On my blog recently, at a tangent to another discussion, Roddy brought up the subject of where people should send their poems. Should they send poems all over the place to small and big magazines alike to widen their readership, or should they wait and then concentrate exclusively on the big magazines when they begin to stand a chance of getting in?

I guess it partly depends on what stage you’re at (I’m using “you” here in an impersonal sense) and why you’re sending poems for publication in the first place.

If you are thinking mainly (or only) of your ‘career path’ and attracting a big publisher, it probably makes sense to concentrate on the big mags, perhaps after getting a few in smaller mags to show yourself you can do it. Mind you, I’ve noticed that in the acknowledgement pages of some successful recent collections, few magazines of any kind are mentioned e.g. Annie Freud cites Magma, Limelight, Tattler, and Rising and that’s about it. Luke Kennard mentions Stride, 14, Exultations and Difficulties, and a few others – but not any of the major London-based literary magazines.

I tend to send only to magazines I really like – small, big and medium, web-based or paper – which means I don’t submit poems all that often. Now and again, I send to publications because of their reputation, but not much. I have been asking myself – should I concentrate only on big magazines? e.g. Poetry Review, PN Review, The Rialto, Ambit, TLS etc (I’d be interested to know what others are considered ‘big’ – Poetry London? Magma? Chapman? The Wolf? London Magazine? Poetry Wales?). And if I submit to one of these and get rejected, how long should I wait to submit again? I don't want editors to get fed up with me (I suspect I wait far, far too long). I like some of these big magazines, but some of them I find dull. I do reflect on getting a collection published (although that’s on the back burner until the end of the year, at least – I’ve been writing stuff recently that I want to develop more before shaping my MS), but I care more about writing and reading good poems.

Small magazines starting off have little chance of attracting many subscriptions unless they attract poets people want to read, which means a number of well-known names alongside new poets. So if established poets don’t give their poems to smaller mags, the status quo is upheld, and the little mags can’t break through, however good the stuff they publish.

Submitting can, I think, become an addiction. Particularly with the spread of Internet literary e-zines, it’s possible to have hundreds of your poems published every year, and I know people who do just that! But I think it’s better only to attempt to publish your best stuff. I say that, knowing that I have published poems I am now embarrassed to have written – sometimes that’s because an editor picked the worst poem out of a batch to publish, sometimes it’s because I sent poems too quickly after writing them.

Web-based poetry journals are another huge question, as they don’t tend to have much ‘prestige’. But there are several very good ones, with big readerships – far bigger than most print magazines. The quality of the better ezines is no different to quality print publications. I don’t see why getting a poem in a good webzine doesn’t have the same kudos as a publication credit in a paper-based magazine.

Anyway, I’ll stop now, as this is getting too long already. Any thoughts on any of this?

I don't bother with the 'important' magazines. I'll send stuff to editors I reckon wouldn't mind reading my work. Over the last few years I've had bits in Fire, Stride, The Wolf, Nthposition etc. Got some work forthcoming in Dreams That Money Can Buy and Trespass, which are both newish, experimentally-minded, youngish lit mags (the former publishes leftfield writers such as Billy Childish and Stewart Home). Also worth checking out Succour. Met the editor Anthony Banks the other day, and he's very ambitious for its future.

And of course I also work with David Caddy on Tears in the Fence, which is a long-running, quality literary journal with a fantastic reviews section as well as poetry and short fiction. Over the last year or so Dave and I have been slowly but surely changing the direction of the mag. We now have excellent online presence through MySpace and Facebook, and a growing international readership. And I'd like to think the quality of the poetry is rising issue on issue, with a lot of younger, more risk-taking writers getting involved. We'd welcome submissions from anyone reading here.

A magazine that you like is certainly a good idea. A magazine in your area is good, too, especially if they hold readings, launches and other events that you can go to and so strike up some kind of relationship with editors and contributors. Personal relationships count for a lot in poetry, and most magazines have a sense of responsibility to the cultural life of their area. Once you do get poems into a magazine, continue to send there, while at the same time looking to build your cv by getting into some others. Give up sending to editors who are rude or take an unconscionable time to reply, but be patient with the others no matter how often they reject you. A mix of big and smaller magazines is ideal - then you can use the smaller ones for more experimental work.

My favourite magazines to send to are PN Review (first one to publish my poetry - Michael Schmidt has very broad taste, and is quite prepared to publish new poets), New Welsh Review and Poetry Wales (my area). I've been in Stand a few times, and send to Poetry Review occasionally, The Rialto and Poetry London once or twice. Ambit I gave up on because it used to take them a minimum of six months to reply.

Good post Rob and thanks for bringing it here as a thread.

I have far too many opinions on this topic, and they differ whether I have my poet, tutor, editor or poetry grouch hat on. I have a few points to make, but here I'll just reiterate those I made on your blog.

I tend to be split between support for the little mags and irritation at the 'cult of the amateur' which some of them thrive on. Some entertain the same 'we are the real poets' arrogance that you see in poetry factions. There is a fairly common reviewing situation of back-patting for small press poets and peg-downing and barn-dooring for the big boys and girls.

I still push my students (or 'assisted learning customers', as I should call them) to send out to lots of magazines when they are comfortable they have some good poems. I have to admit that I tell some of them to stop sending widely and concentrate only on ten or so publications with more of a reputation, although there are certainly another ten I rate, and inevitably, as Rob and Tom have said, we all have smaller publications which we like, eg The Wolf, Snakeskin, Rising and Magma for me.

As with Rob, I also find some of those bigger publications dull - Ambit, PN Review, The North and The Rialto all need a major kick up the backside, some fresh ideas and some new blood involved in the editing. Meanwhile, Poetry Review is as dreary and unchallenging as it has ever been since I started to read it twenty years ago, but there you go. And surely there is nothing worse than dullness in a poetry mag?

There used to be, not so long ago, an idea that you sent out poems to earn 'credits' and that editors took notice of these and ticked them off. Though editors still want poets to get themselves known by publishing in mags and journals, big and small, there is certainly a sort or two of poet whose work does not come across that well in small submissions - this may account for the lack of credits in acks pages of poets like Luke, Annie and John Stammers. Otherwise, it may be that a thriving pamphlet culture is causing people to focus more on that to get themselves known.

Yes, and I was told recently that eight months is not uncommon for The Rialto - it's unacceptable.

Having said that - poets sending out should be aware of deadlines. If a magazine only comes out three or four times a year, then the reading period for each issue may be 3-4 months, eg with Magma at the moment. I've had people complaining that I haven't made up my mind yet on their poems, but I have only kept the better stuff and will, of course, not be making final decisions until the deadline at the end of this month. So, there may sometimes be a reason for mags holding poems for 3-4 months, if you have submitted at the beginning of the reading period and they have been 'shortlisted'. Anything else is nonsense.

I don't really look at it as trying to earn credits for one's imaginary poetry CV, since publication in just about any magazine (even the bigger ones) is like farting at a hurricane, unless you're lucky enough to manage some kind of sustained effort. I submit poems I like (at the time -- I'm quite often fairly useless at judging my own work) to magazines I like. I often put my poems subconsciously into categories when I've 'finished' them, and this helps with deciding to send them somewhere.

I do submit to small magazines because I like a lot of them -- I've had poems in 3 issues of FuseLit, for example, which is a brilliantly quirky pocket-sized journal.

Obviously I have something of an invested interest in supporting smaller publications since I edit Mimesis, which is pretty damn small. I couldn't say whether we back-pat, peg down or barn-door, though. I'd like to think we don't.

From the editorial side of things, I don't tend to worry about receiving submissions from the bigger names, because there are a lot of fringe poets writing just as well (who knows why they're submitting to us). If anything, getting the occasional submission from a big name thinking he or she is doing us a favour is less appealing (even if they probably are).

Maybe this is a terminology thing (as per ever). The term 'little mags' tends to get used for what, in poetry terms, are actually quite well known publications - say, Envoi, Orbis, Smith's Knoll, Agenda, Ambit, Tears in the Fence, Dark Horse, The Wolf, Chapman, Acumen and so on...

Anyway, The Boss is evidently fast asleep in her Care Bear nightie by now or she would have been tearing spots off me over this... as a former little mag ed herself.

I want to say hurray for newer ventures like Mimesis, Pomegranate, Zafusy, Sphinx, Pen Pusher, FuseLit and others, but have seen magazines go down so quick and so soon for twenty years. James' fringe poets are of course amazing, but they will go the way of all poetry flesh and send to where they think will gather more attention.

Never accept (or ask) a favour from a bigger name is a good rule when it comes to poems. Well known poets will only send you the off-cuts. The top magazines in the US pay £100+ a poem and are less reserved about asking than the top publications here (one reason why the UK poetry journal scene is waning). The only poems I send out in the UK now would be to magazines like Magma and Rising with which I feel an affinity, though to be honest I haven't sent to them in a good while either. I well remember being quickly weaned off one of my 'heroes' when I saw the crap he sent to a small magazine a friend of mine was involved with some years ago.

Hehe. Well I didn't think you meant miniature magazines, despite evidence to the contrary ('pocket-sized').

I sleep in the nude these days, Rodders. Not so many poets tucked about me, you see. ;)

I wasn't sleeping but working at my Ancient Greek - my exam is next week. So yes, I'm not going to be about as much, but I'm sure you can all play nicely without close supervision.

Have to disagree - yet again! - about Poetry Review. Yes, it's a bit cosy, like well-worn slippers. But I like that, I don't think a flagship magazine is the right place to be looking for experimentation and off-beat thinking. That's what the little mags are for. They can afford to be more daring and to plunge into crazy new ideas. Magazines like Poetry Review should be about reputation and consolidation and - more necessary than ever now, surely, with all these funding cuts? - some reassurance of stability in a precarious world.

You have to consider readership as much as the (inner) development of poetry. If any non-poets read poetry magazines, I should imagine that PR would be the main one they subscribe to. So KISS is a good maxim for that magazine. Let's face it, suddenly turning PR into something like Angel Exhaust really didn't work last time round ....

:D

I doubt that will be the case for ever though. If it's really about reaching out to non-poets, then I'd focus on general literary magazines, ie. those that feature poetry alongside fiction, reviews etc.

It may just be personal taste (bound to be partly that) but I also find PR stodgy reading, although with occasional flashes of brilliance in both the poems and the articles. I thought it was rather telling that in 97:1 the small press round-up (12 collections in three and a half pages!) included two from Salt. A small press? If Salt is a small press, that means we'll have to introduce a new category, the tiny press, or the needs-an-electron-microscope-to-be-seen press.

As regards submitting, I tend to do it less than I think I should, and only - on the whole - to mags / editors I like and respect. No point otherwise, really.

Yes, I agree that PR reviewing choices often verge on the incomprehensible, and that it was shabby to put Salt in the 'small press round-up' category like that. And some of the recent lengthy essays on or around the topic of poetry would never have seen the light of day if I'd been in charge. But I guess, as you say, it's all a matter of individual taste.

Overall though, some books that get a hefty amount of review space in PR really oughtn't to be reviewed there at all, and some collections you would imagine must be on the 'definitely review' list don't make it.

Like my own, for instance! :D

Some of the mags mentioned in earlier posts were ones I hadn't seen around, so I checked the list of periodicals taken by the Scottish Poetry Library. Very few of the ones I checked appear in their list. I don't know how good they are, because they're not accessible to me, so I don't know if they're worth subscribing to. So I'll continue to send to the ones I know about, the ones I subscribe to, and that tends to be the more mainstream mags. I hope I don't sound like I've got a chip on my shoulder about the lack of access, because I genuinely don't. And I genuinely don't have an answer, except maybe increased web publication.

Never give up hope, Jane! One of my books received a review three years after it came out. (I think it's because I met the reviewer at a party and did my best to be charming.)

Well, that's me scuppered. ;)

Nonsense, Jane. You're the soul of charm.

:blink:

Thanks everyone. Some interesting points there. I think I'll continue doing what I've been doing - sending out occasionally to the small mags I like, to the big magazines now and again, and to the odd competition. Also local Scottish literary magazines - I do send to Chapman, Poetry Scotland, and The Red Wheelbarrow.

How long do people think it's best to wait before submitting again to the same magazine after getting a) a straight rejection, B) an encouraging rejection that says e.g. that the editor enjoyed the work and would like to read more in the future, and c) an acceptance?

***hmmm. That smiley should be the letter "b". It must be some kind of code. I never use smileys.

After a straight rejection, as soon as you like (unless, perhaps, it's your fifth from the same magazine and you still can't take a hint); after an encouraging rejection, as soon as you like; after an acceptance, I would normally leave it at least 6 weeks and more likely 3 months before trying there again.

But it all depends on the editor(s). Some editors actively LIKE having the same poets in their mags every time. Or they seem to. Others appear to have mainly different people in every issue.

It also depends on how many poems you have in the kitty. I rarely have more than 5 - 10 free poems floating about, so I tend to wait for one sub. to come back before sending out again. (After all, I have to be sure I actively WANT them to be seen by other people before submitting them to magazines, a process of deliberation which often takes months.) And since I only send to a very limited circle of magazines, most of which take 3 - 6 months to reply, sending out work is not a regular thing with me. Which makes rejection even harder.

I'm glad to see this topic discussed. Between teaching adults and university students and sending out my own work, I think about it a fair bit.

When I first came to the UK and didn't know anyone, I sent out very broadly. I'm from Normal, Illinois, and I think there's something about being in the magazines that makes me feel like part of a conversation I wouldn't have access to otherwise (though that's less true now with the internet). I'll get a magazine in the post and see a poet whose work I like, read it first, find someone new to me I like, start following them, etc.

Now I feel like I have homes, magazines whose editors respond in a reasonable amount of time and seem to appreciate my work--New Welsh Review, Shearsman, TLS--and from time to time, as I have appropriate work, publish in others, e.g. PN Review, Stand, etc. I have little patience for places that take 6+ months to respond to work; that should be unacceptable. I also send work to magazines in the States to broaden my conversation, so to speak.

When advising my students about sending out work, I focus on places I know are suitable for their poems and will treat them respectfully in terms of time and feedback--Magma and Smiths Knoll are probably the ones I recommend most.