Ms. Nic Sebastian, a published poet and popular poetry blogger, has kindly given us her permission to reprint excerpts from her Q&A series with editors of poetry publications, concerning the submission process and what they look for when selecting poems for publication. You may find this quite helpful when preparing work for submission.

There’s a good variety of responses here, which illustrate the fact that not all editors look for the same things when selecting poetry for their publications as well as the importance of reading the submissions guidelines carefully before sending anything in.

Too, and very importantly for the novice to poetry submission: the fact that writers should -never- take the rejection of their work personally or to heart.

If you’d like to read more-- which you should, it’s really useful and intresting information-- you can find the rest of the interviews at Ms. Sebastian’s popular blog: Very Like A Whale.

New interviews will appear each Tuesday for the next few weeks, so be sure to check them out! Also, be sure to visit the links listed at the end of this article.



Q: Apart from following submissions guidelines, what should a poet sending work do (or refrain from doing) to stay on your good side?


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A: Steve Schroeder, editor: Anti- Poetry Magazine

All my submission pet peeves are pretty well covered in our guidelines already. I suppose the only thing I can really say that the guidelines don’t is this: “It’s an online journal, and every single poem is free, right there. You have zero excuse to be e-mailing me something that makes it patently obvious you didn’t read one of them before you clicked Send.” Of course, people still do.



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A: Paul Stevens, editor: The Chimaera , The Shit Creek Review, The Flea

A few very simple things. Reading the Submission Guidelines is the place to start. I’m constantly amazed, for example, at the large numbers of submissions SCR gets which have nothing at all to do with the current theme. These submissions have no chance because they don’t fit the theme, and it’s clear that the author simply did not read the current submission guidelines. But now they have submitted I have to write and tell them so. Grumble grumble.

Another good thing to do is to NOT double space the lines of your poem in the submission.

Some very professional poets do this next one, and I always bless them for it: when typing poems in Word or another word processor, they end each new line after the first with a line break rather than a paragraph break. In Word and most other programs, use Shift+Enter instead of Enter. This saves me an immense amount of work, because when we’re putting the poems into html I have to manually remove line breaks made with the Enter key and replace them with Shift+Enter line breaks. I have secret cunning ninja ways of achieving this, but it’s still what we technically term A BLOODY LOT OF WORK. So naturally I go all sweet, gooey and full of lurrrve-vibes when I come across a proper Shift+Enter poet.

Poets, if you take nothing else from this interview, please take this: Peter Bloxsom’s submission formatting guidelines for The Chimaera have general application. Go to [link] and memorise them! They are really good, and poetry editors across the planet will think very kindly of you indeed if you follow them.

Finally, Dearly Beloved: Handling Rejection. Sadly, some poets can’t handle rejection. God knows I get rejected often enough — and quite often that happens when I submit my own poetry for publication! I send off my little masterpieces to some lucky editor, and in the fullness of time they reply that they can’t fit my poetic gems, which they have assiduously studied and brooded over, into their current aesthetic vision; viz. my work is rejected. Do I fall to the floor and sob, plummeting headlong to the Slough of Despond? Well OK, maybe I do; but do I go to the next step and write back to the editor spitting ‘Fuck you!’? — No, Gentle Reader, I do not. But some there are sadly who do that to me. Or worse, they write long complicated defences of their poem arguing why it belongs in the Canon and I in the Loony Bin.

Or worse still, they begin a long internet vendetta against me, with aspersions, denigrations, allegations, death-threats, expletives undeleted and various character-assassinations scattered across the world wide web. Some of these vendicatori can get quite obsessively stalkerish. So please, poetry-submitters, do avoid THAT course of behaviour if poss.

I read hundreds of submitted poems a week and can pick only a tiny few. The odds of having yours picked are not good. My own remedy for rejection of my poetry by dunderhead editors: submit the poems immediately elsewhere. I feel better straight away, like a gambler placing yet another bet that this time might just win: and quite often subs placed that way DO get lucky on the next spin of the wheel. You’ve got to have faith in your own poem rather than vent your angst on the poor editor who was just doing his job. Having said that, some editors ARE total bastards who have absolutely failed to see how utterly brilliant my poetry is! (And as I proof-read these words an email hits my in-folder reading thus: ‘thank you for your submission. we are going to pass this time around. please considr us in the future.’ That’s verbatim, cut-and-pasted from the nasty letter. Sigh. Will editors NEVER learn that I am the Next Big Poet?)



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A: Helen Losse, editor: The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature

A poet should know that I treat everyone the same—well, pretty much the same. Invited poets are guaranteed publication. And each April we publish a Poet Laureate from a southern state. Yes, I have one lined up for 2010. And I let them slide on their Southern Legitimacy Statements (SLSs), that we take very seriously.

SLSs have two purposes: They are fun, and they weed out people who don’t want to think of themselves as southerners or submit in a spam-like fashion.. The Mule wants poets who like fun and who enjoy being in or from the south (or at least liking our part of the country). We publish poets from anywhere; southern-ness is state of mind not a physical location.

There is one poet who keeps sending me a poem with his bio and no SLS. I’ve told him not to do it. I’ve copied and pasted from our guidelines. But now, when I see his name in the in-box, I just hit “delete.” Life is too short to get upset over an SLS, but we don’t publish standard bios; we publish SLSs instead. And anyone who actually reads the Mule before submitting knows that SLSs are sometimes better than the poems. In fact, some are poems. We like that.



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A: Susan Culver, editor: Lily, Poetry Friends

Well, here are a few tips for staying on the good side of editors in general.

Don’t argue a rejection. And, if you absolutely cannot stop yourself from sending an email asking why your work was rejected, inquire about it as kindly as possible. Don’t name-call. Don’t tell the editor that you really didn’t want to be published in their blankety-blank publication anyway. Don’t berate the work of other authors. Don’t send multi-part hate mail. This sort of behavior reflects badly on you as an artist… And it’s just not cool.

Beyond that – with email submissions, avoid colored text. Avoid sending the work in an attachment unless specifically asked to send it in an attachment, and – if so – send in the format requested. Unless the magazine discourages it, do attach a brief bio. And by brief, I mean don’t wing off your whole life story.

Avoid being overly familiar in your submission. Unless it’s the title of your poem, making the statement “I saw your picture and you’re hot” in a cover letter isn’t ok. In fact, it’s kind of creepy.



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A: Justin Evans, editor: Hobble Creek Review

My first suggestion would to be to accept with a bit of grace the consequences for not following the guidelines. Until you edit a journal, and I know my journal is smaller than most, you never will know the dark side of poets and their pettiness. As a poet I thought everyone behaved well, and accepted rejection and chastisement from editors with the understanding that it is the editor’s job to be firm and fair. I certainly found out that no matter how many times you say something like ’submit only once per period’ or ‘no attachments,’ you still get them and no amount of being civil stops some submitters from blowing a gasket when you reject their work. Take rejection and criticism like an adult, especially if you are at fault for not following the guidelines.

And that would be the next thing: Understand that a rejection is not a personal statement about one’s character or worth. The poems might be terrible but that shouldn’t be taken to heart.

One last thing: I like it when I come across a poet who clearly puts the poetry first. I like a cover letter but I don’t like commercials. Poets need to realize they aren’t going to impress me by telling me how many places they have published. It implies they are doing me a favor by submitting work to my journal, when in fact we are part of a greater symbiosis.





Q: Describe how you sort through and narrow down submissions and finally select pieces for publication.



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A: Steve Schroeder

I screen all the initial poem batches, which I can do because I’m a bit OCD, I have a job whose schedule allows it, and we’re still a relatively small journal that isn’t swamped with submissions. I immediately reject anything that’s obviously incompetent or wrong for us, then make an accept/reject/more information decision on the rest. Anything that I want discussion on goes out to the editorial team. Based on what I hear back from them and my own multiple readings of the pieces, I make my final decisions. I kind of wish I had a fun answer here, like “I set all the poems on the floor, and whichever ones the cat lies on are the ones I accept.”



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A: Paul Stevens

I’ve pretty much described those procedures for SCR. For The Chimaera and The Flea, I read the poems, leave them, come back and read them again. Some I can see straight away are not going to fly for me. Some amazingly good poems knock me right off my scrivener’s stool at first reading. The ones I end up taking tend to impress me pretty much straight away. Most though I need to come back to over time, either to see if I’ve missed some good qualities, or to check that my initial enthusiasm endures through time. This is why response times are usually reasonably long for submissions: good poetry deserves consideration over time.



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A: Helen Losse

Most of the poets I accept see this in my first reply: “Being published in the Mule is more than just gathering another publication credit; it’s more like joining a big ole southern family. So, welcome.” The Mule is a family that publishes poetry. We are a community that is quite inclusive. We’re liberal and open. We are representative of the south. And because we are a family and a school, we have reunions, take sabbaticals, offer classes; we have fun.

That said, we want quality work of all levels from student to Poet Laureate. A lot of real-life college professors publish in the Mule. We actually don’t reject a lot. The exception is the prima donna poet who’s more bother than he’s worth. Life goes on, even if lines aren’t indented just so. Those who can’t accept that probably don’t belong in the Mule. If I know in advance that a poet will be upset by our presentation, why not spare us both? Val even banned one poet the night she used the term prima donna poet for the first time with respect to a poet who didn’t know when to quit.

Life is too short to value poems over people. At the Mule, we will not do that. Our guidelines actually say, “… PhDs with outhouses.” We work with poets who send us imperfect poems with potential. Being published in the Mule isn’t a career move; it won’t get anyone into an MFA program, but it might just give someone his one and only poetry publication ever. We think that matters. We are southern and polite. We try to be real; writers aren’t better than others. And lots of people read the Mule.

The Mule rejects awful poems or selects only a few, if a poet send more than we want at the time. Sometimes poets get over-zealous in submission, but most seem to use good judgment. When we’re really stuck, we can always send Val’s standard rejection note: “The selection process for inclusion in The Dead Mule is both objective and subjective. It is a complicated beast. We utilize a numerical averaging system similar to the Olympic diving competition scoring method. If a particular piece is not chosen, one is always encouraged to submit something else. So, send us something else.”



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A: Susan Culver

Following the guidelines generally becomes the first point in the selection process. It shows a writer who is ready to share their work and wants it shared in this publication.

Content comes next. How accessible is the work? Can I relate to it? Is it something I want to read over and over?

With Lily, the selection came through the editorial staff. What struck them, what they said yes to, how the work made them feel. The pieces that spoke well to most of the editorial staff generally spoke well to me.

Were there disagreements on that? Yes, sometimes there were.



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A: Justin Evans

First, I am of the belief that an editor can immediately see which poems have or do not have a chance of making ‘the cut’ so to speak. I am lucky in that I have a low volume of submissions, making my process rather easy.

I start by doing an initial reading as the submissions come in. If I think I want to use the poems, I move the submission into another folder for a later reading. If not, the submission remains in my in-box until it is rejected. After I do a second reading and decide I want a poem, I create a page in my new issue’s folder, and contact the poet. I find that if I create pages as I go, the work is much easier. If I am still unsure, I give it one more chance. If I can’t make up my mind after reading the poem three times then I automatically reject it. Sometimes this means I reject good poems because I simply cannot find my way inside of them. This is why poets should never take my rejection personally. I have most certainly rejected tremendous poems simply because I cannot relate to it.



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Here are some further links from Very Like A Whale that you may find interesting:


Blog-posted poems and problems with publication


Ten question: Publication (interviews with publishd poets)


(Negative) Critique/Criticism



_{#Cabal would like to thank Ms. Sebastian profusely for permission to re-print these excerpts.}