This past year, RHINO Poetry celebrated 50 years of gathering the poetry community in its pages, across its events, and through its online presence. RHINO remains an independent, volunteer-run nonprofit, and this year, it had the pleasure of welcoming Cynthia Dewi Oka, Leslie Contreras Schwartz, MJ Dean, and Amy K. Yee as new editorial members. At AWP 2026, RHINO was one of 32 out of 650 Bookfair lit orgs to be Women Who Submit (WWS) Certified for having at least 50% women and 50% POC on mastheads and/or Boards.

RHINO is also able to support emerging editors, non-profit managers, and poets historically underrepresented in American letters through the Helen Degen Cohen Summer Reading Fellowship. These fellows go on after their time at RHINO to carry out important work in the field. Recently, RHINO has applauded past fellow Temperance Aghamohammadi’s debut collection, Battalion Shaped Girl.

As a journal, RHINO continuously expands the idea of what poetry can do, while also remaining grounded in the form’s traditions. This past year, the RHINO Founders’ Prize-winning poem, Christopher Stewart’s “Poland, 1987,” won a Pushcart Prize, and Maggie Smith selected and read a RHINO poem, Liz Ahl’s “You Try to Fix It,” for The Slowdown. In its annual Founders’ Contest, RHINO is grateful to be able to offer monetary prizes and work with incredible judges such as Allison Joseph, Matthew Olzmann, and Cyrus Cassells in recent years.

RHINO’s online archive is free and open to the public, and includes celebrated poems by Faisal Mohyuddin, Jalen Eutsey, Nicholas Goodly, Jaia Hamid Bashir, Hafizah Geter, Sarah J. Sloat, Karen Llagas, Luisa Caycedo-Kimura, and so many more. The archive also houses RHINO Reviews, including special graphic and translation issues. RHINO Reads showcases online and in-person events, and the RHINO Vision Poetry YouTube channel hosts recordings of the digital launch readings.

Each year RHINO presents a Founders’ Prize, an Editors’ Prize, and a Translation Prize to award poems of great impact. The 2026 winner of the Translation Prize was the poem “before I was born, grandma spent the whole summer in the broken beetle in the yard” by Ioana Vintilă and translated from Romanian by Clara Burghelea.

With a donation of $25 or more, you will receive a free print copy of the 2027 edition of the magazine, which includes new poems by Rosebud Ben-Oni, Alejandro Aguirre, Dante Di Stefano, Averill Curdy, Chidiebube onye Okohia, and more!

This fundraiser helps cover operating expenses for the entire upcoming year. Please help us reach our fundraising goal so that RHINO can keep our events, submissions, and extensive online archive and reviews free and accessible to the public!

Credit to Michael L. Miner for the campaign cover art.

RHINO Poetry Donor Campaign 2027