Announcing the Winners of the 2025 Kingfisher Poetry Prize!

Prized Poems

It’s time to announce the winners of the 2025 Kingfisher Poetry Prize, as selected by final judge Jude Neale! Find the winners along with judge’s commentary below, and be sure to look for these prize-winning poems in Pulp Literature Issue 49, Winter 2026.

Winner: ‘My Preschool Teacher Rips Tape from the Roll’ by Atma Frans

“This poem arrests from its first line, each image precise, startling, and necessary. It distills trauma and tenderness into a few lines, where silence and breakage become the form itself. It shows how restraint and image can carry more truth than any exposition.”

1st Runner-up: ‘finding my mother’s field guide to birds’ by Sarina Sullivan

“A single long sentence carries grief and memory in a rush of syntax that mirrors floodwaters and breathlessness. The layering of natural detail with familial memory achieves a raw, urgent beauty, messy, human, unforgettable. Its unpunctuated sprawl becomes its music, making the reader live inside its flood.”

2nd Runner-up: ‘When Limitation Yields Abundance’ by Maryam Imogen Ghouth

“This piece offers a quiet, luminous metaphor, grounding big ideas of desire, restraint, and love in the fig tree’s growth. Its clarity and tenderness resonate, showing how wisdom can emerge from ordinary family memory. The poem demonstrates that abundance, paradoxically, often lives inside boundaries.”

Thank you to all submitting poets for sharing your words and supporting Pulp Literature!

And thank you to our illustrious final judge Jude Neale for taking excellent care of the Kingfisher once again.

Meet Kingfisher Judge, Jude Neale!

Jude Neale is a master educator, Canadian poet, vocalist, spoken word performer, workshop facilitator, and mentor. As well, she has has written twelve collections of poetry. She is a beloved mother, grandmother, and wife.

Jude’s book A Quiet Coming of Light: A Poetic Memoir (Leaf) was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, a recognition of Canadian women poets. Her manuscript, Splendid in Its Silence, won publication in the UK. Her poem, ‘Blue Bowl’, was a finalist for the prestigious Irish Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Award. ‘Emptiness in the Garden’, selected by Britain’s Poet Laureate, Sir Andrew Motion, rode the buses in the Channel Islands for a year.

Drawing on her musical background, Jude collaborated with violist, composer, and visionary, Thomas RL Beckman, to write a poetic prose narrative for the three-movement orchestrated suite, The St. Roch Suite, performed live by the Prince George Symphony Orchestra.

Looking for contest glory for yourself?

Our 2025 Raven Short Story Contest is open to writers of short fiction. Get your entries in today, September 15th, to take advantage of our Earlybird pricing. Not quite ready? No worries! This contest will remain open until October 15th, 2025. Find all of the details and the contest guidelines here.