Submissions & Letters to the Editor
Thank you for your interest in submitting work to Poetry. We look forward to the opportunity to engage carefully with your work. Due to the number of submissions we receive each year, we will likely get back to you within eight months. We appreciate your patience.
Please visit our Submittable page for our full submission guidelines and open calls for work.
IMPORTANT NOTES:
- Please send only one submission at a time per category, and wait until you hear back from us before uploading a new submission. We are eager to provide ample time and space for everyone’s voices to be considered, so if you do send multiple submissions, they will be archived unread and will receive no response.
- Our response time can be up to 8 months. We appreciate your patience—we have a small staff who reads over 150,000 poems per year.
- To make sure you receive our response, set your spam filter to allow emails from [email protected].
- We consider only previously unpublished work. Work that has appeared online for any reason, including social media posts, is considered to have been previously published and should not be submitted.
- Poetry is open to simultaneous submissions, but let us know immediately if work is accepted elsewhere by adding a note to your submission specifying the work that is no longer available.
- All poets will be compensated for published poems. For text poems, we pay $10/line with a minimum honorarium of $300 per poem. For visual poems, audio poems, and video poems, we pay $300 per poem. If a piece is published in multiple formats, such as print and video, we pay for each format. For prose, we pay $150 per published page.
- If you are unable to use Submittable for any reason and need alternative submitting options, please reach out to us for more information at [email protected]. Please include your name and contact information. If you’re having technical issues with Submittable, please contact [email protected].
Frequently Asked Questions
Poetry is looking for thought-provoking responses to work published in the magazine, as well as letters that raise new questions about the state of contemporary poetry. To send us your letter, please fill out the form here.
If we choose to use your letter, we will notify you by phone. If you have not heard from us within two weeks of sending your letter, you may assume we will not be using it. All letters may be edited for length and clarity, and may appear online, in print, or both.
Where can I submit my work to Poetry?
We use Submittable to receive content for Poetry. Please visit our Submittable page for our full submission guidelines and open calls for work.
If you cannot use Submittable (poetry.submittable.com/ ) and would like to submit your work by mail, please send your submission to 61 W Superior St, Chicago, IL 60654 and include a self-addressed return envelope. If you do not include a return envelope, your submission will not receive a response.
How does Poetry pay its contributors?
We pay via ACH, wire transfer, check, or JPay.
What rights does Poetry acquire for published work?
Poetry acquires first serial rights and non-exclusive reprint rights, meaning that all authors can reprint their work as they’d like after it’s appeared in the magazine.
Where can I read a back issue of Poetry?
You can read issues of Poetry for free or order an individual back issue from our archive. Print and digital subscriptions are also available.