John Skoyles Prize for Poetry

The annual John Skoyles Prize for Poetry honors an outstanding poem published in Ploughshares in the previous year.

Since 2007, John Skoyles served as Ploughshares’ Poetry Editor until February 2025, when he served as interim Editor-in-Chief before retiring later that year. During his tenure at the journal, Skoyles championed the work of emerging poets, celebrating enigmatic poetry that possessed, as he put it in his Editor’s Note for the Winter 2024-25 issue, “clarity and surprise.” Skoyles edited with great care and empathy, and continues his prolific career as a poet and writer. The winner of the Skoyles Prize is selected by our editors and the announcement of the award, along with a short profile of the author, is printed in each year’s fall longform issue.

John Skoyles Prize for Poetry Winners

2026: Mostafa Ibrahim, “So-and-So” (translated from the Arabic by Abdelrahman ElGendy) / Winter 2025-26