Tag: poetry magazine

Current reading and other news

Current reading … and a parrot

Camilla’s Bookshop is open again in Eastbourne after an arson attack, and I can report that the parrot is still alive and greeting you as you enter, and the stacks of books are as tightly packed as ever – in fact even more so! Here’s how the poetry section looked before (multiply this ten or even twenty times over and you get a good picture of the shop as a whole!

Camilla's Bookshop

Now, the stacks on the floor are about 4 foot tall and it’s impossible to bend down and get one’s head into a position to see what’s actually in the stack…however I managed to find two books of interest on the upper shelves. One is John Donne, The Complete English Poems (Penguin Classics) and the other is  The Eavan Boland Sourcebook (Carcanet) which I’ve started and already it’s fascinating. Eavan Boland is a poet I’d only heard of but not read, but when she died earlier this year there was such an outpouring of grief from the poetry community that I decided I needed to seek her out.

In addition to this I’m near the end of a lovely book by Jean Sprackland, a memoir in which she retraces her steps through the graveyards and cemeteries she’s known over the years.

current reading 27-7-20

Other recent reading:

current reading-27-7-20

Vicki Feaver‘s I want I want (Cape) is one of the Forward Prize shortlisted books that I ordered, and Sestet is an anthology that I’ll be reviewing for The Frogmore Papers. I must say I’m looking forward to reading Rachel Long‘s My Darling from the Lions, which is up for Best First Collection in the Forwards. I really liked her recent work in The Poetry Review.

Also waiting in the wings to be read is Little Kings by Peter Kahn (Nine Arches), kindly given to me by Peter Raynard. Peter Kahn is a new poet to me, and the book jacket blurbs make it sound very promising.

My contributor copy of Stand arrived recently. I’m delighted to have a poem in Stand; I’ve subscribed this last year and have enjoyed much of its content. Particularly interesting are the editorials. I think it’s a shame that not all mags have them.

I’ve resubscribed to Poetry just at a turbulent time it seems. A poem in the July/August issue by Michael Dickman has caused a massive furore, and editor Don Share resigned. Here’s his extraordinary final editorial. 

Feature on the Frogmore blog

And speaking of The Frogmore Papers, here’s a lovely post on their blog about the sad demise of listings mag Viva Lewes. The April issue was due to feature four of the members of the Needlewriters Collective (Jeremy Page, Charlotte Gann, Janet Sutherland and myself) but it never went to print. But the feature is reproduced here, like a sort of echo of what almost happened.

‘Ellipsis’ on Radio Reverb

Another lovely thing: fine poet and Brighton Reverb Radio presenter Jackie Wills featured one of my poems on the Reverb Literature Hour the other week. It was such a treat to hear her read the poem; I don’t think I’ve heard anyone read a poem of mine before. And her analysis of it was wonderful. I was very touched. With Jackie’s permission I’m posting it here:

A birthday post and on magazines

poetry wall

Ooh. Lots of interesting discussion & comment around my last post. Thank you to everyone who engaged! (Feels a bit of a sham/shame to use that 21st century term but you know what I mean: commented, shared, liked/disliked etc).

Meanwhile, on another blog (when I update it that is) I’m telling the story of our new sheds. Yes, plural! I’m talking about the replacement structure for two sheds, a tool shed and and ‘summerhouse’ which we inherited, and loved, but which ultimately wasn’t really doing the job we needed of it. To cut a long story short, the old tool shed and summerhouse have been relocated 150 yards up to the communal garden, and they look perfectly at home up there. Meanwhile to replace them we’ve had built for us a wooden structure which incorporates two ‘rooms’ – a tool shed (yeah OK a ‘mancave’) and a potting shed/half greenhouse/she-shed. It’s exciting, but it’s more for garden stuff than anything else.

I can’t rival anything like Abegail Morley’s iconic Poetry Shed, alas, BUT I couldn’t help but insert a poetry element: a wall of poems! I’ve often wailed about the number of poetry magazines I have and how they take up an inordinate amount of space on the bookshelves. SO how about tearing out a bunch of poems from various mags, and use them to paper a wall in the ‘pottery’ (as we’re calling it – don’t ask!)? First of all I thought I’d look for ‘garden’ or outdoor-related poems. But it expanded to other topics too – basically poems I just liked and wanted to be able to read and enjoy anytime I’m pottering in my pottery! Also, we do have two very small grandchildren, and part of my vision is to welcome them into the pottery as they get older, to do some gardening fun and get them interested in gardening (the older one is already getting into it) – so how about poetry too??

So out came the mags – I started with the earliest and worked from there – so actually ended up with a lot of poems from 2010 – 2017 and maybe not many more recent, but hey. I took out all the Rattles, Agendas, Proles, Frogmore Papers, Poetry Reviews, Poetry, Rialtos, Tears in the Fence, Obsessed with Pipework and so forth, got out a sharp knife and started excising…

And a funny thing happened. (I should use that as the title for this post, in true Clickbait style!) I read. And read, and realised I’d either not  read these magazines properly or it was so long ago I’d forgotten all the great poems. I took several days over it, but really enjoyed the process, because I discovered/rediscovered some wonderful poems. (In the comments on my last post, Claire Booker noted that many poets don’t actually read the magazines in which their poems appear, or even subscribe to... and I had a twinge of guilt when I read that. I thought I had read these magazines but clearly a cursory lookie didn’t really cut it.)

So I ended up with more poems than I needed to paper the wall. Plus a few air bubbles that I tried to ‘mend’, some more successfully than others. I was careful to place poems with ‘swearage’ (a term I’ve learned from a poet friend – although autocorrect wants to change it to ‘sewerage’ – how appropriate!) further up the wall so that four-year-olds don’t read it and do the classic “nana what does X$%!@ mean?” The photo shows it in progress, I’ve since finished but need to varnish the wall to protect it a bit from the vagaries of shed-dom (damp, condensation etc). I may be putting a mirror on the wall, so I tried to place my faves on the outer fringes so they’re not hidden. A confession: I included 3 of my own poems, although more for fun – I like the idea of someone who maybe doesn’t know I write poetry ‘happening’ on them – ha ha.

PS:  Today is my birthday. In the 1980s I would have bought you all a cream cake. Honestly. Today I just say I hope you have a lovely, lovely day, and let’s all go outside, take a deep breath, and thank whoever or whatever you’d like for being alive. XX

Recent reading: Janet Sutherland, Poetry magazine

Alongside making updates to the look and feel of this site (and general online spring cleaning) I’ve been enjoying some stimulating reading lately. The January edition of Poetry has yielded up a lot of interesting material, including extracts from ‘A Frank O’Hara Notebook’ by Bill Berkson, which made for rich reading on a train journey yesterday…

a frank o'hara notebook

At the back of the mag Mark Ford reviews the Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons (over 2,000 pages!) – a poet I confess I’d never heard of, and clearly someone who went against the grain in more ways than one.

I’ve also listened to two of the podcasts for this issue, in which Don Share, Lindsay Garbutt and Christina Pugh focus on a single poem for reading and discussion. It’s like listening in to an editorial meeting, and always makes me appreciate a poem more. Each month they pick three or four poems to talk about. The two I heard were Khaled Mattawa’s ‘The Boat Merchant’s Wife’ and Jorie Graham’s ‘Overheard in the Herd’. Fascinating. You can catch all the Poetry magazine podcasts here.

A few weeks ago, Janet Sutherland and Matthew Stewart were two of the readers at Needlewriters, a quarterly event in Lewes, in which I’m involved. They each read from their latest collections. I’ll talk more about Matthew’s collection The Knives of Villalejo in a future post.

Home Farm by Janet Sutherland

Home Farm is Janet Sutherland‘s fourth collection from Shearsman. As an aside, when I was at the Swindon Poetry Festival last October, Tony Frazer of Shearsman was on an editors’ panel, and when they were all asked ‘is there a poet you are most proud of having discovered?’ Tony’s answer was ‘Janet Sutherland.’

The cover illustration of a cross-section of a cow sets the scene perfectly. Janet grew up on her parent’s dairy farm in Wiltshire, and much of the book is set there – the experience of day-to-day life and death, the precarious nature of land, weather, animals ‘If symptoms are severe / your animal can die in just an hour -‘ (‘Bloat’) This is no cosy pastoral memoir. The poems draw on actual incidents, stories and memories, extracts from books, letters and accounts. We learn the names of the fields (‘Stony ground, East Close, Home ground, Muddy Track, Paddock, Park, Chapel, Horatio…’ – ‘Fields and Copses’) and the cows, are given glimpses into the ways that love and care for the animals is balanced out by the hard realities. In ‘Mum’s Accounts’ of births and deaths, we’re told ‘The Middle Column is for notes of trouble, trial, losses (‘1987: Gorse, milk fever. Lotus, calved early, calf dead. Dolly, needed help, calf died next day.’) The writing is unsentimental, brutal at times and brilliantly so.


You’ve see calves born, shut them in pens,
and heard their mothers’ bellowing.

You set that grief aside. You taught
calves how to dip unwilling heads to drink,
to suck your milky fingers like a straw.  (‘You hold in your head a notion of the land’)

A seemingly simple poem about a doe making her way tentatively through a wood (‘She will enter’) is a moment of such intensity and understatement, very typical of Janet’s style. I hesitate to call it ‘nature writing’ as there’s something rather limp about the phrase.

The collection embraces experimental poems, fragments and illustrations, all of which I found absorbing, moving and mysterious, propelling me on.

A facsimile of a page from a letter is reproduced, phrases from which appear in a poem later in the book to heartbreaking effect:

I was just looking at your room this morning
and wishing you were home

this room is already empty
the face above the sheets
has gone to clay

now son take care of yourself

Even as I type this my eyes are welling up! Surely this is what poetry exists for.

Roundup: 16 US poetry journals with submissions details

In my last post I explained that although I haven’t seriously tried submitting to US poetry journals, I’d like to, and have started doing the research.

What follows here is a list of sixteen journals – obviously far from comprehensive, but it’s a starting point. Many of these publications have large, rich websites with articles, features, blog, podcasts, archives and more. There are also competitions and other opportunities alongside general submissions (which is my focus on here). So do go explore.

I did end up cutting a few of the titles when I discovered they were either not seeking work from abroad, or their websites or submissions processes were just too clunky or broken to manage, or I wasn’t confident they were still active and current.

In general: assume that all magazines require original, previously unpublished work. Always wait for a response before submitting more material. I also recommend reading at least a sample of the work they publish before submitting.

Atlanta Review

Print only, twice yearly.

Editor: Karen Head

What they say:

Atlanta Review, an international, award-winning poetry journal based in Atlanta, Georgia, has been published biannually since 1994. Located in the Georgia Institute of Technology.

We publish poems, not poets. (All submissions are read blind.)

Our Spring/Summer Issue is guest edited with poems curated from living poets in specific regions or countries in the world.

Poetry submissions:

No more than 5 poems per submission, only one submission per submission period (deadlines June 1st and December 1st) – more details on the Atlanta Review Submittable page. General online submissions fee is $3 (but free if you submit by post.) They aim to respond within 4 months. This is a print-only journal published twice-yearly.

Payment? Unclear.

 

The Baltimore Review

Online, quarterly.

Senior Editor: Barbara Westwood Diehl  (17 other editors are listed)

What they say: 

The Baltimore Review was founded by Barbara Westwood Diehl in 1996 as a literary journal publishing short stories and poems, with a mission to showcase the best writing from the Baltimore area, from across the U.S., and beyond. Our mission remains just that.

In 2012, The Baltimore Review began its new life as a quarterly, online literary journal.

Poetry submissions:

Submission periods are August 1 through November 30 and February 1 through May 31. The theme for the Winter 2018 contest is “Food.” Deadline: November 30.  Non-theme, non-contest submissions will also be accepted throughout each submission period. Simultaneous submissions are accepted.  Response time – from 1 to 4 months.

More details on The Baltimore Review Submittable page.

Payment? Non-contest submissions:  a copy of the annual compilation in which the author’s work appears, and a small payment ($40 Amazon gift certificate or $40 through PayPal, if preferred). “We also nominate our contributors’ work for every possible prize, and we send copies of the print compilation to the Best American series and other prize anthologies.”

Sample poem: ‘Bone’, by Leslie Adrienne Miller.

Blackbird

Online, twice yearly.

Senior Editors: Gregory Donovan & Mary Flinn

What they say:

Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts offers visitors from around the world outstanding fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and reviews, as well as plays, visual art, new media, and video essays.

We believe that contributors should be paid—as a gesture of respect—as we endeavor to give their work and their lives as artists our sustained support and attention by taking note of their ongoing accomplishments.

Blackbird was founded in 2002 as a joint venture of the Virginia Commonwealth University Department of English and New Virginia Review, Inc.

Poetry submissions:

Send up to 6 poems at a time. Next reading period is from November 15, 2017 to April 15, 2018. Simultaneous submissions acceptable as long as they are ‘indicated as such’. Online submissions preferred – full details here.

Payment? Yes, but unclear what.

Sample poem: ‘I know who you are’, Dana Crum

 

By&By Poetry 

Online, quarterly.

Editor: Jason Sears

What they say:

By&By Poetry, founded in 2015, aims to provide an eclectic online showcase for both established and up-and-coming poets. We aspire to shape By&By into a celebration of poetry, a place where poets can congregate, read, and be heard….

“By and by” evokes the humid warmth of Southern hymns, the comfort of a grandmother or grandfather, the all-encompassing belief in the future. A term that once denoted a sense of immediacy, “by and by” now implies an eventual hereafter.

Poetry submissions:

Accepted year-round via Submittable (no fee). No more than 5 poems at a time. Include a cover letter, short bio and something about why you think these poems are a good fit with By&By. No payment for publication, but the editors “aim for a speedy seven day turnaround time. If we haven’t reached out to you within a month, feel free to gently prod us into action via Submittable.”

Payment? None.

Sample poem: ‘Pruned’, by Nicole V Bastia

 

The Carolina Quarterly

Print, twice yearly. Selected content published online also.

Editor: Moira Marquis

What they say:

The Carolina Quarterly has been publishing established and emergent writers for 65 years. It features a variety of poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, and artwork.

Poetry submissions:

Submissions are accepted year round, both by mail and through Submittable. ($2.50 fee.) No more than 6 poems at a time. Expect four to six months for a decision. Simultaneous submissions are OK but let them know if your work is accepted elsewhere.

Payment? Unclear.

Sample poem: ‘The Mudsuckers’ by Lindsay Wilson

 

Coal City Review

Annual. Thanks to Maggie Sawkins for suggesting this.

Editor: Brian Daldorph

What they say:

Since 1990, Coal City has published 20 annual reviews and 7 collections of poetry. Our contributors are tall, short, male, female, American, foreign, rich, poor, free, imprisoned, discontented, contented, rural, urban, suburban, liberal and not-so-liberal.  The traits they share are curiosity, compassion, insight and fierce commitment to good writing.

Poetry submissions:

Coal City Review welcomes submissions of literary poetry and short stories throughout the year. Send up to 6 poems. NB All submissions by SNAIL MAIL ONLY – see the submissions page for details.

 

Copper Nickel

Print, twice yearly. Selected content published online also.

Managing Editor: Wayne Miller

Poetry Editors: Brian Barker and Nicky Beer

What they say:

Copper Nickel is the national literary journal housed at the University of Colorado Denver—was founded by poet Jake Adam York in 2002. Work published in Copper Nickel has appeared in the Best American Poetry, Best American Short Stories, and Pushcart Prize anthologies, and has been listed as “notable” in the Best American Essays anthology.

Poetry submissions:

Submissions accepted from August 15 to March 15. Please submit four to six poems at a time. Simultaneous submissions OK but let them know if accepted elsewhere. They try to respond to all submissions within eight weeks, though response times can be longer—particularly in the late spring and summer. Submittable page (no fee).

Payment?

Starting with the spring 2017 issue, Copper Nickel pays $30 per page + contributors copies + a one-year subscription. (Per-page payment could vary slightly from year to year, based on funding.)

They also award a $500 prize per issue – the Editors’ Prize in Poetry -for what they consider to be the most exciting work in each issue, as determined by a vote of in-house editorial staff.

Sample poem: ‘New You’ by Allison Campbell

The Florida Review

Print, twice yearly. The sister online magazine is Aquifer.

Editor & Director: Lisa Roney

Poetry editor: Kenneth Hart

What they say:

The Florida Review publishes exciting new work from around the world from writers both emerging and well known. We are not Florida-exclusive, though we acknowledge having a jungle mentality and a preference for grit, and we have provided and continue to offer a home for many Florida writers. We have been in more or less continuous semi-annual print publication since 1975 and have recently (2017) added a new literary supplement in Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, which will feature new literary works on a weekly basis, as well as author interviews, book reviews, and digital storytelling.

We are looking for innovative, luxuriant, insightful human stories—and for things that might surprise us. We like writing that takes risks, affects us deeply, and yet also meets the highest standards of beautiful language and  syntax that supports the meaning of the work.

Poetry submissions:

International submissions are welcome via Submittable. Interested in well-crafted poems that sing and take risks—in style or subject. Traditional forms and free verse, any length. Send no more than 5 poems at a time. They strive to respond in 3 to 6 months, though sometimes it takes 8 months. NB read all the submissions guidelines as they are long and specific.

Payment? Starting this year they are awarding modest annual prizes to one non-contest-winner “staff pick” writer in each category (poetry being one).

Sample poem:  Two poems by Betsy Sholl (Aquifer)

 

Indiana Review

Twice yearly, print

Editors-in-chief: Tessa Yang, Su Cho

Poetry editors: Anni Liu, Emily Corwin

What they say:

Now in its thirty-ninth year of publication, Indiana Review is a non-profit literary magazine dedicated to showcasing the talents of emerging and established writers. Our mission is to offer the highest quality writing within a wide aesthetic. Works by contributors to IR have been awarded the Pushcart Prize and reprinted in The Pushcart Prize Anthology: Best of the Small Presses, as well as in Best American Short Stories, Best American Poetry, and The O. Henry Prize Stories.

Poetry submissions:

General submission period is September 1, 2017 to October 31, 2017. Send only 3-6 poems per submission. Simultaneous submissions are welcome. However, you must contact them ASAP if your work has been accepted elsewhere. “Please also note that because we are not influenced by cover letters it is perfectly fine to not include a cover letter with your submission.” Response time is usually 1 – 4 months, but may at times be longer. IR accepts less than half of 1% of work submitted.

Payment?

$5.00 per page ($10.00 minimum) and one year’s subscription, beginning with the issue in which their work appears.

Sample poem: This is a print magazine, but poems appear occasionally on the blog.

 

Kenyon Review

Print (6 issues a year) and digital version – either instead of print or as an optional add-on to print subscription. You can also buy digital versions individual issues.

KR Online is the online sister publication.

Poetry editor: David Baker

What they say:

Building on a tradition of excellence dating back to 1939, the Kenyon Review has evolved from a distinguished literary magazine to a pre-eminent arts organization. Today, KR is devoted to nurturing, publishing, and celebrating the best in contemporary writing. We’re expanding the community of diverse readers and writers, across the globe, at every stage of their lives.

Poetry Submissions:

Send up to 6 poems. Reading period September 15th through November 1st, 2017. Response time: they aim for within 4 months. NB: All submissions are considered for both the Kenyon Review and KROnline. The two are aesthetically distinct spaces – “we urge our submitters to read and become familiar with both.” The submissions page will contain a live link to Submittable when the window opens.

Payment? Yes, but unclear what.

Sample poem (from KR Online): ‘Guerrilla Theory’ by Kien Lam

 

The Manhattan Review

Print – two, possibly 3 issues per year

Editor: Philip Fried

What they say:

Founded in 1980, The Manhattan Review has won praise for its balance of American and international poetry, its distinguished interview series, and its many firsts. In the last decade MR has endeavoured to publish the best contemporary British poetry alongside the work of excellent American poets.

Poetry submissions:

Send 3-5 poems, any time. Avoid simultaneous submissions. Contributors from abroad my send by email. See the full guidelines here.

Payment: no mention of any.

Sample poem:Vasari’s Last Supper’ by Rosalind Hudis

 

Poetry

Print, monthly

Editor: Don Share

What they say:

Founded in Chicago by Harriet Monroe in 1912, Poetry is the oldest monthly devoted to verse in the English-speaking world.

Poetry submissions:

Send no more than 4 poems at a time. Response can take 7 months (they get a LOT of submissions!) Read the full guidelines on their Submittable page.

Payment:

Payment is made on publication at the rate of $10 per line (with a minimum payment of $300), and $150 per page of prose, for first serial rights. All rights will revert to the author upon publication. Authors will also receive two contributor copies of the issue in which their work appears.

Sample poem: ‘Ode with Interruptions’ by Rick Barot

 

Potomac Review

Print, twice yearly

Editor in chief: John W. Wang

Poetry editor: Katherine Smith

What they say:

Rooted in the nation’s capital’s suburbs, Potomac Review is the antidote to the scripted republic that surrounds it. By taking on D.C.’s values of international inclusion, Potomac Review looks out into the world from its lush Potomac River basin, collecting and absorbing the world’s literary diversity. Potomac Reviewseeks literature from emerging as well as established writers around the globe to facilitate in the literary conversation.

Poetry submissions:

Accepted all year round via their Submittable page. Send up to 3 poems. Simultaneous submissions are welcome but contact them ASAP if your work has been accepted elsewhere. They typically respond within four to six months.

Payment?

Two complimentary copies and a 40% discount for additional copies.

 

Radar

Online, four times a year

Editor: Rachel Marie Patterson

What they say:

We publish poems from established and emerging writers and welcome international submissions. Our taste is eclectic; we encourage submitters to read our past issues before sending work.

We are interested in the interplay between poetry and visual media. Each issue features pairings of poetry and artwork, selected by the editors and contributors.

Poetry submissions:

General submissions via Submittable open October 1 through June 30. Send 3 – 5 poems. They aim to respond within a month. From July to September they read submissions for the Coniston Prize, this year judged by Dorothea Lasky.

Sample poem: ‘Biography’ by Erin Malone

 

Rattle

Print, quarterly. All poems also published on the blog, a poem a day.

Editor: Timothy Green

What they say:

….more than anything, our goal is to promote a community of active poets. That means we care as much about submitters as subscribers. Lawyers, landscapers, homemakers, and Pulitzer Prize winners are all treated the same—and we’ve published them all. We only occasionally solicit work, and for representational balance, not prestige. At Rattle, anything always goes. If a poem is accessible, interesting, moving, and memorable, if it makes you laugh or cry, then it’s the kind of poem that rattles around inside you for years, and it’s our kind of poem.

Poetry submissions:

Submit year-round via Submittable. Send up to 4 poems. No fees to submit. Simultaneous submissions are encouraged – “if another journal beats us to the punch, congratulations!” Detailed submissions guidelines are here.

Payment?

Contributors in print receive $100/poem and a complimentary one-year subscription to the magazine. Online contributors receive $50/poem.

All submissions are automatically considered for the annual Neil Postman Award for Metaphor, a $1,000 prize judged by the editors.

Sample poem: ‘This has nothing to do with willpower’ by Ted Jonathan

 

The Seattle Review

Print, twice yearly, publishing long form only

Editor in Chief: Andrew Feld

What they say:

The Seattle Review is a print journal wholly committed to the publication of longer works of poetry, novellas, and lyric essays. It is our belief that this format offers a unique venue for the publication of significant and risk-taking works by both new and established writers.

Poetry submissions:

Accepted all year round via Submittable. There’s a $3 reading fee from June 1 to September 30. A ‘long’ poem means at least 10 pages in length, but there are other criteria – best to read the detailed guidelines here.

Payment? Contributors will receive two copies of the issue in which their work appears, and a year’s subscription to the Seattle Review.

Sample poem: poems occasionally published on the blog.

 

At this point I rather ran out of steam

– but wanted to mention a couple more briefly, even though they didn’t make this particular cut:

Tarpaulin Sky – chaotic website but brilliant and very funny (and that’s just the ‘subscribe to our press’ page). Submissions guidelines are here, although it sounds like they’re not open at the moment. Lots of great alternative, smart & interesting poetry & visuals on the site.

CutBank – I really liked the look of this (print and online) journal based in Montana, but it sounded like they perhaps aren’t looking for submissions from overseas. They say they are “global in scope, but with a regional bias.”

 

At some point I’ll review & update this list and would be happy to add to it – if you have any more suggestions please leave them in the comments.

Also, if you do submit to any of them let us know how it was for you… and I’ll do the same. Thanks.

Submitting to US poetry journals, part 1

You know how it happens – you start following a link, then you get so engrossed in something you end up forgetting about your current ‘to do’ list. So there I was, reading a poet’s biog, I followed a link to a magazine I didn’t recognise, and got thinking ‘hmm, my XYZ poem could work well here’. It was a US online journal, and I remembered I was once going to write a blog post about submitting to US journals, aimed primarily at UK poets.

First of all, an admission: I don’t have a great track record of subscribing or submitting to US journals, but I enjoy Rattle and used to subscribe to Poetry (until they decided to make it very difficult for non-US residents to subscribe).** In the past I’ve never felt confident that my work would fit. Too British. But I’m starting to feel that may be changing.

** UPDATED 21/8 – after hearing from Don Share on Twitter, I can report that Poetry’s online subscription process now accommodates overseas addresses, so I have re-subscribed. Huge thanks to Don – I’m somewhat amazed that the editor of the most famous poetry mag in what was once known as ‘the free world’ should take the time and care to reach out to a humble subscriber. Truly deserving of a Mexican wave around the poetry community.

As with all journals, it’s a good a idea to sample a publication before submitting. This is of course where online magazines come into their own – you can read current and back issues and check out their aesthetic. Also, you’ll often find very specific information about a US journal’s mission and what they welcome (other than the not terribly helpful ‘send us your best work’ which always strikes me as odd. Why would I even want an editor to read and publish something if I don’t feel it represents my best work?)

So how do you start submitting to these magazines?

  1. The Poetry Society of America has a long list of magazines  – this is a great resource but I suspect it hasn’t been updated lately. There are forty-nine journals listed here which have broken links, and some magazines aren’t listed. Still useful though.
  2. Read poet biogs – once you start browsing US poetry magazines you’ll find poems/poets you like, or that you could imagine your work appearing alongside. Read the biogs, see where else they are published, and check out those places.
  3. Start collecting info on a spreadsheet – web address, editor’s name, submission window dates, link to submission guidelines, and so forth. It can then be a monthly task to check what windows are coming up, and decide whether to submit or not.

Deciding where to submit

Not every journal is going to be right for your work, and there may be other reasons why you are attracted to one magazine over another. For example I know I’m influenced by things like the stated response time and whether they use Submittable (which I like). I’m perfectly happy with paying a small reading fee, whereas I know some poets are not.

Getting the information together is a first step. Then I try to narrow it down to a few targets, revisit them and read more, think about what poems I might send them or set a reminder to do this once their window is open.

Personally I like to have a bit of a strategy because I feel it’s the best use of my time. I don’t have that many poems at any one time so a scattergun approach wouldn’t work for me. But I know some poets always have plenty of poems ready to send. If that’s you, and you target magazines who are OK with simultaneous submissions, then you could set aside some time and do a mass send out.

In my next post I’ll be listing some US magazines, with submission details and other info. Depending on how long this turns out to be, it may be more than one post.

Meanwhile, if you have any experiences of US poetry magazines that you’ve submitted to, or considered submitting to, or any stories/advice you’d like to share, do let me know in the comments.

Dealing with Literary Rejections: Six Viewpoints

Rejections - Charlie Brown

I was asked yesterday ‘how’s the writing going?’ which is always an interesting one to answer. First you have to gauge if it’s a genuine enquiry, or a generic ‘how’s things?’ A non-writer friend probably doesn’t want to hear a long moan about rejections. But submissions, and in particular rejections, is one of the unavoidable and recurrent themes of a writer’s (certainly a poet’s) life.

For me, the problem starts with the word ‘submission’. It’s so, well, so passive. To submit is to rollover onto your back like a cat with its claws retracted, begging for attention. It just ain’t dignified.

There are thousands of articles and blog posts about dealing with literary rejections. And can we get enough of them? I don’t think so, judging by the social media indicators. I’m not the only one to be fascinated by how others deal with the rejection game. I’m just as fascinated to know how the rejectors deal with it too. There are two sides to it, but perhaps it’s easy to forget that when you’re the submissive party.

Here are six viewpoints on rejection that I’ve enjoyed. You have to read them to get the full stories, but I’m giving you a flavour.

“No Thank You” – On Rejection and Writing by Chuck Sambuchino in Writers’ Digest.  “You can’t please everyone, and the moment you try, you cease to write anything interesting.” Chuck runs with the idea that all rejections are subjective, and you can rationalise them all you like but ultimately you just have to deal with it and not let it unsettle your writing.

Rejecting Rejection by E Kristin Anderson at The Writing Barn. Rejection slips are just part of the submissions game – there are no acceptances without rejections along the way. “You can’t win if you don’t play.”

“Never Give Up” — or How One Writer Got Published in Poetry Magazine After 12 Rejections at the Bookbaby blog, Chris Robley tells the encouraging tale of poet Todd Ross who was eventually published 15 times in Poetry magazine, despite his previous 12 rejections by same.

Submission, Rejection, Acceptance, Reward by Roy Marshall. Paying attention to the detail of cover letters and appreciating the ‘good’ rejections can bring some comfort. “Once or twice I’ve felt less pleased by an offhand acceptance than by polite and careful rejection.”

Ten Levels of Rejection (and What to Do About Them)Nathaniel Tower takes a close look at the exact wording of rejections and draws some biting conclusions. “Not all rejection is equal.” Great to see the ‘passive aggressive’ rejection (beloved by certain publications) finally unmasked! (Number 4)

And finally, Robert Peake gives some soothing advice in What Should You Learn from Rejection Letters? at ReadWritePoem. “The very fact of rejection is insufficient grounds to conclude your that poems are terrible, that you are a terrible poet, possibly a terrible person, and that giving up writing for good would be a service to humanity.” Oh we hope not, Bob, we hope not.

 

Comic strip copyright Peanuts.com

Notes from a Don Share masterclass

What is it about poets called Don? There’s Don Paterson for starters. Don. Paterson. And now Don Share.  Maybe it’s the the power/mafia connotations (Don Corleone). Or the suggestion of raffishness (Don Juan). Or the hidden warning: not DO but DON’t.

So here’s the thing: picture sixteen or so poets perched in a circle, hothoused in a room of the Richard Jefferies Museum on the edge of Swindon. All eyes and ears are on the Editor of Poetry, Don Share, who’s been flown in from Chicago for the Swindon Festival of Poetry. No-one quite knows what to expect, but I for one am hoping not to have to do any work at all, other than listen and take the odd note. And that’s exactly what happened.

After the initial introductions, Don had a pretty good idea of just how much ambition and urgency was present in the room, and he set to answering our (mostly unspoken) questions. In the afternoon, there was some expectation that we’d all subject Don to one of our poems, for him to offer some pointers. We’d lost two participants (including one of the only 2 men) by then, but there still wasn’t time for everyone to have a go. But no-one really minded, especially as Don offered to email his comments to anyone who’d been left out.

I admired the way Don kept the energy going throughout the day when others might have wilted. Some of the funniest moments were clearly unscripted, such as the ten minute discussion about how he’d agonised over publishing a poem, the problem being the poet’s use of the word ‘slab’. And when he said with no hint of irony that he’d always wanted to visit Swindon (“it’s in the Domesday Book!”) Or pronouncing on the poetry greats: “I’ve no idea what they were setting out to do, what was going through their minds – maybe they were just geniuses and we’re all screwed!” And later on “The Waste Land is just crazy-ass!”

Of course there was also a huge amount of fascinating stuff…although you ‘had to be there’, here are my notes which I hope give a flavour of it. Huge thanks to Don for his generous sharing (no pun intended).

Don Share in Swindon

On the editor’s role

There are good editors who are not poets. There are good poets who are not great editors. Don sees them as 2 distinct roles. He reads a LOT of poetry – the magazine gets 120,000 submissions a year, for starters, and all are read by Don and Consulting Editor Christina Pugh.

Editors must be ‘pitiless and undeceived’

Editors can’t be publishing only poets with an established reputation – if that were case then (for example) Poetry wouldn’t have published T S Eliot. (As it was, the publication of ‘Prufrock’ in 1915 resulted in years of hatemail.) He still gets hatemail from people about stuff that’s published. “If we go down the route of only publishing what everyone thinks poetry is/should be, then we’re lost.”

Don doesn’t necessarily like most of the poems he publishes. It’s not about liking – “the most powerful poems are infuriating”. Christina Pugh’s judgement on the majority of ‘perfectly competent’ poems is “there’s nothing at stake here.”

On comparing oneself to the great poets

It’s absolutely correct to say ‘I’m not Ted Hughes’ or ‘I’m no Emily Dickinson’ – because they were themselves, and so must any poet be. “you can’t imagine Emily Dickinson in a workshop.”

Don read ALL the back issues of Poetry and he says that 94% of the poetry published in it over the hundred years or so is not good (ie it hasn’t stood the test of time).

The key for ‘competent poets’ – ie those of us getting published, writing perfectly OK poems, making a bit of a poetry name for ourselves – is to not just aim for mere competence. Don remembered when Derek Walcott became his mentor, looked over one of his poems and said ‘This is very good, well done … you could write these kinds of poems all your life… but is it your life’s work?”

Don’s advice – list ten poems that for you are absolute favourites, poems  you aspire to, and ask yourself  “are these competent poems? What makes them more than that?”

What can the poor aspiring poet do??

Eliminate the ‘obvious stupidities’:

  1. Be honest – ie true to what you know, where you’re from, what you’ve lived. (This wasn’t discussed exactly but it made me think that perhaps the ‘poetic’ elements that can creep into a poem are to do with adopting a register that’s foreign to us in everyday speech. There was some discussion afterwards about how playing up to one’s ‘roots’ was a big trend in poetry at the moment – leaving those of us with very little in the way of distinguishing features – ethnic, regional, class etc – feeling a bit disadvantaged!)
  2. Be specific. Make the reader live it/see it/ feel it like you do. “As soon as I see the word ‘bird’ in a poem, I’m done.” What kind of bird? “If it’s not coming from something you know, it’s scenic … it’s got to come from a place of honesty. When an American reads Ted Hughes, they see what he sees, it’s as if they were where he was – it’s not about a kind of realism, it’s about being able to inject a reader with an image.”
  3. Another problem is that students of poetry are shown (or study) the great poems, and if that’s all they read (rather than reading broadly from a poet’s body of work) – that is a problem. If you only read the exemplars then you don’t have a feel for how the poet got where they did. Even the great poets wrote some crappy poems, went through stages when they couldn’t or didn’t write great poetry. “The work that your worst poems do has to be the work that your best poems do” … “make something of what you’re bad at” – (I’m still pondering what this means exactly).

“The things you worry about least in your poem are the things that can set the poem apart, if you pay attention to them.”

“If you start off knowing what you’re trying to say then the poem becomes predictable.”

“Readers are like editors – they catch you out.”

Tips/ comments from the workshopping session

  • Form – how a poem’s laid out on the page – is the first thing the reader/editor notices. Have a reason for the choosing the form you’ve chosen. Things like stepped lines, right aligned, spaces, one word on a line – what’s the reasoning? If you were to read it out loud, is the form obvious to the reader, and if not, why not put it into a form that matches how you read it? The rhythm might shape the poem. Play around with form. Try different things.
  • The title is the next biggest thing – if it says too much then the poem isn’t a surprise.
  • Pay attention to consistency of tone/language / register
  • Some of the lines of your poem may be scaffolding – it serves a purpose while the poem is evolving, but can be taken out at the end (I liked this a lot!)
  • Similarly, you can often edit out the first few lines – they’re often just like the vamping that musicians do before they start the actual piece of music
  • Using the pronouns ‘she’ or ‘he’ – why not ‘I’? It’s a distancing thing so maybe there’s a psychological purpose for it? Don’s advice is that readers prefer not to be put at a distance, want to feel the speaker is talking directly – more powerful.
  • Why not give people names? Character come to life when they’re given a name – readers care more if it feels like direct speech not just a story told by someone else. Don gives the example of Ted Hughes’ Letters – it’s the fact that it’s Ted & Sylvia that we’re reading that makes it so fascinating, not “just another guy in a crappy relationship.” If a poem is about a couple, their relationship, why not tell us their names?
  • Details, specifics. They can make a poem more memorable, different, unique even. eg ‘Adlestrop’. Think of Betjeman with all the proper names he uses. Larkin.
  • If you allude to something, the observation has to be good enough to stand alone, in case the reader doesn’t get the allusion
  • Be careful with words like ‘gush’ and ‘spume’ as they can overpower others. (Perhaps this should be the basis of a list – ‘words that overpower’?)
  • Somebody or something must be changed in the course of a poem – either in the poem itself or in the reader or both. There’s a shift – what is it?

I have some back issues of Poetry from when I took advantage of a freebie offer I think, and it’s a great magazine – I’m now motivated to subscribe properly, as one of my ‘rolling subscription’ system whereby I try to get around to subscribing to different magazines for at least a year at a time. The Poetry Foundation website is a fantastic free resource in itself, and every month there’s a Poetry Magazine Podcast that’s definitely worth a listen.

Robin Houghton & Don Share
Star-struck selfie

Riordan & Share on ‘100 years of the don’ts’

Don Share & Maurice Riordan

Yesterday evening I was at Keats House in Hampstead listening to a Poetry Society debate on the subject of Ezra Pound’s enormously influential article ‘A Few Don’ts’, first published a hundred years ago.

As the respective editors of Poetry Review (UK) and Poetry (US), Maurice Riordan and Don Share could be said to represent the behemoth of the poetry establishment from both sides of the Atlantic. And both magazines published ‘A Few Don’ts’ when it first came out. Fascinating though the evening was, I guess this was never going to be a platform for a radical re-working of the ‘don’ts’.

Riordan in particular expressed fondness for many of the ‘rules’, and also argued that they were more discretionary than they are usually given credit for. “Go in fear of abstractions” isn’t the same thing as “don’t use abstractions”, for example. He also pointed out that Pound did say the ‘don’ts’ were not to be considered as dogma, rather that they offered guidance – “cautions gained by experience” and were up for debate.

There were some questions and observations from the floor and the talk was less about whether we need a new list of don’ts, but the bigger question of whether in this century we will see a new poetic movement to take us away from modernism, whether we need (or have) another Pound in our midst to reinvent poetry in the way that he did, “from the doughy mess of Romanticism”. Someone said that in order for a new movement to take off, enough people need to hate what currently holds as fine poetry.

Another important point made by Don Share was that there is far greater access now to poetry from around the world, and new ideas spread quickly via the internet. It’s hard to imagine anyone having the influence and power of Pound over today’s poetry scene, with its myriad different artistic movements, sub cultures and niche followings.

I first came across ‘A Few Don’ts’ in a brilliant book called Strong Words, an anthology of essays by poets on poetry, edited by W N Herbert and Matthew Hollis. I think it’s one of those books that’s on the reading list of any Creative Writing MA, but if like me you’ve never done one, it’s a revelation. Highly recommended.

Magazine focus: Rattle

Rattle poetry magazine

I (oh no, starting a blog post again with ‘I’) was just thinking it would be fun to occasionally feature a specific poetry magazine: mention what I like about it, give a flavour of what’s in it, fill you in on their submissions policy etc.

I’m currently a tad stressed. First I’m trying to stay civil with not one but two sets of lawyers about two completely different matters, then there’s the order for 500 CDs for my choir that has turned into a nightmare, I’m worried that the recent insect bites are reigniting a years-old stress-related skin condition, and about to spend 4 days as a ‘helper’ on a sixth formers’ trip to Belgium when I don’t know any of the students and I’m intimidated by teenagers. Enough about all that, but maybe it’s appropriate to start with a magazine called Rattle.

[Nonetheless I had a lovely day yesterday, particularly on Facebook. Thank you to everyone for your very kind comments about the Hamish Canham Prize.]

I  don’t know how I came across Rattle, but I liked the sound of it, plus I saw they had a competition on at the moment which attracted me. I’ve been tiptoeing around US poetry for a while, first after encountering the Best American Poetry 2012 and then more recently being sent a copy of Poetry unexpectedly. I’m intrigued by the fact that I know none of the names, and  there are styles and themes that seem very different to what I read in UK magazines, although I’m struggling to put my finger on WHAT exactly.

And so to Rattle. It’s a bit bigger than Poetry, kind of A5 but a bit longer. Perfect bound, nice quality paper and production values generally (including lovely blue endpapers)  I was intrigued by the variety of work (although it felt a little heavy on ‘shock effect’ writing – no fewer than 2 poems had the word ‘penis’ in the title – popular culture, humour and shape-poems all well-represented) and the very stylised ‘Contributor Notes’ in the form of first-person statements (“When I was a kid, listening to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, I thought that art was going to give meaning to my pain…”)

I particularly enjoyed the extended conversation between Rattle Editor-in-Chief Alan Fox and Ellen Bass, rich with insight. Made me want to read Ellen’s work, definitely. Extract:

“I say to my students, ‘Ok you’ve got a metaphor there. Maybe it’s not your best metaphor. Why don’t you make a list of 20 metaphors that might describe this.”  If I say to myself, ‘OK, I need a metaphor here and it’s got to be the exact right metaphor’, I feel like I may as well kill myself. But if I brainstorm 20 or 40 metaphors that don’t have to be good, I may loosen up my mind enough and then I might look at that list and the right one might be in there.”

So here’s the skinny (see, I’m getting into the lingo!) on Rattle.

Based: California

Editor: Tim Green

Published: Quarterly

Features: Poems, translations, interviews, reviews & essays.

Annual Subscription: $20 (I paid $30 and for that it’s mailed to me in the UK, and it arrived within a week although they do say to allow much longer than that)

Submissions policy: only unpublished work but simultaneous submissions OK. Expect to hear within 4 – 8 weeks, email submissions OK. Full details here.

Typical size: 100 pages

Longest poem title: ‘Things That Happen During Pet Sitting I Remind Myself Are Not Metaphors For My Heart’ by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz (a close second was ‘Ringo Starr Answers Questions on Larry King Live About the Death of George Harrison’ by Roy Bentley.)

Are you familiar with Rattle? Had something in it? What are your impressions? I did like the fact that they are firm but reasonable about submissions – all email submissions are acknowledged automatically, simultaneous subs OK. Also when I had a question my email was answered same day by the Editor. And the magazine arrived super quick. Impressive.

More new reading material, and some happy happenings

Some classic internet-enabled moments this week.

Firstly, my post about having received a free copy of Poetry magazine was picked up by Steven Critelli who alerted Don Share, senior editor of that venerable publication, who promptly lived up to his name and tweeted it …

don share tweet

Then one of the other participants going to the Ty Newydd course in October (Zoe Fiander) found this blog and left an introductory note for me, which was very nice.

And finally, not really serendipitous but a treat all the same, when Inpress ran out of ‘How to pour madness into a teacup’ (by the excellent Abegail Morley) and couldn’t fulfil my order, they (and the publisher Cinnamon Press) offered me another book from their list, by way of an apology. So, I got Abegail’s book from elsewhere and am also the proud owner of A Handful of Water, a new collection by Rebecca Gethin. So plenty of new reading material to look forward to!

today's postbag

Speaking of new material, The Rialto has also just dropped through my letterbox.

So I’m hoping all this high quality poetry nutrition will pay off soon in the form of some decent poems of my own.

But for now I’ll leave you with an extract from William Logan’s poem The Nude that Stays Nude in Poetry magazine, consisting basically of a whole list of new ‘don’ts’ for poets – one of which is

Don’t think what you have to say is important. The way you say it is important. What you have to say is rubbish.

This itself is a line a poem, so one has to take it with an ironic postmodern pinch of salt. Or not. You decide!