submit my poems to journals (monthly)

Lots of folks are finally getting decisions & notifications made, it seems. I just got an e-mail listing the winners of the annual state-poetry-society contest, & my poems did not place. That’s OK: I am not very invested there, as the group doesn’t attract many high-quality poets & the prizes don’t include publication, so I did not submit any of my favorite poems.

I don’t even remember which they were; I’ll have to check this evening at home.

Thank you for sending your writing to XXXX. We have reviewed and considered your work for an upcoming issue of our journal, but regret that the material we have selected does not include your piece.
Please do not let this be a source of discouragement. Fashioning an issue of XXXX is like creating a tapestry. Individual strands may be beautifully textured and interesting, but not fit the pattern emerging from the content with which we are working. . . . We appreciate your support of XXXX and hope you find a publishing home for this good work.
FYI – we are now able to accept only submissions that are specifically written for a theme of one of our future issues. Look for the next list of themes on our website in early 2010. We’ll look forward to seeing your writing for these themes in the future.

I probably will submit to them in the future. It’ll be interesting to see whether their list of themes sparks a new poem or two.

The notification from CALYX last month encouraged me to submit, & so I have remembered to do so before the end of this year’s reading period (Dec. 31). Six poems, the max allowed: one is an entirely new one that I just workshopped recently, another is an old one that I have revised & am submitting for the first time, & the rest are simultaneous submissions already awaiting responses elsewhere. Thank goodness for duotrope.com to help me keep track of everything.

A local journal issued a call for submissions with the same year-end deadline. I have also just submitted three poems there! (Unfortunately, this journal has no web page so I can’t track it on Duotrope. That means I can only record it in a “queries” folder on my computer, & must trust my memory to consult that as needed . . .)

That may be my last 2009 submission. Definitely my best year yet for submissions of my poems!

& posted almost simultaneously! Ah, the beauty of online publication.

Dear Ruth,
I really like “Under” and will be publishing it in today’s edition, which should be up in an hour or so. Thanks for sharing your work with us.
Best regards,
Editor

You can read it here if you like.

Thank you so much for submitting your work to our inaugural poetry contest. . . . We at XXXX were honored to have so many entries for our first contest. All poems were read anonymously by editors on our staff. However, we were unable to award your submission a winning prize or runner-up.

Dear RuthG:
We have carefully considered your submission XXXX and regret that we do not have a place for it in XXXX at this time. We do appreciate your support and hope you try us again in the future.
The Editors

This was a single poem I submitted Nov. 21, just 15 days ago. Wish the response had been a different kind, but I do appreciate the speediness!

Dear Ruth –
Congratulations! After reading 96 submissions for the Poetry That Moves Contest, “After You” was selected by our judges to be the September 2010 poem. The poems are presently being prepared for printing. More news to come concerning the Contest Reception and Reading.
Thanks for participating!

“After you” is the same poem that was published in the Goodreads newsletter last August. Next September it’s going to appear on the sides of buses in Highland Park, a suburb north of Chicago. What fun!

In some ways it’s cooler to have a poem on a bus than in a little magazine that just a few people read. Better said, both have their place. Yay for public poetry!

I just submitted two Colombia poems to an online journal seeking poems that advocate human rights.

On a roll with the submitting . . . hoping I’ll soon be on another roll with acceptances!

Today I have been plugging away for hours on a long long editing project that requires close concentration. I decided to reward myself for getting to page 80 by taking a break to make a poetry submission.

The poetry reading period of two journals on my current radar ends December 31, so I want to be sure to submit to both soon. One done now! I ended up sending four poems about my childhood experiences in Colombia. They make a nice set, I think.

Dear RuthG,
Thank you for letting us read your work. We’re sorry that it’s not right for us at this time.
Sincerely,
The Editors

This form rejection disappoints me. This journal (focusing on experiences of war) was launched just last year, & when I submitted at that time the editor wrote me back a personal note saying that the first issue was going to stick with a Middle Eastern setting, no room for Latin America-related stuff, but I was “doing important work” with my poems & should definitely submit in the future. So I expected a more positive response this time. Very possibly someone else is now helping to respond to submissions . . . Anyway, I was hoping for better.

Still lots of poems out there. Onward.