I’ve hardly submitted anything anywhere this year. Work pressures, lack of belief in my own writing, time spent on other activities. The usual excuses.
But as I start to write again, I am starting to look out for new opportunities to submit poems. I follow a good few magazines on Twitter, so am watching out for magazine open submission windows. There are also a few listing sites I use.
But it can be a bit time consuming. Particularly when it comes to submitting somewhere new.
You can’t simply send off poems . Well you can, but your chances of success are limited. You need to read a couple of copies of their magazine to get a real understanding of what works, what tends to get accepted. And then there are the submission guidelines.
Most of them are pretty self-explanatory – but from my time editing magazines, it’s amazing, (or perhaps it isn’t), how many poets don’t bother reading these. You spend all those hours writing a poem and then blow the chance of getting it accepted by ignoring the guidelines.
Each to the own I guess.
And then there’s the whole issue of multiple submissions – a hot topic in the poetry world. But I’ll save that for another time…I’ve got a deadline to meet!
Anyway, here’s one of the links that I use for finding submission opportunities. Hope it’s of use.
If you’re a poet who submits their work, how do you find new places to send your poetry to?