ABOUT CODA

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An annual poetry volume from The Fifth Corner.

Derived from the musical term for a concluding passage, and from the Latin cauda, meaning tail, a coda is a final movement that lingers after the main body has ended.

Each issue of The Fifth Corner concludes with a single poem selected through the Coda Poet Prize. Beginning in 2026, this commitment to poetry expands through CODA, an annual volume collecting the winning and shortlisted poems selected across the year’s prize cycles.

Published each January, CODA serves as a record of the poems that most distinguished themselves throughout the year. While the winning poems first appear in the pages of The Fifth Corner, CODA gathers them alongside the shortlisted works, preserving a broader portrait of the voices and sensibilities that shaped the prize.