Submitting Poetry to Journals and Magazines

Before publishing my first book, I submitted my poetry to journals and magazines that featured poetry. You can find these on-line or better yet, go to a bookstore like Barnes and Noble, Borders or the library and search for poetry journals and magazines. In the back of them are list of contests that can offer monetary prizes, book publishing deals and chapbook publishing. Some are free to enter while others ask for you to pay a fee. Many colleges have journals and on-line magazines featuring their students, but will publish other non college students as well. Some pay, some don't. Both are good to do if the reward is great like being published. Go to Yahoo!, Google, MSN or AOL and search "poetry submissions", "submit poems" and/or "poetry magazines". You will find tons of journals, magazines, e-zines who accept poetry and their submission guidelines. Here are some sites with good advice for poets and links to home pages of literary magazines.

www.poets.org

www.workingpoet.com

www.soyouwanna.com

www.poetrkit.org/magsatok.htm

www.Literaturebuzz.com

Acceptance and Rejection

There are some who will accept your work happily. Celebrate them and use it to keep your self motivated for you may need it. I will tell you what one of my instructors from a workshop I took told us right away. If you are going to submit, expect to be rejected a lot. Not everyone is going to like your poetry and will make comments (some uncalled for) when informing you they aren't accepting your poetry for submission. Don't let it get you down. There are a number of reasons the editors did not accept your poetry in their publications. Your poetry may not have been a good fit, it did not fit the theme of that month or there were so many submissions, the editors didn't have enough time to look at it (you can tell no one looked at them for the poems are still perfectly folded and unopened). Ask yourself this: do you believe in your work? If you do, then take in the feedback, see if there is an opportunity to use what has been said to improve your work and move on. Keep submitting, keep submitting and keep submitting! Stick with it for with time and effort you can see your poem(s) published in magazines and journals!

Setting Goals

It is a good to set up some submitting goals each month. Start small like 1-3 a month and build from there. I have a spreadsheet set up in Excel that keeps a catalog of publishers, magazines/journals I have submitted poetry to. I keep track of the date is was submitted, to whom, title of the poem, the date of their response and if it was accepted for publication or not. Another reason why I keep a catalog of submissions is so I don't submit to the same editor twice or send the same poem to another editor (some frown upon simultaneous submissions) and also in case I need to follow up with them. It can take up to 6 months or even longer to get a response from editors. There have been times I have had to follow up with an editor about my submission. A submission I sent a year ago, the editor recently sent me a letter rejecting the submission.

Don't Give Up!

I hope this story I am about to share with you will inspire you as it did for me when it was told. One of the instructors ffrom a workshop I attended at The Loft submitted poetry to The Kenyon Review (http://www.kenyonreview.org) with the submission being rejected. She told us previously once we have submitted and have been rejected, that it is a good idea not to submit again. Having forgot she submitted to them a year before, she submitted poetry to them again and it was published. As for poetry contests, she entered the Minnesota Book Awards contest. She won and got her manuscript published. Her name is Anna George Meek. It is all up to on what your publishing ambitions and goals are.

Best of luck on your publishing endeavors!