Editor Interview: RHINO Founders' Prize

Love affair w language!

All of them.

The actual publication is beautifully bound, with a professionally illustrated cover which changes each year, very nice paper, and professionally designed on the inside as well. We put a lot of care into the printed matter.
We also publish each poem online throughout the year, and offer our writers the opportunity to record their poem for the website.

Read the guidelines carefully. Read the poems carefully to get an idea of our taste - while eclectic, we value craft and risk.
You can purchase a back issue for only $6.

5 pages of poetry or less.
The poems don't need to hang together but we value a struggle between choosing one of the bunch.

Some submitters send overly cliched work or more poems than we ask for.
Some submitters for the Founders' Prize don't see the huge PayPal button and wonder how to pay. We're happy to answer questions but it makes our lives easier if the guidelines for formatting and submitting are followed.

We like to know how people heard of RHINO and anything else they want to share.
We don't need a lot of explanations about the poems - in fact, we prefer to make our own discoveries while reading them.

We read every poem in every submission.
Each submission is read by 4 editors.

We query to make sure the piece hasn't been published or accepted elsewhere.

We have 10-12 editors who are each tasked with reading throughout both submissions windows (general and Founders'' prize). This often means we read 20 packets a week, which is 100 poems a week.
We meet twice a month to "bring to the table" poems we feel bear reading by the group. There the poem is read out loud - some of us follow along on our laptops - and discussed at length.