Tag: poetry magazines

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Keeping track of poetry magazines: getting down and dirty

I’ve just finished trawling through hundreds of poetry magazine websites. It’s my quarterly mission: to update the spreadsheet that I send out to a few thousand poets. Every time it seems to become more challenging: the process of pulling up-to-date information from a magazine’s web presence requires a kind of forensic mindset: never believe the first thing you read, never assume, always try to cross-check. And the first rule of all: ALWAYS SCROLL DOWN.

How it works (in theory)

First of all, as I have often said, I have every respect for poetry magazine editors. Theirs is a thankless task and many have been keeping their magazines going, year-in year-out, on a budget of zero. I have bookmarked the submissions pages of most of the magazines on my list, and about half of them are kept up-to-date with relevant information: we are open for submissions, or we are closed and our next submissions window will be x, that sort of thing. Or, our submissions process has changed, we’re now only open once a year in December, or whatever. Some lovely editors even email me with this information! I’ll stop there before I start welling up!

I try not to be complacent, as even those pages that appear unchanged for years might suddenly throw in some relevant new info down the bottom of the page, such as NOW ON HIATUS and it’s easy to miss it if you don’t, um, scroll down.

On Hiatus

During the pandemic years innumerable zines sprung up. Students on creative writing programmes started shiny new publications called something like “Burnt Toast” or “Crapshoot”. The majority have disappeared: if the domain name is now for sale, that’s a big clue. But often the website is still there, proclaiming ‘Issue 2 coming soon! Send us your poems!’ First of all I ask myself ‘are they open? But then I start to realise the zine is dead, and I feel kind of sorry for what happened to all that enthusiasm and ambition. ON HIATUS has come to be the standard phrase. I used to think it meant ‘we are taking a break but hoping/intending to return’, which it sometimes does. But more often than not it’s a way of saying GONE FOR GOOD. There shouldn’t be any shame in admitting a project has run its course, or real life got in the way. I’ve done that myself quite a few times. But here’s the dilemma: should I drop a publication from my list, and risk not hearing if it returns (because it wasn’t bad and actually it may have been around a while), or keep it on and expect people to trawl through the dead wood to find the magazines that actually exist?

Conflicting info

Consider this. Website says SUBS CLOSED, followed by a long description of what to send and ‘OPEN until [date]’.  Or, SUBS OPEN, followed by a long description of what to send and then SUBS CLOSED. Sometimes it looks open, but when you click onto their Submittable page, or webform, it says they are closed. The social account says CLOSED in the profile, OPEN in the feed.

So I don my detective hat. Are they open for flash but not poetry? Are they open for their annual competition, but not for general subs? Are they open for subs in the Scottish language only? Were they open for 24 hours only, and they haven’t had time to update their Submittable? Have they reached their Submittable limit for that month? Has someone tasked with updating the socials not been able to update the website, or didn’t realise the Profile needed updating or couldn’t figure out how to UNPIN a post? Did someone not SCROLL DOWN? (These are all real examples.)

What year is this again?

Now let’s say the website submissions page says SUBS OPEN UNTIL AUGUST 31st, and I think ‘great…. but I’ll just check they mean 2024.’ So I click around the website to see if there are any dates attached to news or blog posts (often there are not). I peer at various grainy images of ‘our latest launch’ to identify anyone I know – do they look considerably younger? Hmmm.  Or I investigate the ‘LATEST ISSUE: No.4’ for signs of recent life. This might mean checking their social feeds (often there are no link to these, so I have to type into Google [magazine name] +Twitter or whatever.) I get there, and pinned to their feed or in their profile it says SUBS CLOSED. Oh, but doesn’t the website say they’re open? I scroll through the feed and see ‘Issue no. 6 is here! WOOT!’ But that was in February 2023. (Of the mags I trawled though today, I would estimate that 9 out of 10 Twitter feeds have been dead since 2021.) But wait a minute – didn’t [poet name] tell me the other day that she had sometime coming out in this mag? Maybe they moved to Instagram or Medium or maybe they’ve got a LinkTree …? By which time I’m ready for another cup of tea. I might make a note to check the magazine next month, or to email or tweet the editor. I don’t do that very often though, because I tend to not get a reply.

So then I move onto the next mag. And the next. Why do it? I do enjoy the research element, and see it as a bit of a game, that way it doesn’t get too frustrating. The spreadsheet started off as a list for my own reference, although now I suppose it’s become a bit of a ‘thing’. I try subscribing to other magazine alert services but I can’t find anything more granular or up to date or relevant to my needs than this. Plenty of recipients tell me they find it useful, and/or make a donation on my BuyMeaCoffee page. So I’m not writing this as a plea for gratitude or sympathy. I actually enjoy getting my hands dirty in the world of poetry magazines submissions, and I love finding some real gems, even places where I might send my own work. I’ve made friends with editors along the way, but it’s definitely a service for poets rather than editors. I get a kick out of giving away something I’ve created for free. And as I say, I do the legwork, so others don’t have to.

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The positives of submitting less to magazines

I recently came across this blog post by Naush Sabah about why we send our poems to magazines (or not). I’m in agreement with her on just about all of it, although I needed telling some things; for example:

You needn’t seek to publish every poem you write. Some work is for the drawer, some work is for an audience of one or two friends, some work is better within a book, some work is for the trash and, if you’re lucky, a key to unlock the next piece of writing.

It hasn’t been a conscious thing, but when I think about it, I can put most poems I write these days into one of these categories. I haven’t been sending out as many poems to magazines as I used to, and among those I have sent not many have been accepted. I’ve been a bit disillusioned about this to be honest.

And yet at the same time I can see that quite a few of these poems belong with others in order to have the impact I’m after. In other words, in a collection.

A few might even be poems I should be treating as stepping stones to the actual poem I’m after, the ‘key to unlocking the next piece of writing’ that Naush talks about in her piece.

A funny thing to be saying, given my unofficial role as cheerleader for submitting to magazines. I still believe in the magazines, and still encourage people to send in their poems. But it’s what I’ve always said: it’s not a strategy that suits everyone all the time. Goals and ambitions change.

Which reminds me, Sarah Salway interviewed me recently about submitting to magazines, for her lovely Everyday Words project. Sarah is a powerhouse of creativity, and if you haven’t seen it before, do watch this excellent TED talk she gave in 2019, ‘In praise of everyday words’:

Embed Video

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On poetry magazines: The A3 Review

The A3 Review cover

You know how I’m a bit of a sucker for interesting poetry formats? Well, I’ve often wondered what The A3 Review was all about – a paean to the London to Portsmouth road, perhaps? Or a massive mag that won’t go through your letterbox? I bought a copy of issue #13 to find it’s neither of those. As the website says, it’s ‘a magazine that behaves like a map’ – it comes folded into A6 size, but opens out to reveal its contents.

A3 Review issue 13

In it I found poems by a number of international writers who I wasn’t familiar with, plus a pocket-sized Q & A with Roger Robinson (top tip: ‘read & write more, publish less’) and some quirky graphics. It was really interesting to see the poems spread out, so you get a visual sense of how they sit together as well as how they ‘talk’ to each other. Also in my package (sent from Spain where editor Sean Levin perhaps is based) was ‘Write About The House’, an innovative writing prompts booklet, or rather map, in the same A3 fold-out form. It’s a visual treat, as well as being packed with interesting prompts.

Write About the House by Writing Maps

How cool is this? The A3 Press has over 20 of these themed writing maps and also produces chapbooks (chapmaps?) as well as the A3 Review. Excellent value for money too.

PS: I’ve been asked if I get free copies of stuff that I review or talk about on this blog. The short answer is no, unless it’s a contributor’s copy of a magazine or a book that I’ve blurbed. This includes my quarterly list of magazine submission windows. So any ‘endorsement’ is entirely just my own thoughts.

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Drum roll please, the essay is submitted (and other news)

End of my first year on the MA Poetry & Poetics

On Tuesday I submitted my Spring term essay (HURRAH!), and well before the deadline, so no stress, except for not being able to find anything on my desk under the various piles of articles, but they are now all filed away. (This is the module I’ve been studying, if you’re interested). I’ve sent back the four library books I still had. I’m catching up with blogging, emailing and various house and garden jobs.

It’s all been rather strange, distance-learning with very little contact with other students or tutors. I’ve never actually set foot in the University library. Bizarre! If I go back for the second year I’m going to enjoy mooching about the library, going for the odd tutorial, having the odd beer with course-mates and doing all the things I remember as being What Students Do. We shall see how things pan out. There’s no teaching in the Summer term, so that’s my academic year over, pretty much, and universities have been told they can’t offer any face to face teaching in Arts subjects anyway. But I’ve been very lucky. I’m already set up to work from home, I don’t have to worry about accommodation or jobs or a career. But it must have been a pretty awful academic year for most students.

Butcher’s Dog magazine

Another nice thing was to have a poem accepted for the next edition of Butcher’s Dog magazine. Editor Jo Clement was recently being praised on Twitter for the quality and sensitivity of her rejections. It almost made me wish I’d had one. Now that’s perverse for you! I’m a new subscriber to the Dog (see more about it on this recent post) and although I’ve submitted there before this is my first acceptance, so I’m very pleased. Poetry magazines do rely on subscribers though, and I think the way it’s described on the Butcher’s Dog website puts the case for subscribing very well:

Why Subscribe?
Pre-ordering helps keep us in press. Subscribers directly contribute toward advance printing costs and press maintenance. Buy today and you’ll support the mix of emerging and established poets we strive to publish annually.
​
How does it work?
Prices reflect the complete checkout cost. This includes postage, packing and transportation costs for the first twelve months of your subscription, which includes two magazines: Spring and Autumn.

The virtual Needlewriters

The Needlewriters, the writers’ collective which I belong to, hasn’t been able to host its quarterly readings in Lewes, but we dipped our toe in the Zoom water last night and presented our four readers online: Julia Webb (poetry), Emily Bell (prose), Karen Smith (poetry) and Jackie Wills (prose). The readings were excellent, and we were thrilled with the turnout. Although it was free, many people very kindly made donations which has enabled us to stay in the black. Even though we haven’t had any live readings in the last year, unfortunately there are fixed costs that never go away, like web hosting. So it was a success all round. Next event in June, and then in the autumn we expect to be back in the pub and able to socialise, which personally I find impossible on Zoom.

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On poetry magazines: Stand, Agenda, The Dark Horse

This is the second in my mini-series on UK & Irish poetry magazines. The three featured today are all long-standing publications.

Stand magazine

Stand started up in 1954, when, according to the website,  “Jon Silkin used his £5 redundancy money, received after trying to organise some of his fellow manual workers, to found a magazine which would ‘stand’ against injustice and oppression, and ‘stand’ for the role that the arts, poetry and fiction in particular, could and should play in that fight.”

What a brilliant story. Jon Silkin died in 1997 and the magazine has had a number of editors over the years, and a long association with the University of Leeds that continues to this day. John Whale is the current managing editor, and each edition seems to include a nice mix of both well-established and newer poets. It runs to around 150 pages and the landscape layout, while interesting, offers I suspect some challenges. The name of every contributor since 1999 appears on the website!

Agenda magazine

Another small magazine with a big reputation is Agenda, founded by William Cookson in 1959, with a big input from Ezra Pound, no less. Cookson’s recollection of how the journal came into being appears on the website, and is a fascinating read. I particularly liked the detail that Pound thought the fifth issue was ‘particularly boring’ and he suggested Cookson should stop, “but he soon relented, sending £5 towards the printer’s bill to help me to continue, writing, ’Oke Hay / Fluctuat. But get some GUTS into the next issue, and something that isn’t watered down E.P.'” Priceless.

The current editor Patricia McCarthy does much to promote young poets in the ‘broadsheet’ section, and the magazine (again more of a book really, at 160 pages) is a blend of poetry, reviews and editorial (and GUTS of course). Most issues are themed, and its ‘retrospectives’ are particularly interesting.

The Dark Horse journal

And finally for now, The Dark Horse. This is a journal I’ve been aware of for a while but only recently sent for a copy. Billing itself as ‘Scotland’s Transatlantic Poetry Magazine’, it clearly has gravitas –  there is work in this recent issue by heavyweights including Michael Longley and Dana Gioia.  I also really enjoyed the essays, including a harrowing tale of ‘cancel culture’ by Jenny Lindsay and an extract from Hamish Whyte’s memoir of his thirty-year friendship with Edwin Morgan.

The Dark Horse was founded in 1995 by Gerry Cambridge, who is still its editor, and clearly also the driving force behind its design and impressive production values. Incidentally he wrote this interesting piece entitled Why we do it – on editing a poetry magazine.

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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

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New poetry magazine: Finished Creatures

Finished Creatures

I first met Jan Heritage at the house of the late and much missed Jo Grigg. Jo was the coordinator of the Brighton Stanza and to be invited to her writing ‘salons’ was a real privilege. That must have been getting on for ten years ago.

For a quite a while the idea of starting a new poetry magazine had been bubbling under for Jan, so when she put out a call for submissions late last year I was excited to see it happening. I sent her two poems, knowing full well she’s fair but firm in her critiques and wouldn’t be publishing her mates for the sake of it. So it was lovely to find I had a poem accepted, and last night was the first of two launch events. I was planning to go, until I decided this current flare-up of sciatica was only going to be made worse by three hours on a train. So instead, here I am at my standing desk blogging about the mag, and looking forward to reading others’ accounts of the event.

For a first issue, Finished Creatures has an impressive contributors roll-call. Alongside established names such as Philip Gross, Pippa Little and Paul Stevenson are many that are new to me. Poems that jumped out at me on first reading were ‘My American Child’ by Amuja Ghimire, ‘Trigonometry’ by Claire Collison, ‘from the IKEA back catalogue’ by Lisa Kelly and Caroline Hammond’s ‘Deep Water Warning.’

The production quality is high, and I have to applaud Jan’s design and layout skills… there are some very visual poems in this book, and getting the correct spacing isn’t easy. Then there’s the proofing, the ordering, the decisions about typeface, pagination and so on. Yes, there is software, but software is only as good as the human using it, and there’s no software like the human eye with its brain attached. Having laid out the Telltale TRUTHS anthology last year I can personally vouch for the number of woman-hours that went into this magazine. Jan has a background in publishing, and it shows.

The magazine came with a matching bookmark, in a beautiful envelope with old-fashioned string fastening. Classy stuff, 84 pages and well worth the £7 price.

Is it madness to start yet another poetry magazine? Only if you look at it with the eye of a business person. We all know there’s NO money in poetry but I think there’s always room for another beautiful journal. It will be interesting to see how Finished Creatures develops in terms of content, themes and (dare I say it) ongoing funding. I’m so pleased for Jan. What a triumph.

Read all about it here – and you can get a copy of the historic first issue by emailing poetry@finishedcreatures.co.uk – it’s £7 plus £1.50 postage.

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Poetry magazine windows & comp deadlines coming up

ackergill-drawing room window

*UPDATED 8-6-17* to include the Prole Pamphlet Competition, deadline 30th June.

Windows

It’s been a while since I checked submissions windows. I realise a few have just closed (e.g. The North – you have to be sharp-eyed to get in there!), but here are some that are currently open…

Agenda – the website says it’s currently open, and you have submit via email, and there are very specific house style rules. They say they aim for a 12-week turnaround, and after that time it’s OK to submit elsewhere.

The Interpreter’s House – open until the end of June. Submit by email. They ‘prefer not to receive simultaneous submissions’ and previous contributors are asked to wait out three issues before submitting again. I rather like this and wish some other magazines would stipulate it, as it would prevent certain people from flooding every issue of some mags with their stuff. Just saying.

Under the Radar – now open until June 30th – via Submittable.

Tears in the Fence – currently open for submissions by email or post.

Long Poem Magazine – open until June 30th for poems that are at least 75 lines long ‘but not book length’. Submit by email.

For a list of some UK magazines which are open to submissions all year, see my post from last year.

A few competition deadlines coming up

All details are provided in good faith, but I can’t guarantee I’ve got them all correct – please go to the competition page to check and to read the rules, cut off dates etc.

Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition – Judge Sinead Morrissey. Prizes £2,000, £400, £200. Entry fee £7 per poem. Deadline 19th June. Is it just me or does the ‘women only’ rule feel a little anachronistic in this age of greater understanding of gender fluidity, cis vs trans women and so forth? Just saying. Mslexia are also holding their annual Pamphlet competition which has the same deadline.

The McLellan Poetry Prize –  Judge Maura Dooley. Prize awarded by the Arran Theatre and Arts Trust as part of the annual McLellan Arts Festival – winners are invited up to the Isle of Arran for the prize giving in September. Prizes: £1000, £300, £100, plus 6 commendations of £25. Entry fee: £5 for the first poem, £4 thereafter. Deadline 21st June.

Prole Pamphlet Competition – Judge Fiona Pitt-Kiethley. This is Prole Magazine’s first pamphlet competition, for collections up to 35 pages. The winner will receive £50 and 15 copies of the pamphlet. Entry fee £12. Deadline 30th June.

Live Canon International Poetry Competition – Judge Clare Pollard. One prize of £1,000, plus £100 for a poet ‘living, studying or working in the London Borough of Greenwich’. Shame it can’t be extended to poets born and bred in the (ahem!) Royal Borough of Greenwich, because that would make me eligible. Oh well. Entry fee £6. Deadline 1st July.

Ambit Summer Poetry Competition – Judge George Szirtes. Prizes £500, £250, £100. Entry fee is £6 per poem. Deadline 15th July.

Winchester Poetry Prize – Judge Sarah Howe. Prizes £1,000, £500, £250. Entry fee is £5 for first poem, £4 for subsequent poems. Deadline 31st July.

 

And with a little more time to prepare…

The Manchester Poetry Prize – judges Adam O’Riordan, Mona Arshi & Pascale Petit. £10,000 prize for the best portfolio of three to five poems (maximum combined length: 120 lines) Entry fee £17.50. Deadline 29th September.

Troubadour International Poetry Prize – Judges Michael Symmons-Roberts and Imtiaz Darker. Prizes £2,000, £1,000, £500, plus a swathe of other prizes (magazine subscriptions, champagne etc). A reduced first prize this year, but still a prestigious one to win. Entry fee £6 for the first, then £4 for each subsequent poem. Deadline 16th October.

 

Good sources of info re poetry competitions and reading windows are:

Angela T Carr’s A Dreaming Skin – poetry competitions and opportunities

The South Bank Poetry Library – competitions listings, plus details of UK poetry magazines & publishers.

Cathy’s Comps & Calls – monthly blog post detailing a huge ton of writing comps (not just poetry), many free to enter.

As ever, good luck!

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UPDATED – List of poetry magazine submissions windows

Windows

**UPDATED 28-4-16 – new listings in red, with thanks to those who have contributed.**

Many UK poetry magazines have now adopted the ‘submissions window’ model, and it can be tricky to keep track. I’ve started making a note of these, and also those that welcome submissions all year round, and thought you might find it of interest. I may even keep it updated (but I can’t promise!)

It’s not an exhaustive list by any means – if you know the submissions details of others, please do add them in the comments – thanks. There’s quite a wide range of styles and tastes represented here – I’ll leave it to you to do the research as to whether your work will fit a particular publication – if you’re new to submitting I do recommend reading a copy first!

NB – the links take you directly to the relevant page about submissions (where possible) so you can check all the guidelines.

Acumen – open all year (thanks to Rebecca Gethin)

Ambit – February 1 – April 1 & Sept 1 – Nov 1

Butcher’s Dog – currently closed, keep an eye on website

Carillon – send any time

The Frogmore Papers –  April 1 – 30 & October 1 – 31

The Interpreter’s House – October, February & June

Orbis – submit any time (thanks to Aidan Baker)

Lunar Poetry – submit any time (thanks to Alice)

South Bank Poetry – submit any time (thanks to Peter Raynard)

Envoi –  February, May & October

Poems in Which – open all year (thanks to Peter Raynard)

Poetry Salzburg Review – submit any time

Poetry Scotland – submit any time

Poetry Wales – submit any time

Popshot – next window opens June 1st 2016

The High Window – currently open until July 31st 2016 (thanks to Peter Raynard)

Structo Magazine – unclear, but currently closed to submissions (thanks to Peter Raynard)

Gutter Magazine – window recently closed, keep an eye on website (thanks to Peter Raynard)

The Stinging Fly – window re-opens in the summer

Tender – unclear, keep any eye on website (Thanks to Fiona Larkin) – window just closed 22/4, sorry!

The London Magazine – submit any time

Long Poem Magazine – next submission month is June 2016 

New Welsh Review – unclear, but submissions currently open

New Walk Magazine – submit any time

Three magazines from Indigo Dreams:
Reach Poetry,  The Dawn Treader, Sarasvati – all open all year (thanks to Ronnie Goodyer)

Wasafiri – submit any time

Shearsman – March & September

Under the Radar – 14 March – 30 April,   14th July – 30 August, 14 Nov – 30 Dec

Bare Fiction – varies, sign up for the newsletter to be kept informed of deadlines (you also get a free PDF copy of Issue 1 when you sign up)

Agenda – varies, sign up for the newsletter to be kept informed of windows

Magma – deadlines at end of January, March & September. (They call them ‘contributions’ rather than ‘submissions’ which I rather like!)

Tears in the Fence – unclear, but open now

The North – unclear, but open now

Lighthouse – open all year but they have deadlines – connect on Facebook or Twitter to hear of them

Antiphon – submit any time

Ink Sweat & Tears – submit any time

Obsessed with Pipework – submit any time

The Poetry Review – submit any time

The Rialto – submit any time

Prole – submit any time

Brittle Star – submit any time

Poetry London – submit any time

The Moth – submit any time

PN Review – submit any time

 

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Poetry submissions – stats for last 6 months, stocktake

poetry files

Just a quick update on my poetry submissions, in case you’re interested – I know people often like a comparison, and while those “I’m delighted to announce…” successes are all very nice to hear about, sometimes it’s good be reassured that you’re not the only one who’s not currently delighted about anything.  So, I’ve just done a 6 month audit and here’s what my submissions tracker tells me:

Magazines, waiting on:
4 poems currently out for 193 days
4 poems out for 168 days
5 poems out for 113 days
3 out for 8 days

There seems to be a long gap (no poems sent out between November and February) but that’s not entirely true, as some things were sent and returned in that time. Thanks so much to Antiphon and Ambit (among others) for your prompt responses!

Since last August I’ve had 24 poems declined by 6 magazines and 2 accepted.

Competitions: I’ve entered 11 poems in six competitions, the results of which are one 1st placed poem, one shortlisted and two sunk without trace, with the 3 remaining comps still to be judged.

On the whole I think I’ve sent out less material during this period than I’ve done in the past. I don’t have a fixed strategy, you know, such as sending a poem straight back out as soon as it’s returned. I also think I’m a bit more circumspect than I used to be.

When I first starting sending poems to magazines in early 2010, I think the first few acceptances (when they came) were like a drug – I was awash with the confidence that’s easy to have when you’re new to something. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose – and as with anything, the more you learn the more you realise the extent of that ignorance, and are humbled by it. So now I tend to sit on a poem that’s been declined, maybe go back to it a few weeks or months later, fiddle with it, wonder if it would fit another publication, sit on it a bit longer.

The other day I spent the evening filing – although I keep everything on the computer I do print poems off when I send them somewhere, or read them at an event. I’ve decided to archive a huge number of poems – the ones that never lived up to my own assessment of their merit – and I’m aiming to keep the “working on / not out at the moment” pile small. Instead of endless tweaking, I’m focusing more on writing new material. I’ve basically let go of a lot of stuff. It makes it easier to  look forward rather than back, and for me at least that’s important, as is a belief that the best work is yet to come. Do you agree? Any thoughts?