Submissions ups and downs this week
Category: Submissions
Are anonymous submissions a good thing?
I came across this article recently, in Anon magazine, setting out the opinions of three writers as to whether anonymous submissions to magazines were a good idea.
I rather like Kathleen Jamie‘s conclusion, that actually by creating a so-called ‘level playing field’ for all poets, regardless of reputation, a magazine like Anon (championing the cause of anonymous submissions) is perpetuating the mistaken idea that there is some sort of conspiracy among well-known poets to keep everyone else out. She suggests the problem is not that the pages of poetry magazines are dominated by the same few names, far from it. But rather this:
No editor fears receiving a sub-standard poem by Seamus Heaney, if such a thing exists. What he fears, understandably, is receiving shed-loads of dreadful half-baked so-called ‘poetry’ accompanied by pages of testimonials, CVs and special pleading.
In other words, an anonymous submissions process doesn’t make it any easier to get poems accepted. If they’re mediocre, that’s the end of it. And big-name poets don’t submit to small magazines anyway. They don’t need to.
Plus, as Gerry Cambridge points out in the same article,
Unpublished poets are deluded if they believe they can’t get published because they’re not known names. After all, those known names were once unknowns, too.
and
… any editor of an individual cast of mind would like nothing more than to print the work of an unknown or little-known poet whose writing, in the editor’s opinion, is excellent – or even promising and individual in a way that marks it out from the majority
Anon isn’t the only magazine with an anonymous submissions process – South also insists on anonymity, as does Iota. Having had work in both, I’ve always wondered if I’ve been a beneficiary of the process. Then again I’ve also wondered if having an androgynous name also works in my favour. We can speculate on all these things and more, I suppose. (And to be honest I quite enjoy it – I find the intrigue, arguments and gossip an essential and entertaining part of the poetry scene – but then again I’m only really an amateur onlooker, so I can see how easy it is for me to say that, and how frustrating it is for others who hate the shenanigans and just want to get on with their writing.)
What do you think? Do aspiring/nascent writers benefit from anonymous submissions? Or is it insulting to editors to assume they are swayed by who the poet is rather than the quality of the individual poems?
Image credit: South Peace News
It’s my birthday! Hurrah! I think
Children love having birthdays. I quite enjoyed them myself until I got to about 30, then I went through a period of getting a bit grumpy about the whole birthday thing. But these days I don’t mind them at all. So far today:
Woke up with migraine that had been brewing up all night – boo
Husband presents me with a copy of Hilary Mantel’s Bring up the Bodies which I’ve been itching to read since it came out, but was waiting for the softback version – hurrah!
I have to go to work for half the day, and the office is freezing – boo
Finish with a meeting at our local friendly cafe, Pleasant Stores, and am treated to a veggie muffin – hurrah!
Jeans are feeling a bit tight and am reminded of urgency of nipping middle aged spread in the bud before I start looking like a veggie muffin – boo
Get home to find the lovely Charles Johnson at Obsessed with Pipework wants one of my poems for April 2013 issue – hurrah!
I see husband has hidden a bar of chocolate in the fridge for later – hurrah!
After popping the pink and yellow pills, migraine is now downgraded to mild headache – hurrah!
So overall a pretty good day. I might even try to write a poem.
Would you pay to submit your poetry to a magazine? (Poll)
Here’s a thing. Poetry presses and magazines exist on a shoestring. Sometimes half a shoestring. I’m sure we’d all love to support them by subscribing to them all, but it does get a tad expensive. So what’s the answer?
Charging for submissions seems relatively unusual in this country but it’s not in the US. The New England Review, for example, is very upfront about making a charge for submissions, but they made it sound very reasonable:
“We charge a small fee for online submissions ($3 prose, $2 poetry, $2 NER Digital). This fee, which is waived for current subscribers, helps to support New England Review in its mission to encourage literary innovation and exploration by publishing writers at all stages of their careers. It’s also not much more (and sometimes less) than what you’d pay for postage, paper, and printing. We also think you’ll appreciate the convenience of being able to upload your submission from your own computer.”
So what do you think? Should magazines move to this model, and ditch the vagaries of Royal Mail altogether? Would you agree to paying a pound, say, to submit a handful of poems to a magazine? Is it better to give your money to the poetry magazines rather than the Royal Mail?
If you’re reading this and you run a small press, what are the disadvantages of this system – your having to print out poems? Possible loss of formatting? Too much trouble to set the system up? Would a fee deter people from submitting – and possibly the ones you actually don’t want to deter?
Take the quick poll and please comment – I’m interested to know what you think.
How’s your filing? And what’s in a (folder) name?
Here’s a pressing question – what sort of filing system do you favour?
I love my lever arch files, with their colour-coded dividers and lovingly decided section names. But if you leave the filing for a while the ‘unclassified’ section at the front becomes unwieldy, and it’s impossible to find anything. But (for me) at least the process of weeding, filing and sorting paper has a certain satisfaction.
And now to the computer. The very nature of computer filing (the ease with which you can change folder and file names, not to mention the ease with which you can create new iterations of files – or overwrite them – and the limitless capacity of folders) should make it all a doddle. At least you don’t have to grab the tippex or cut up white labels to stick over section names if you change your mind, or buy new lever arch files.
But for some reason I find the ease of computer filing also creates a increased burden of decision-making. I started with a reasonably rational file name: ‘Poetry’. Then a few subfolder names suggested themselves: ‘working on’, ‘magazines’ (which of course needs the sub-subfolder name ‘correspondance’), the hopeful ‘submitted no reply yet’, the victorious ‘published-forthcoming’ and the sad “failed submissions’. (There’s also ‘archive’ which is mostly rubbish which I just can’t bring myself to delete, with the subfolder ‘may be worth re-working’.. and other folders which probably need deleting or consolidating.)
Now, I’m aware that although I choose to call my sad folder ‘failed submissions’, others may use the blunt phrase ‘rejected’. But I deliberately avoid that. I know that I will never look at any folder called ‘rejected’, whereas ‘failed submissions’ seems like a objective, rational sort of category – one woman’s failure is another’s opportunity, etc. And ‘rejected’ just gives too much power to the rejector, in my mind. Having had a few ‘failed submissions’ find their way into the ‘published-forthcoming’ folder, I feel justified in these semantic decisions.
What do you think? Care to share your filing system? Is it important what we call folders?
Brighton Stanza on top
First the good news: I got a note through a week or so ago from Paul McGrane at the Poetry Society saying my poem had been commended in the 2012 Stanza competition (judged by John Siddique), but the full results weren’t out until today. So what should I find, but that there are 2 other Brighton Stanza poets on the list of 10 commendeds – Tess Jolly and Tom Cunliffe. Hurrah for us all!
Tess is a friend primarily from Jo Grigg’s workshopping group, which has been a fantastic support and inspiration for me. She is a really talented poet and I’m so pleased to see her name coming up regularly in publications and comps.
So overall, I think that makes the Brighton Stanza the winner this year – thank to Jo for encouraging us all to take part. It’s only a small competition, but always nice to get a little recognition.
And the bad news? My submission to Ambit seems to have gone astray. So that’s 5 months of waiting for nothing. Boo! But the Ambit chaps were kind enough to respond to me on Twitter and suggested that if I re-submit I could mention what happened and they might put my poems a bit higher up the slush pile. Except now when I look at what I submitted, I don’t like them! So they deserve to be at the bottom!
Writing musings/ submissions etc
I’ve been grabbing the odd hour here and there to write while my other half watches the cricket highlights each day.
I need to submit some new stuff, so I need to write some new stuff. I’ve tentatively been trying to come up with something ‘humorous’ for the Moss Rich Prize. Yes I know I’ve told myself not to bother with competitions but as this one is local, has extended the deadline (so may be short of entries – ha!) plus the ‘humorous’ tag may put off many of the usual suspects.
So I’ve whipped up four shorties to try on it. Not sure if they’re ‘funny’ as such but should raise a wry half-smile with luck. But that’s just time and money down the drain really, whereas sumitting to magazines is more my bread and butter. I’ve work out at the moment for consideraton at Ambit and Poetry London, neither of which I’ve tried before and I’m not sure if I’ll hear from either for several months. That leaves 2 or 3 poems that are almost publishable, I think. But where to send?
Are they quirky enough for Obsessed with Pipework? Agenda and The North have both closed submissions for the time being. The Rialto has just published one from me and I don’t like to push my luck too often with them as I feel I’m in there by the skin of my teeth. Three forthcoming in Iota but they too seem to have significantly slowed down their production schedule. And Smith’s Knoll? I don’t know… I know the quick turnaround is great but in some ways it seems worse to get a rejection so quickly… it’s extra demotivating somehow, so I’m reluctant to try them again (it would be my 3rd time, and I tend not to pursue a publication more than twice without an acceptance – stupid I know, but there’s something psychological about it.) Plus, their website talks about the current publication being 2010 – I guess it’s hard to keep a website up with that strict 2 week turnaround to stick to, you’re too busy reading submissions. Nevertheless it makes me lose a little confidence in a publication and wonder if they still have an active publication schedule.
Both Charles at Obsessed with Pipework and Patricia at Agenda were most generous about work I have submitted before so I’m inclined to try them again. If what I’ve written is suitable. But then again I could always writing some more. Hmmm!
Out now – The Rialto 75
The Rialto: bedside reading for this week at least.
Very proud that I have a poem in it on page 50.
The Last
They’ve been coming since posters were invented:
sometimes in dreams, to the tipping of cowboy hats
or dressed in Liverpool shirts. Each one appeared
in my diary, in code. My mother wouldn’t explain,
I couldn’t ask. And still they would come, insistent.
They left my body as they found it: I never wanted
them to stay, or change things. It’s been a while since
I wrote a diary. I don’t know how many there were,
I wasn’t counting. Too busy getting on with
the business of getting on. For the last, though,
I would have thrown a party, marked the occasion
in some way, worn something red, if I had known.
Writing again after a setback
A few weeks ago I was feeling a bit ‘stuck’ and decided to pay for another ‘Poetry Prescription’ from the Poetry Society. I got the feedback last week and it was less than motivating. Basically my work got sent to the same poet who looked at it last time (I did a ‘PP’ back in 2008 prior to starting to read and write poetry more seriously). He or she was fairly underwhelmed the first time, and gleefully told me in his or her report that he or she remembered having done so.
Sorry about the he/she malarky – I’m not allowed to know who the poet was who laid into my work, ‘to protect their privacy’ – never mind my privacy!
As I explained to Paul McGrane, I’m happy to take criticism of individual poems (which is the point of the exercise) but would rather have had a fresh eye look over the work. This person seems to have made up their mind before even reading the four poems I submitted (based on their prior opinion) and went out of his or her way to make me feel small and useless.
Is this the way the Poetry Society motivates new writers? What a shame. But thanks to the encouragement/wise words of two or three supportive poet friends I won’t let it set me back. OK, I know a lot of what I’ve written isn’t great, but there is some good stuff in there, and I just need to write more of it. Plus, in poetry there are many opinions and this particular critic may never be a fan of mine no matter what I write.
So I’m back writing again, with a few good kernels of poems on the go. Onwards!
Hurrah! The Rialto takes another
So excited to have had a poem accepted for The Rialto.
The first poem I had published was in this magazine (Rialto 70, Autumn 2010) and to say that I was ‘gobsmacked’ would be an understatement… only I’m not allowed to use that word in my husband’s presence as he believes it is an affront the English language.
The only trouble is … I wasn’t as proud of that particular poem as some of the stuff I’ve written more recently, plus since then I’ve had this nagging feeling it was a fluke, and I needed dear Michael Mackmin to say ‘YAY’ to another in order to revive that ever-ready to deflate tent that is my confidence.
So – phew! Very happy.
Also forthcoming are 3 poems in Iota, although I’m not sure when it’s coming out. Back in March I got a rejection from Iota, for the same three poems that had previously been accepted by the same. Very strange – eventually I realised it was because I had submitted twice – the first time I included my contact details on the poems and then realised that Iota operates an anonymous selection process. I was advised to re-submit, and it was the second submission that was rejected.
It’s a good example of how the same poems can be wrong for a publication one week, and right for it the next – presumably down to things like what other poems are in the mix already, where the editor has a gap, etc. Maybe also what they read that morning or had for lunch. Who knows – but it was a good illustration of how you should not give up too easily on a poem just because it gets rejected a few times.