Poetry submissions in the Submittable era

There’s no doubt that Submittable has revolutionised the process of submitting poetry to journals over the last few years, both for poets and for editors. It’s terrific for the former, who are able to make submissions in minutes, follow their progress and keep track of what they’ve sent where, rather than relying on spreadsheets or trawling through emails. And then it’s also extremely useful for the latter, enabling them to free up their email inboxes, structure their reading in terms of drawing up long and short lists, and ensure stuff doesn’t get left behind.

Moreover, the use of Submittable appears to have involuntarily generated certain trends in terms of the poetry that journals are publishing, due mainly to the vastly increased numbers of submissions that its ease of use has encouraged. For example, if a single, individual editor receives over 18,000 poems a year via Submittable (a reasonable figure for certain major magazines, as indicated to me in private by a couple of those editors), their attitude to accepting or rejecting those poems inevitably changes, whether they admit it to themselves or not. The consequence seems to be that Submittable’s use lends itself to poems that generate an immediate impact, given the editor has seconds to view each poem on the screen before making an initial decision whether to hold or dismiss the piece in question.

In this context, it’s also worthwhile for poets to put themselves in an editor’s (or magazine publisher’s) shoes. With the current rules of play, some poets boast on social media of having a dozen or more subs on the go at any one time, often using a scattergun approach because they have no skin in any journal’s game. 

And then many poets simply see magazines as an outlet for the work rather than as an integral part of the creative process of discovering new work by contemporaries, of keeping up with the scene. They fail to recognise that poets and editors should sit around a metaphorical table rather than stare each other down from opposing sides of a decrepit fence, the former bombarding the latter with subs and then wondering why communication breaks down.

Some editors are thus changing the way they use Submittable, operating with submission windows. The latter option might reduce impromptu, spur-of-the-moment, chuck-a-few-poems-their way subs, but it still tends to provoke an absolute avalanche of subs as soon as the window is opened, often leading to it being closed abruptly once the journal’s limit with the platform is reached.

Another option is charging for poets to send their work in via Submittable, justifying this payment in the context of the fees that magazines themselves have to pay for use of the platform. These submission charges are typical in the States, but highly controversial in the U.K., not least because of the consequent implicit exclusion of poets who have limited financial means.

What might be a potential solution? Well, in order to find a solution, it’s best to identify and address the problem. And the problem, from my perspective, isn’t Submittable as such, rather the fact that its emergence has coincided with a worsening of the age-old issue that there are too many writers and not enough readers of poetry, thus creating a perfect storm.

Everyone wants to be published in print-based journals and no one wants to buy them. For instance, let’s imagine that 18,000 poems a year equate to about 5,000 poets submitting, If all of them bought an issue of the magazine in question, the mag would be able to pay its way. And just imagine if half of them then went on to subscribe! The financial sums involved aren’t inconsequential – they might even reach the equivalent of many ACE grants.

So why not take Candlestick Press’ example and apply it to major journals? They stipulate that (unless you are a concession or suffering financial hardship) any poet who wishes to take part a Candlestick competition should first buy one of their pamphlets. Or what about Rattle, who include a year’s subscription in their admittedly hefty competition entry fee? Or Crannog, who request the purchase of their current issue by any submitter who’s never previously been published by them? This condition also means that the poet in question receives a good dose of contemporary poetry in return for submitting, keeping something tangible that they can read even if their work fails to be accepted.

Underlining, of course, that it’s crucial to put in place measures to avoid the problem of potentially excluding poets of limited means (by detailing a list of exemptions), I see no reason why many print-based journals shouldn’t follow a similar policy. Bearing in mind that most magazine guidelines state that poets should read an issue before subbing (and many poets ignore that advice completely), such a system would provide them immediately with loads of excellent preparatory material.

Furthermore, fewer submissions would arrive via Submittable, meaning that editors would no longer be so overwhelmed, while the poets’ engagement with the magazine would also be greater! This process wouldn’t only ensure a greater commitment on the part of the submitting poet,but also  longer print runs, stronger sales and continuity of the journal beyond endless funding applications. What do you think?!

If you can’t be bothered to read a print-based  magazine, do you deserve to be published by it?!

‘I wish I'd written that’

Kevin Bailey has generously written a terrific review of Whatever You Do, Just Don't for HQ Poetry Magazine, so terrific that I'm almost willing to forgive him for calling me Matt! Here are a couple of quick quotes... This is superb and engaging poetry - highly recommended and worth getting. As a poet-of-sorts myself, when I start to think ‘I wish I'd written that’, I know that the experience of engaging with their work is going to be a good one.

i.m. Geoff Hattersley (1956-2024)

Geoff Hattersley, who died yesterday, was one of the most outstanding but underrated poets of his generation, while his impact on other poets was so great that it wouldn’t be hyperbolic to suggest his emergence back in the 1980s transformed U.K. poetry. In fact, this influence will undoubtedly become a fundamental part of his legacy to the genre, alongside his idiosyncratic, top-notch poems.

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was a pioneer in embracing American techniques and aesthetics, infusing them with the humour and character of oral language in Yorkshire society, and generating something new. I remember reading his work for the first time and suddenly waking up to the possibility of Transatlantic poetic communication far beyond expected channels.

Without his example, I find it difficult to imagine Simon Armitage writing Zoom!, as it shares numerous qualities with Hattersley’s poetry. What’s more, Zoom!, the current Poet Laureate’s first full collection, also includes several poems that were previously published in a pamphlet titled The Distance Between Stars, which was edited and brought out by Geoff Hattersley himself under his Wide Skirt imprint.

In the above context, given Armitage’s importance and relevance to the present-day scene, Geoff Hattersley’s contribution as an editor and publisher has been immense. As for his poetry itself, why not celebrate his life by getting hold of his most recent collection, Instead of an Alibi (Broken Sleep Books, 2023), recently the subject of an excellent review by Matthew Paulan excellent review by Matthew Paul for The Friday Poem and with a sample poem from it in The Guardian a couple of months ago…?

The evolving nature of the self, Lucy Dixcart's Company of Ghosts

There’s some terrific poetry being written these days around the motif of ghosts. Anna Saunders’ Ghosting for Beginners (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2018) is an excellent case in point, as are Rebecca Farmer’s two pamphlets, Not Really (Smith-Doorstop, 2014) and A Separate Appointment (New Walk Editions, 2022).

The latter poet is especially interesting as a point of comparison and contrast with the subject of today's review, Lucy Dixcart and her first full collection, Company of Ghosts (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2024). In both poets’ writing, ghosts interact with the living, though the ghosts in Rebecca Farmer’s poetry are primarily lost loved ones, which is understandable given she is from an older generation. 

In Lucy Dixcart’s case, meanwhile, her ghosts tend not to be sourced from the dead. Instead, they represent the hypothetical selves that could have existed if different life choices had been made, or they act out the role of former selves, all seen from someone who’s approaching the mid-point of life, looking back on youth and wondering what might have been.

One such example of forking paths can be found in the opening lines to ‘In Concert’…

At night, my lost sisters rise –
floating ghosts manacled with kelp,
faces moon-soaked, lassoed by their own
salty hair.

Each sings her last moment - 
a job declined, a child that wasn’t,
a door closed, or opened.
I’ve shed a self at every threshold…

And then those afore-mentioned former selves appear later on the collection, passing judgement on present-day events and speakers, as in ‘Reunion’, in which the third person plays the ghost…

…She’s rolling her eyes,
propels me to some former friends. We sift
through weddings, children, work – nothing sticks.
I call for help, but she’s jigsawed apart
and all her edges are missing…

Throughout this collection, Lucy Dixcart takes the device of ghosts and uses it innovatively to explore the evolving nature of the self. Like all good poetry, Company of Ghosts confounds our expectations and enriches our own inner lives as we find ourselves encountering our own ghosts too… 

The current cull of unfunded, print-based, poetry publishing

Ok, ok, so I know full well the following is absolutely a first-world problem, but I do feel it’s worth putting on record that unfunded, print-based, poetry publishing in the U.K. is being decimated right now.

Here’s a brief, provisional list (please forward me further suggestions and I’ll add them) of the outfits we’ve lost so far this year. In under six months.

Publishers:

-         Maytree

-         Holland Park
-         Victorina

Journals:

-         Dreich
-         South
-         Planet

And the above is on top of major casualties last year such as Ambit. Oh, and recent urgent appeals to buy books from the likes of Longbarrow and Broken Sleep.

Moreover, online isn’t a magic wand. How many webzines have vanished from the internet once they ceased publishing new stuff? That’s the modern equivalent of going out of print, except nobody can buy second-hand copies of the mags in question. And then, only this morning, I read that One Hand Clapping seem to have lost their entire online archive, a huge blow both for them and for the poets involved.

At this stage of the game, there are grave doubts as to how many unfunded, print-based, poetry publishers, both of mags and collections, will still be alive and kicking by the end of the year. I see no point denying we’re in a full-blown crisis. What will emerge from the smouldering ruins…?

Transatlantic communication, Adam Chiles' Bluff

Adam Chiles’ second full collection, Bluff (Measure Press, 2024), is one of the most thought-provoking books to emerge this year. Its interest is two-fold. On the one hand, there’s its intrinsic poetic quality. And on the other hand, there’s the unique implicit dialogue that it establishes between the U.K. and U.S. poetry scenes.

Let’s start with this latter issue. Chiles was originally from the U.K. and now lives in the U,S.. His first collection was published by Cinnamon Press in the U.K. back in 2008, but most of his recent magazine and journal credits seem to be Stateside, while this book has also been brought out under the auspices of an American publisher. However, the vast majority of his current subject matter revolves around his previous life in the U.K.. And then all the spelling is Americanised, though the turns of phrase are inherently and quintessentially British.

What’s more, Chiles might be publishing in the U.S., but his aesthetic refuses to plump for either side of the American binary polarity between formal and free verse. Instead, he adopts the more British approach of playing with both methods, often fusing them within a single poem. As such, Bluff offers an excellent bridge across the Atlantic, a reminder that what unites us is far stronger than what separates us. It sets out to include both nationalities and achieves its aims, dodging false polemics, which brings us neatly on to the poems themselves.

There are direct allusions to both Edward Thomas and Philip Larkin in this book, and both are present in the background via Chiles’ portrayal of humans in the natural world, paired with his fierce clarity of language, as in the following extract from ‘Self-Portrait as a Lighthouse’…

…You inhabit the verges

of this song, neck-deep
amid the salt-scrim,

a pummeled scar,
storm-wrecked, sheer

above the Atlantic’s steel
horizon. Each night,

mind ablaze, you plow
the gale’s blind acre…

And then there are terrific, pared-back poems of grief for the poet’s father, which run throughout the collection, again interwoven with the nature The opening lines of ‘Reading Edward Thomas to My Father’ provide an excellent example of Chiles’ technique…

From the ninth-floor hospital window, acres broaden,
scroll out past slate and pylon, the black moor

unfastening, hour by hour, its thicket of wounds…

Bluff is a collection that repays repeated readings. Its ability to generate empathy in the reader, to find the universal in the specific, are eternal values that are often eschewed in contemporary poetry, but Adam Chiles is a master of them. It seems clear that he’s gaining a considerable readership in the U.S., and it’s time a U.K. audience discovered or rediscovered him too. His poems are a breath of fresh air.

A video from the Rogue Strands reading in London

Thanks to Mat Riches' dexterity with his flash phone, here's a video of me reading a poem from Whatever You Do, Just Don't at the recent Rogue Strands event in London. My YouTube channel seems to be functioning very well as a way of reaching new readers, and I'd be grateful if you could subscribe...