Skip to main content

Poetry submission windows which are currently OPEN! - November 2019

Well this election is scary. There are so many good people wanting to make an impact and do good things to help people. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could just elect people who could collaborate and find the best ways to do these things together? I fear that's not going to happen, but I hope that something pretty good will. You've got to accentuate the positive, right?

I got to go see Amanda Palmer live in Glasgow (definitely not Manchester) recently, and one of the things she was talking about was how she got criticised for making light of a dark situation in her song, Oasis (it's a marvellous song with a joyous video here). She does. She said to us that where there is darkness it's essential that we go into it and we make light.

I'm all about the darkness myself (goth poet ahoy), but she's right, we need light, we need the volte, so if you've got some light to bring to these darkening days, or if you've just got a little black cloud that needs some company, here are some places that are currently accepting poetry submissions:
  1. Scottish PEN is putting together a collection of poetry and prose inspired / influenced by the Declaration of Arbroath. See more info here. The deadline is 13th January.
  2. -algia is looking for work on pain and illness. There's a little bit of info here. Open until 1st January.
  3. The Poetry Village - they're lovely people, whose imprint, Maytree Press, will be publishing my first chapbook next year!!! They publish two poems a week online, plus gorgeous art. Their window is currently always open.
  4. Magma are accepting submissions on the theme 'Act Your Age' until 31st December.
  5. Southlight - based in the South of Scotland. Their window is currently always open.
  6. Obsessed with Pipework - four issues a year, but submissions are always open.
  7. B O D Y is  o p e n  for submissions.
  8. Poetry Review is open for submissions. Mary Jean Chan and Will Harris are guest editing.
  9. A new(ish) poetry magazine - Sideways - is looking for submissions, and welcomes newbies.
  10. From the Edge is also pretty new.

This post has been written whilst listening to my husband making tea, and regretting buying my son lemon garlic chicken because it stinks. Today I have been mostly trying to get rid of stuff, but also booking a holiday! Yay!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

February update!

  Hello! Please see above for a screenshot (not sure who the photo is by) from the lovely Fragmented Voices website which has my poem, Escaping Pheasants, as their featured poem today. This poem is inspired by the pheasants which are brought in to our local country house for people who are that way inclined to shoot. Sometimes I see them flapping down from the estate wall and on to the busy road, making a break for it toward the moors. Good luck pheasants. Escaping Pheasants also features in my book, Little Gods, published by the marvellous Roswell Publishing and available from booksellers and Amazon, or get in touch to get a signed copy from me. Other recent successes include two poems in Obsessed with Pipework #105, a Haiku in Coin Operated Press ' Haiku Zine, The Libraries  came out in Culture Matters' Bread & Roses Anthology, and, as I mentioned last time, When you slow a bit you can see the way , another poem from Little Gods, came out in Butcher's Dog #19. I have ...

Happy New Year!

I can still wish you happy new year before January's out, right? Having spending a while doing research and convincing myself I can't write, I'm back in the room in 2019, sending my little baby poems out into the world. I have broken up the chapbook I was trying to get published, I've rewritten lots of stuff, and I'm happily sending them out to places where I hope they might find a happy home, while supporting some of the fantastic poetry magazines out there. One of those fantastic poetry magazines - Picaroon Poetry  - run by the marvellous Kate Garrett - has already accepted one of my babies. It was one of the ones that I'd started to feel bored by, so I tore it to bits, rewrote it, and sent it off to Kate, who will be sending it out into the world in Picaroon Poetry #16 in May (which is terribly organised if you ask me, I don't even know what I'm doing tomorrow!). Thanks Kate!  Hopefully I'll be letting you all know about more successes soo...

discovering Iain Crichton Smith

I think I don't like poetry. In fact I'm pretty sure. What I like is a brick of a book with well rounded characters, who can take me on a journey with them. I find that for me poetry can be navel gazing, twee nonsense, so caught up in its clever cleverness that it drives me to distraction. But then again, I like lots of songs for their lyrics, and sometimes, just sometimes, I come across some poetry which just blows me away. I came across Iain Crichton Smith recently at my writing group. I live in Scotland, and the other members of the group were all saying that Smith is so much covered in Scottish English (and Gaelic) classes that people don't tend to notice the beauty of his poetry. I didn't go to school in Scotland. The poets I studied at school were people like Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Shelley. I don't recall ever coming across anything like this. That said, I'm not sure that as a teenager I would have noticed it. Perhaps you have to have some i...