Pacific Northwest College of Art at Willamette University
MFA Program
Poetry, Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Translation, Cross-Genre
Portland, OR
Application Deadline:
Wed, 10/15/2025
Application Fee:
$0
Genre: Poetry
Jorie Graham With Michael Silverblatt
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“The work of most poets whom I admire requires an apprenticeship to the language of that particular poet.” Jorie Graham speaks about reading habits, influence, and accessibility to a wider audience as a poet in this 1999 interview with Michael Silverblatt, host of the long-running KCRW series Bookworm, produced by the Lannan Foundation.
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Burial With Mary Lattimore
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“imagine his joy as the sun / wizarded forth those abundant sugars / and I plodded barefoot / and prayerful at the first ripe plum’s swell and blush,” reads Ross Gay from his poem “Burial” in this video featuring music by Mary Lattimore. The track is featured in an album called Dilate Your Heart, part of a yearlong release campaign celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of indie record label Jagjaguwar.
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Climate Crisis
Rising global temperatures and natural disasters, such as the recent tropical storms and hurricanes in North America and the earthquake in Haiti, bring to mind the fragility of the environment and the effects of climate change. Over the years, poets have taken to their craft to raise awareness and humanize the climate crisis in works such as “I Don’t Know What Will Kill Us First: The Race War or What We’ve Done to the Earth” by Fatimah Asghar, “Let Them Not Say” by Jane Hirshfield, “Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now” by Matthew Olzmann. Write a poem about the environment that draws the reader in emotionally, whether it is by describing a changing landscape or reflecting on the issue. For further inspiration, browse these poems engaging with the climate crisis curated by the Academy of American Poets.
Off the Grid Poetry Prize Accepting Submissions
The deadline is approaching for the eleventh annual Off the Grid Poetry Prize. Given for a poetry collection by a writer over the age of 60, the award includes $1,000 and publication by Off the Grid Press, an imprint of Grid Books. The prize aims to reward writers “ripened in craft and vision.”
Using only the online submission system, submit a manuscript of at least 50 pages with a $25 entry fee by August 31. Jimmy Santiago Baca will judge. The winner will be announced by the end of the year. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
Poets Tam Lin Neville and Bert Stern founded Off the Grid Press in 2003 with the goal to “provide a forum for older poets who are sometimes overlooked by the current marketplace.” The press later rebranded as Grid Brooks while preserving Off the Grid Press as an imprint. While the Off the Grid Poetry Prize remains reserved for older writers, Grid Books is open to writers of all ages and champions “creative work that springs from the margins.” In addition to poetry, the press also seeks to publish scholarly editions and oral history projects.
Poet Laureate Joy Harjo
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“I’m carrying this for America, but for Indigenous peoples in particular,” says Joy Harjo about what it means to be the first Native American to serve as the poet laureate of the United States in this 2019 PBS NewsHour interview with Jeffrey Brown. A Q&A with Harjo about her new memoir, Poet Warrior (Norton, 2021), appears in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
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Literary MagNet: Aurielle Marie
The author of the new poetry collection Gumbo Ya Ya discusses four journals that first published their work, including BOAAT, TriQuarterly, Southeast Review, and Ploughshares.
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The Field of Stories: A Q&A With Joy Harjo
In a new memoir, Poet Warrior, published by W. W. Norton in September, U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo travels the roads, rivers, and rhythms of her life, taking readers on a journey across generations.
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The Wide Question: A Q&A With Kaveh Akbar
Kaveh Akbar, the author of Calling a Wolf a Wolf, returns with Pilgrim Bell, a collection of poems that dissolves the border between knowing and not knowing and interrogates ideals of justice, the self, and the divine.
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Words as Weapons
In a preface to “After Cecilia Vicuña,” a poem from the collection Villainy, published in September by Nightboat Books, Andrea Abi-Karam includes a note on the Chilean poet and visual artist Cecilia Vicuña, who condemned General Augusto Pinochet and spoke out about how “the lies (the words, the language) of the Chilean dictatorship murdered & tortured thousands of people.” In the poem, Abi-Karam asks questions about the power of words and how to provoke change through a medium such as poetry that at times can feel devoid of consequence. “i ask questions like / … how to weaponize the poem words as weapons / give the poem teeth.” What questions would you ask yourself about the power of your own words? Write a poem that contemplates the impact you wish to make as a writer—the reasons, hesitations, desires, and conflicts that arise when you create.
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