Submission caps for poetry magazines

Not judgemental, but curious, observational and slightly concerned, this post will tackle the growing question of submission caps.

By submission caps, I'm referring to a limit of submissions that poetry journals will often place on their Submittable call-out for a specific issue. This decision is down to two main factors: Submittable's charging system and the editors' capacity for processing poems.

The consequence of these submission caps, however, is that supposedly lengthy submissions windows for mags that use them pretty much go straight out of the window. This is because, for instance, if a journal opens to submissions for a month but reaches its limit on Submittable after a few days, those windows are hugely shortened. And then it requires an operation of scramble and dash (or military-level planning!) on the part of the poet to ensure their poems reach the editors before that limit is hit.

And a further potential consequence is the watering down of the quality of submissions. The best poets aren't necessarily the ones that are hustling and chasing submission opportunities, poised at their keyboards to press send as soon as a window opens. The standard of the journal might well suffers.

Right, so that's an incipient problem recognised. But what about a potential solution? And that's where things get extremely tricky. Without submission caps, editors' entire waking hours would entail wading through thousands of poems in search of gems, their reading skills getting ever more jaded. And any step away from open calls would dismantle any journal's claims to be seeking out new talent and fresh poetry.

Deep down, it seems that more and more people hold serious aspirations to getting their poetry published in quality journals. Which is possibly a good thing. If only all of them were buying books at the same rate as they submit their own work. Though that's another massive can of worms, so we won't go there again today.

What do you think of submission caps? How might poetry journals best cope with the huge number of subimssions that want to knock on their doors?