Wayfare magazine announces “Behold the Man!,” its first annual contest for poems about or related to Jesus of Nazareth. The inaugural judge is James Matthew Wilson, the Cullen Foundation Chair in English Literature and the founding director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Saint Thomas.
TOPIC
We’re looking for a range of responses to Jesus from a variety of faiths and perspectives, religious or otherwise. Poems should engage this topic with freshness and insight, avoiding overly simplistic expressions of either praise or criticism of Jesus himself or Christian beliefs and practices.
Some examples of what we’re looking for include but are not limited to Gerard Manley Hopkins’s effusive encomium “The Windhover,” Mary Oliver’s heartbreaking identification with the sleeping apostles in ”Gethsemane,” James Wright’s haunting sonnet “Saint Judas,” Anne Sexton’s powerful wrestling with faith and disbelief in “With Mercy for the Greedy,” Stephen Dunn’s delightful irony in “At the Smithville Methodist Church,” and Joe Plicka’s moving taxonomy of Christian representation, “The Jesus.”
PRIZES
1st: $1000, 2nd: $500, 3rd: $100. The number of honorable mentions will be determined by the judge. All contest winners and honorable mentions will be published in Wayfare magazine.
SUBMISSION WINDOW AND JUDGING
Submissions are accepted February 1st through March 29th, 2026 (Palm Sunday). Winners will be notified at the end of May and recognized at the summer Wayfare Festival.
Semifinalists will be selected by Kevin Klein, D.A. Cooper, and Kathryn Knight Sonntag. The contest judge will select winners from among the semifinalists. Wayfare reserves the right not to award prizes.
GUIDELINES
Poets may submit up to two poems. Each poem must be 50 lines or fewer, including epigraphs but excluding title and stanza breaks. Prose poems accepted: 300-word limit.
All verse forms and free verse accepted. Poems must be in English but may contain some words in other languages.
Format: Word or PDF document. 12 pt readable font (Times New Roman, Arial, Cambria, Calibri)
Judging will be blind at all stages. Poets must remove any self-identifying information from their submissions.
Family members and current students of the judge are ineligible to enter.
Simultaneous submissions are allowed.
Poems must be original, not translations of others’ work.
Poems must not be AI-generated in part or whole.
Poems must be unpublished in print, on the Internet, or in limited edition books as of the contest deadline.
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