POETRY Magazine

Thank you for sharing your work with Poetry. We look forward to the opportunity to engage carefully with your work. Due to the number of submissions we receive each year, we will likely get back to you within eight months. We appreciate your patience.

Gratefully,

Adrian, Angela, Holly, Jeremy, Lindsay, Shoshana, and Winshen

How to Submit

Please submit up to 4 poems (up to 10 pages total) for consideration, following these guidelines:

1. First save your poems as a single document.

2. Then complete the form with your information and upload your poems

3. Click SUBMIT, and you’ll receive an email confirming that we received your submission. You can check the status of your submission by logging into your Submittable account.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

1. Please send only one submission at a time per category, and wait until you hear back from us before uploading a new submission. We are eager to provide ample time and space for everyone’s voices to be considered, so if you do send multiple submissions, they will be archived unread and will receive no response.
2. We have a small staff that reads over 100,000 poems per year. Because we strive to give every submission careful review, our response time can be up to eight months. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
3. If you have published your work in Poetry during the last year, please wait until next year to submit any new work.
4. We consider only previously unpublished work. Writing that has appeared online for any reason, including social media posts, is considered to have been previously published and should not be submitted.
5. We welcome poems in all languages. For poems that are not primarily in English, please include a translation of the non-English portion(s) of the poem. This is an accessibility consideration for our editorial staff, not an attempt to privilege the English language.
6. For those submitting video, please also include a written copy of your text, as both video and text would be published if accepted for publication.
7. If your submission involves collaboration with another poet or artist, please include their name and 20-word bio as well.
8. Poetry is open to simultaneous submissions, but let us know immediately if work is accepted elsewhere by adding a message to your submission specifying the work that is no longer available.
9. All poets will be compensated for published poems. We pay $10/line with a minimum honorarium of $300 per poem.
10. To make sure you receive our response, set your spam filter to allow emails from submissions@poetrymagazine.org.
11. If you have further questions, please visit our detailed FAQ on our website.

Please click the HELP link at the bottom of this page if you have trouble using this site.

If you are unable to use Submittable for any reason, please visit our FAQ page to learn other ways to submit your work.

Thank you for your interest in Poetry magazine!

“Not Too Hard to Master” is a new series of poets writing on form. We’ve published two pieces in this series so far – Tishani Doshi on shape/concrete poems and Terrance Hayes on the sestina – and are looking for new prose pieces on forms (either received or invented) that have not already been written about for the series. (Please note that we have a forthcoming piece on the burning haibun. We will update this list as we accept more pieces.)

We’re looking for poets who are working in form to write reflective, lyric essays about why a particular form is worth exploring. We are not interested in scholarly or academic writing for this feature. Each submission should contain these three components:

1. A narrative or personal essay about the form itself. Why does the form appeal to you? How did you come to it, and why have you stayed with it? Do you have an interesting or unusual connection to the form, or do you think about it in a way that might make readers who shy away from form curious to try it? This essay should also include any technical details (stanza length, rhyme, syllables, etc.) so that readers can attempt it.
2. Examples of the form. We prefer new, unpublished pieces by you, but we’re also open to historical reference points, or original poems by you that have previously been published. Please note that we may not be able to reprint entire poems within the piece unless we can get the rights, so previously published poems may be shortened to excerpts.
3. A prompt or generative exercise for readers to create their own poem in the form (this can be as straightforward or creative as you want). Here’s an example from Tishani Doshi’s piece and one of a few from Terrance Hayes’s piece.

Payment: We pay our standard rate of $150/magazine page for prose and our standard poem rates of $150/page for reprints and $10/line for new poems.

What to submit: Please include your completed essay, at least 1 example of the form by yourself or another writer, and 1 prompt (although you can submit more prompts if you feel it’s important or helpful) as a single file.

As part of the 110th anniversary of Poetry, we are beginning a multi-year project that will interrogate the magazine's archive for absences and erasures. We invite you to submit folios focused on individual poets, movements, dynamic years, forms, or styles. Recent folios on Margaret Danner and Carolyn M. Rogers are examples of the composition, scope, and quality of archival work we are interested in.

These folios will be 25-35 pages in length, and may include photos, letters, interviews, and other ephemera in addition to poems. These folios should include previously unpublished poems, poems published only in limited edition runs, or out-of-print work. All folios should include a short prose introduction and can include other critical re-examinations of the work as well. We are particularly interested in poets, movements, and styles from 1912–1980.

Please note: The curator of the folio is responsible for obtaining reproduction permissions in advance of submitting. If you have an idea for a folio but do not want to curate it, please use this general folio suggestion form.

One of my greatest pleasures as a teacher and maker of poems is listening for echoes across poems and poetic traditions. To me, they are reminders that no matter how many poetic traditions have been born of human creativity, or how different the poetries are themselves, we are all, as human beings, navigating the same mysteries and, as poets, engaged in the same act of making. I find great comfort, too, in knowing that those echoes are often deliberate, that poets across the globe have been in dialogue and in interdependent relationships, shaping their poems and poetics in response to those of others, for as long as there have been poets. 

The attending ideas of “lineage” and “influence” are complicated, interwoven. Many believe influence to be a mostly unconscious process, hard sometimes to prove or even identify, while lineage is often considered conscious, identifiable, chosen. It’s around these ideas that I will organize my third and final issue as guest editor. 

For our November issue, we are looking for original poems that engage directly with notions of lineage and influence. Your poems can be for or to or after a predecessor or contemporary; “about” lineage or influence thematically; intertextual; ekphrastic; an homage, critique, or anything between; anything that places your original work in conversation with a poetic or artistic antecedent or contemporary. Show us who moves and agitates you, who paved the way for you as a poet, who didn’t, who opened imaginative doors, who tried to close them, who teaches you, and with whom you choose to be in artistic conversation and collaboration. 

We imagine that your poetic ancestry and kin will be as varied and particular as you are. We are not concerned with “schools” as a lineage as much as we are with personal lineages: individual voices (or even single poems) that have changed you, with and after whom you feel you are now writing. The unifying ideas for the issue will be exchange, influence, conversation. 

We look forward to reading your poems! 

Gratefully,

Charif Shanahan, Guest Editor

Deadline: For consideration for our November 2023 issue, please submit by June 15. Work will be read on a rolling basis so we encourage you to submit early! 

How to Submit

Please submit no more than 4 poems, for a total of 10 pages maximum. If your poems are selected, brief prose statements may be solicited. If you have any trouble using this online system, please email support@submittable.com.

1. Save the work you are submitting as a single document.

2. Complete the form with your information and upload your work.

3. Click SUBMIT, and you’ll receive an email confirming that we received your submission. You can check the status of your submission by logging into your Submittable account.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

1. Please send only one submission at a time per category, and wait until you hear back from us before uploading a new submission. We are eager to provide ample time and space for everyone’s voices to be considered, so if you do send multiple submissions, they will be archived unread and will receive no response.
2. We have a small staff that reads over 100,000 poems per year. Because we strive to give every submission careful review, our response time can be up to eight months. For this special issue, you will hear from us no later than October about the status of your work. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
3. If you have published your work in Poetry during the last year, please wait until next year to submit any new work.
4. We consider only previously unpublished work. Writing that has appeared online for any reason, including social media posts, is considered to have been previously published and should not be submitted.
5. Poetry is open to simultaneous submissions, but let us know immediately if work is accepted elsewhere by adding a message to your submission specifying the work that is no longer available.
6. All poets will be compensated for published poems. We pay $10/line with a minimum honorarium of $300 per poem in print and $150/magazine page for prose. 
7. To make sure you receive our response, set your spam filter to allow emails from submissions@poetrymagazine.org.
8. If you have further questions, please visit our detailed FAQ on our website.

Please click the HELP link at the bottom of this page if you have trouble using this site.

If you are unable to use Submittable for any reason, please visit our FAQ page to learn other ways to submit your work.

Thank you for your interest in Poetry magazine!

Translation Call from Charif Shanahan (1-13-22)

An intricate, sometimes maddening, and always rewarding act, translation is an intimate process by which we apprehend a source text and generate what, even in its most faithful expression, can only be an approximation of the original. In the process, we crawl into the minds, time periods, and words of another and we decipher them. Translation is also deeply personal—consciously or not, we bring our own experiences and perspectives to the table. For the May and September 2023 issues guest edited by Charif Shanahan, we are looking for translations that spark conversation, that reimagine as much as interpret, that celebrate pluralism, and that bring the nuances of writing to the forefront. We also welcome essays and interviews about the craft of translation, contemporary translation issues, and critical essays on translations.

Please note: You must have permission to publish the work you have translated; obtaining permission is the responsibility of the submitter before work can be accepted. 

Deadline: For consideration for our September 2023 issue, please submit by May 1. Work will be read on a rolling basis so we encourage you to submit early! If you submit after that date, your work will be considered for later issues. If your work was already submitted to this category and you have not yet received a response, your work is still under consideration for these issues.

How to Submit

For translations, please submit no more than 4 poems, for a total of 10 pages maximum. Please include both the original poem and your translation. For essays or interviews on translation, please submit no more than 10 pages of a single essay or interview. If this is part of a larger work, let us know in the cover letter field. If you have any trouble using this online system, please email support@submittable.com.

1. Save the work you are submitting as a single document. Since we publish translations bilingually, please also include the poems in the original language in your submission document. 

2. Complete the form with your information and upload your work.

3. Click SUBMIT, and you’ll receive an email confirming that we received your submission. You can check the status of your submission by logging into your Submittable account.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

1. Please send only one submission at a time per category, and wait until you hear back from us before uploading a new submission. We are eager to provide ample time and space for everyone’s voices to be considered, so if you do send multiple submissions, they will be archived unread and will receive no response.
2. We have a small staff that reads over 100,000 poems per year. Because we strive to give every submission careful review, our response time can be up to eight months. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
3. If you have published your work in Poetry during the last year, please wait until next year to submit any new work.
4. We consider only previously unpublished work. Writing that has appeared online for any reason, including social media posts, is considered to have been previously published and should not be submitted.
5. We welcome poems in all languages. For poems that are not primarily in English, please include a translation of the non-English portion(s) of the poem. This is an accessibility consideration for our editorial staff, not an attempt to privilege the English language.
6. Poetry is open to simultaneous submissions, but let us know immediately if work is accepted elsewhere by adding a message to your submission specifying the work that is no longer available.
7. All poets will be compensated for published poems. We pay $10/line with a minimum honorarium of $300 per poem in print and $150/magazine page for prose. For translations, we split payment 50/50 between the translator and the author of the original poem or the rightsholder.
8. To make sure you receive our response, set your spam filter to allow emails from submissions@poetrymagazine.org.
9. If you have further questions, please visit our detailed FAQ on our website.

Please click the HELP link at the bottom of this page if you have trouble using this site.

If you are unable to use Submittable for any reason, please visit our FAQ page to learn other ways to submit your work.

Thank you for your interest in Poetry magazine!

Thank you for sharing your work with Poetry. We look forward to the opportunity to engage carefully with your work. Due to the number of submissions we receive each year, we will likely get back to you within eight months. We appreciate your patience.

Gratefully,

Adrian, Angela, Holly, Jeremy, Lindsay, Shoshana, and Winshen

How to Submit

Please submit up to 4 poems (up to 10 pages total) for consideration, following these guidelines:

1. Upload your video submission, up to four videos. These can be recordings of spoken word pieces, ASL poems, or mixed-media pieces (i.e. poetry read alongside dance)*

2. In the second file field, please also include a written copy of your text, as both would be published if accepted for publication. If there are components to your poem which are performed by an artist other than the poem’s author, please include their name and bio as well.

3. Click SUBMIT, and you’ll receive an email confirming that we received your submission. You can check the status of your submission by logging into your Submittable account.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

1. Please send only one submission at a time per category, and wait until you hear back from us before uploading a new submission. We are eager to provide ample time and space for everyone’s voices to be considered, so if you do send multiple submissions, they will be archived unread and will receive no response.
2. We have a small staff that reads over 100,000 poems per year. Because we strive to give every submission careful review, our response time can be up to eight months. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
3. If you have published your work in Poetry during the last year, please wait until next year to submit any new work.
4. We consider only previously unpublished work. Writing that has appeared online for any reason, including social media posts, is considered to have been previously published and should not be submitted.
5. We welcome poems in all languages. For poems that are not primarily in English, please include a translation of the non-English portion(s) of the poem. This is an accessibility consideration for our editorial staff, not an attempt to privilege the English language.
6. Poetry is open to simultaneous submissions, but let us know immediately if work is accepted elsewhere by adding a message to your submission specifying the work that is no longer available.
7. All poets will be compensated for published poems. We pay a $300 flat rate for online videos and $10/line with a minimum honorarium of $300 per poem in print.
8. To make sure you receive our response, set your spam filter to allow emails from submissions@poetrymagazine.org.
9. If you have further questions, please visit our detailed FAQ on our website.

Please click the HELP link at the bottom of this page if you have trouble using this site.

If you are unable to use Submittable for any reason, please visit our FAQ page to learn other ways to submit your work.

Thank you for your interest in Poetry magazine!

Thank you for sharing your work with Poetry. We look forward to the opportunity to engage carefully with your work. Due to the number of submissions we receive each year, we will likely get back to you within eight months. We appreciate your patience.

Gratefully,

Adrian, Angela, Holly, Jeremy, Lindsay, Shoshana, and Winshen

How to Submit

Please submit up to 4 poems (up to 10 pages total) for consideration, following these guidelines:

1. First save your poems as a single document.

2. Then complete the form with your information and upload your poems

3. Click SUBMIT, and you’ll receive an email confirming that we received your submission. You can check the status of your submission by logging into your Submittable account.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

1. Please send only one submission at a time per category, and wait until you hear back from us before uploading a new submission. We are eager to provide ample time and space for everyone’s voices to be considered, so if you do send multiple submissions, they will be archived unread and will receive no response.
2. We have a small staff that reads over 100,000 poems per year. Because we strive to give every submission careful review, our response time can be up to eight months. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
3. If you have published your work in Poetry during the last year, please wait until next year to submit any new work.
4. We consider only previously unpublished work. Writing that has appeared online for any reason, including social media posts, is considered to have been previously published and should not be submitted.
5. We welcome poems in all languages. For poems that are not primarily in English, please include a translation of the non-English portion(s) of the poem. This is an accessibility consideration for our editorial staff, not an attempt to privilege the English language.
6. For those submitting video, please also include a written copy of your text, as both video and text would be published if accepted for publication.
7. If your submission involves collaboration with another poet or artist, please include their name and 20-word bio as well.
8. Poetry is open to simultaneous submissions, but let us know immediately if work is accepted elsewhere by adding a message to your submission specifying the work that is no longer available.
9. All poets will be compensated for published poems. We pay $10/line with a minimum honorarium of $300 per poem.
10. To make sure you receive our response, set your spam filter to allow emails from submissions@poetrymagazine.org.
11. If you have further questions, please visit our detailed FAQ on our website.

Please click the HELP link at the bottom of this page if you have trouble using this site.

If you are unable to use Submittable for any reason, please visit our FAQ page to learn other ways to submit your work.

Thank you for your interest in Poetry magazine!

Thank you for sharing your work with Poetry. We look forward to the opportunity to engage carefully with your work. Due to the number of submissions we receive each year, we will likely get back to you within eight months. We appreciate your patience.

Gratefully,

Adrian, Angela, Holly, Jeremy, Lindsay, and Shoshana

How to Submit

Poetry magazine welcomes personal and idiosyncratic prose pertaining to poets and poetry. We appreciate experimental forms, as well as playfulness and a sense of humor. These pieces should demonstrate poetry’s role in the wider culture and its manifestations in the writer’s lived experience. This is not a form for straightforward literary criticism or academic prose. Please see our general submissions page for other prose-related calls (book reviews, roundtables, etc). In this form, we are seeking:

• Essays that explore unique or unexpected connections between poetry and the wider culture (pop culture, politics, internet culture, art, etc.). Previous examples include:
  • “A Politics of Mere Being” by Carl Phillips
  • “Exhaust All Poisons” by Brian Kim Stefans 
• Essays that resurface a poet worthy of closer consideration or that shed new light on a poet/poem via compelling personal narrative. Previous examples include:
  • "Heart to Heart” by Noah Stetzer
  • “Mostly His Apocalpytic Star Glitters Wondrously” by Chase Berggrun
  • "Differing Freak Wonder” by Nick Sturm
• Immersive dispatches or literary reportage that illuminate poets/poems, canonical or otherwise. 
  • Previous example: "In a Foreign Land” by Mairead Small Staid
• Creative personal essays on the craft of writing poems or poetic lineages. Previous examples include:
  • “Among Every Three Fathers, One Will” by Jennifer Tseng
  • "Impossible Word: Toward a Poetics of Aphasia” by heidi andrea restrepo rhodes
  • “Writing Beyond the Human: Divining the Poetics of Divinity” by Joy Ladin
• Roundtable discussions or conversations between a group of poets on a specific topic related to poetry or the craft of poetry. Previous examples include:
  • "Grief in Three Bodies: A Conversation" by Victoria Chang, Prageeta Sharma, and Khaty Xiong
  • "Disability and Poetry: An Exchange" by Jennifer Bartlett, John Lee Clark, Jim Ferris, and The Cyborg Jillian Weise

Our typical essay  length is about 1,500 - 2,500 words. As a maximum, please submit no more than ten pages; if the work is longer than that, please note that in the cover letter and we will ask to see more if we are interested.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

1. Please send only one submission at a time per category, and wait until you hear back from us before uploading a new submission. We are eager to provide ample time and space for everyone’s voices to be considered, so if you do send multiple submissions, they will be archived unread and will receive no response.
2. We have a small staff that reads over 100,000 poems per year. Because we strive to give every submission careful review, our response time can be up to eight months. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
3. If you have published your work in Poetry during the last year, please wait until next year to submit any new work.
4. We consider only previously unpublished work. Writing that has appeared online for any reason, including social media posts, is considered to have been previously published and should not be submitted.
5. Poetry is open to simultaneous submissions, but let us know immediately if work is accepted elsewhere by adding a message to your submission specifying the work that is no longer available.
6. All poets will be compensated for published work. We pay $150 per published page in print for prose.
7. To make sure you receive our response, set your spam filter to allow emails from submissions@poetrymagazine.org.
8. If you have further questions, please visit our detailed FAQ on our website.

Please click the HELP link at the bottom of this page if you have trouble using this site.

If you are unable to use Submittable for any reason, please visit our FAQ page to learn other ways to submit your work.

Thank you for your interest in Poetry magazine!

Thank you for sharing your work with Poetry. We look forward to the opportunity to engage carefully with your work. Due to the number of submissions we receive each year, we will likely get back to you within eight months. We appreciate your patience.

Gratefully,

Adrian, Angela, Holly, Jeremy, Lindsay, and Shoshana

How to Submit

Poetry magazine seeks:

• Reviews that consider 2 or more new poetry collections, drawing connections between disparate works, focusing on a shared theme/aesthetic/etc. across works by different poets.
  • For example: "The Borderless Empire of the Interior" by André Naffis-Sahely
• Reviews focused on multiple books by a single author and/or on collected or new and selected works.
  • For example: "Refuse to Settle” by Alan Gilbert
• Reviews of underappreciated/overlooked works from the last year.
  • For example: "The Lonely Dream" by Vidyan Ravinthiran

Please don’t submit reviews of a single book. Those submissions will be declined.

The magazine welcomes exploratory writing that demonstrates the relevance of poetry to everyday life. We encourage writers to take an out-of-the-box approach to book reviewing, and are particularly interested in work that fosters conversation—between the poets whose work is under consideration, the reviewer, and readers at large.

Our typical review  length is about 1,200 - 1,800 words. Please submit no more than seven pages total.

IMPORTANT NOTES:

1. Please send only one submission at a time per category, and wait until you hear back from us before uploading a new submission. We are eager to provide ample time and space for everyone’s voices to be considered, so if you do send multiple submissions, they will be archived unread and will receive no response.
2. We have a small staff that reads over 100,000 poems per year. Because we strive to give every submission careful review, our response time can be up to eight months. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
3. If you have published your work in Poetry during the last year, please wait until next year to submit any new work.
4. We consider only previously unpublished work. Writing that has appeared online for any reason, including social media posts, is considered to have been previously published and should not be submitted.
5. Poetry is open to simultaneous submissions, but let us know immediately if work is accepted elsewhere by adding a message to your submission specifying the work that is no longer available.
6. All poets will be compensated for published work. We pay $150 per published page in print for prose.
7. To make sure you receive our response, set your spam filter to allow emails from submissions@poetrymagazine.org.
8. If you have further questions, please visit our detailed FAQ on our website.

Please click the HELP link at the bottom of this page if you have trouble using this site.

If you are unable to use Submittable for any reason, please visit our FAQ page to learn other ways to submit your work.

Thank you for your interest in Poetry magazine!