Spoon River Poetry Review is a literary journal of poetry based in Illinois, USA. It was first published 1976 as Spoon River Quarterly through the Spoon River Press at Western Illinois University. After two years, both the press and the journal moved from Macomb, Illinois, to Peoria. The journal's name was not based on Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, but was coined for an actual river in central Illinois which is believed to be named after the local freshwater mussel shells that the region’s early Native Americans and colonists used as spoons. Renamed Spoon River Poetry Review (SRPR) in 1993, the periodical is one of America’s oldest continuously published literary journals.
Its original editor was its founder David Pichaske, who moved to Minnesota in 1987 along with the related Spoon River Poetry Press, since when, the journal has been edited by Lucia Getsi at Illinois State University, by Bruce Guernsey at Eastern Illinois University, and then by Kirstin Hotelling Zona, at Illinois State. The journal publishes poems written in English or in English translation, and each issue features a poet who has an Illinois connection, as well as other poems from across the globe.