I set a goal to send 365 poetry submissions in a year not to get published, but to make rejection normal. After 284 submissions, 134 rejections, and a national prize, here’s what the data taught me about staying in the game and growing as a poet.

Telling the Bees’ began in the early months after my father died, when I kept returning to the old ritual of announcing a death to the hive. I’m deeply honored that Bellevue Literary Review has awarded the poem the 2026 John & Eileen Allman Prize for Poetry.