Submissions

Admittedly, it's hard to concentrate on writing poetry this week during the World Series. So I thought it would be a good time to send out some poems and articles for publication. I’m making my list and checking it twice.

Let me ask you a few questions, and feel free to comment on any or all the following.

  1. Are you submitting your work? If so, do you have some recent publications you’d like to mention?
  2. Do you have better luck with print or online journals?
  3. Where would you like to see your work published? (Name the publications)
  4. Any publishing or rejection stories you'd like to share?

Comments

Anonymous said…
J - good for you. I haven't sent out individual poems for publication in years. Call me lazy. But...

Spoon River, Virginia Quarterly Review, So to Speak, AGNI, Many Mountains Moving, Cortland Review and Blue Fifth Review are my favorites (the last two are online).

I wish I could get a group of poems into American Poetry Review.

Once I was rejected from Paris Review with a tiny slip of paper types on which said "we have no use for your poems." Which led me to write this long poem asking: not even as trash basketball? Not even as toilet paper? Not even as papier mache?
jillypoet said…
Hey! I got a letter similar to that once, "Frankly, your poems do nothing for me." Truly! Never thought to ask, can they fill your open mouth? Thanks to PWADJ, I have recently sent to Cortland Review and Mamazine...or is it Mama something else? I forget.

I have had better luck sending to online pubs. Quick turnaround. damselfly press is a new pub and I have two poems there right now. They are looking for poems for their next issue. The link is on my blog.

I think I'd like to get into American Voice (my favorite college prof started there), Poetry, and...have a poem selected for Poetry Daily.

How is the manuscript, Jan? Is that the news? Is it? I have to check your blog to see...

I have a question for other poets/bloggers. Do you find you get distracted by other blogs and comments and "poetic liasons?" I really value other poets' opinions and the community definitely spurs me to write more, but I think I need to pull my focus back to my writing, not the social communities. Anyone else have an opinion?
Carolee said…
I am a real novice at sending stuff out. I only have poems in local publications. but this month I have 18 poems floating out there to 4 publications: 2 online (literary mama and wicked alice) and 2 print (tipton poetry review and awakenings review). all of those publications have links here (one of fertile gound's resource pages).

and there's an "October poetry send off party" discussion with some others people talking and naming pubs here

oh--and jill--about the boundless paths that seem to emerge from each comment and the tendency to lose writing time ... i limit my travels to a handful of sites, and i'm going to try to check in only once a day; maybe every other day. does that help?
January said…
Carloee, I think it's great that you're sending out. Keep sending, no matter what. And read journals, too. Find poets who write in a similar style and send your work there.

I'll have to check out the October poetry send off.

And I only visit 5-10 daily, mostly rotating through the ones on my list. I don't respond on all of them but I do read as much as I can. So I spend about an hour a day blogging, broken up in the morning and at night.
January said…
Jilly: editors can be quite insensitive sometimes. I've gotten those types of rejection slips, too. Courtland Review is a good site, so I hope they take your work.

You should also check out Literary Mama--send your work there.

Sometimes I have a hard time focusing, but it's not because of blogging. Sometimes I blog to escape things I have to do, but I count that as part of my everyday writing ritual. So after the World Series, I'll get back to writing poetry.
January said…
Melissa, I like all of the journals and sites you mentioned, and I'm desperate to get into APR. I mean desperate. I did get a nice, handwritten note on my rejection letter, which was encouraging.

I'm not sure if you've ever been to AWP, but last year I went to their trade fair--it was a sea of all the publishers who had rejected me. In my head, I was saying, "look, there's jubilat--they rejected me." There's Crab Orchard, and Ploughshares -- all rejections." *sigh* Well, I hope this year when we attend AWP we'll have a different story to tell.
Catherine said…
I've only submitted to New Zealand journals, and there aren't many. I've had poems a few times in Takahe, which makes a point of publishing "emerging" writers, and also in our local daily newspaper which runs a poem each Saturday. Every so often I send a batch somewhere else, and I have some very nice rejection letters, but they are still rejections.
I've been meaning to send some more off for a few months but keep putting it off.
I have no idea where would be the best place to start if I were to try overseas or online journals
The World Series of What?

...just kidding.

The Atlantic Monthly. The New Yorker. Poetry Magazine. (Do they still publish these? Oh, yeah. I'd be really happy if the American Poetry Review would take some of mine, too. Harpers. I have never submitted to any of these. Or hardly any others....if you don;t send out, nobody rejects.

I have some rejection slips from other stuff. My book. A couple of short stories, an article or two. Acceptances are nicer. And more fun!
Anonymous said…
Be ruthless. I heard a writer at AWP say every time he finished a short story, he sent it out to 20 journals. Twenty! Send a ton of stuff out. Send it to a ton of places.

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