Poetry Window Open Call: 2026 Winners

The Poetry Society invited poets to submit a previously unpublished poem no longer than 10 lines to be installed for a month in the window of our storefront office on Smith Street in Brooklyn, New York. The storefront window has featured poems by Nicole Sealey, Elizabeth Willis, Carl Phillips, Joy Harjo, Reginald Dwayne Betts, and Charles Simic, among others. Approximately 5,000 pedestrians pass by the window each day.

Open Call Winning Poems

“And Even You, With Your Lucky Breaks” by Cynthia Clifford
“Horseshoe Crabs” by Michaela Cowgill
“Piano” by Ting Lin
“Trust the Process” by Ryan Mihaly
 

Cynthia Clifford is a Mexican-American poet from Southern California's Inland Empire. She holds an MFA from Columbia University, where she was awarded the Linda Corrente Fellowship and taught creative writing as an adjunct assistant professor. Based in Brooklyn, her poems have appeared in Witness Magazine, Quibble Lit, and other journals. She was awarded a 2026 Poetry Society of America Summer Fellowship.

Michaela Cowgill lives in Maine. She has received support for her writing from the University of Virginia, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and the Vermont Studio Center. Her poems have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Colorado Review, Guesthouse, and elsewhere.

Ting Lin’s poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from The Cincinnati Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Washington Square Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and The Margins (AAWW), among other places. Her essays and criticism can be found in The Nation and The Baffler. She lives in Oakland, CA.

Ryan Mihaly is a poet, translator, and musician from New England. He is the author of B-Flat Clarinet Fingering Chart (New Michigan Press, 2022). His poems, translations, and interviews have appeared in Circumference, FENCE, Poetry, Asymptote, The Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. He is working on translating the 20th century Polish poet Halina Poświatowska with his wife, the poet Karolina Zapal.