Submissions
We welcome submissions year-round responding to works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s permanent collection and select past special exhibits - all areas, including painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, costume, musical instruments, and the Met building itself. All styles are welcome from poets around the world.
We are now able to pay $10 per poem.
Please send up to three poems with a note about the work they reference to metphrastics@gmail.com. Please include a 2-3 line 3rd person bio.
Please note: we get a number of submissions about works in other museums, and we get many that are simply not ekphrastic poems. Only ekphrastic poems about artwork at the Met will be considered. Please note the piece(s) in your cover letter. Thank you!
Current Calls
Fall 2025 - Arms & Armor - window will close September 15
This issue will focus on the Met’s extensive Arms & Armor collection. Send us your poems about battle, armor, shields, masks, war (or fear of war), and anything else inspired by these extraordinary pieces. The poems should be based on works on display only, that a visitor could go and encounter in person.
Please put “Arms & Armor” in your email subject.
Tips
Please make sure your poems are about artwork at the Met. We prefer to feature poems about works currently on display, but it’s not a requirement unless stated in the submission call.
While we consider the quality of the poems first, we do try to include a variety of source artworks. As you can see on our By Artwork page, most poems we receive are about Modern & Contemporary, as well as European Painting. If you see a region or genre we haven’t covered as widely, you might take that as a prompt. For instance, we don’t yet have any pieces on Arms & Armor, Musical Instruments, Latin America, Ancient America, or Africa, and we’re always looking for more Asian, Islamic, Ancient Near Eastern, Ancient Egyptian, Greek & Roman, American, Costume, Cloisters and Medieval.