submit my poems to journals (monthly)

Might as well put together another submission. So I did, to a downstate journal whose deadline for poems related to life in / persons from / places in Illinois is later this month.

All three are older poems that I revised for the purpose. One was originally two separate poems about the same place; I blended them into one & think it is much stronger than the two were separately.

I feel like a total poetry nerd today.

My first November submission is to a competition for short poems (16 lines or less), to be displayed on the sides of buses in a suburb north of Chicago! Up to 12 poems will be selected, one per month.

Previously published poems are welcome, which is nice. I am submitting two that have been published elsewhere & one that hasn’t. For this venue, I think positive, accessible but fresh poems are probably most appropriate—ones that will make people on the street smile & think at the same time.

Notification will be no later than December 5, which is great.

is the first site that comes up when my name is googled nowadays. I think I’m going to follow the lead of some of my poet friends there & make good use of that page. We can post our own writings, & the poem that won the Goodreads contest is already up on my page. In the next week or so I will round up a number of other poems that have been published in various venues a year or more ago & post them.

Dear Ruth,
Thanks for sending to XXXX, however this story didn’t quite work for me.
Thanks again,
Editor

The subject line of this e-mail did say “poem” (rather than “story”) & included my submitted poem’s title, but obviously this editor doesn’t take the trouble to customize his rejection notes, except for including my first name. And his syntax is a bit loose.

How’s that for a bit of sour grapes? But on the positive side, he replied in just 6 weeks. Would that all editors were so prompt.

Two poems that I submitted for a journal’s contest did not place. I just read the winning poem & think the prize is well-deserved; it’s a beautiful, haunting piece set in Chad.

However, the notification e-mail says that all poems submitted for the contest will be considered for publication in the journal; if one or both of mine are accepted I should hear back within 60 days.

are in their stamped envelope, addressed to the editor of a special international section that will appear in a journal next spring. Two of them are the ones that didn’t place in the contest I mentioned in today’s earlier post. Gotta keep these babies moving right along. I’ve got 34 out at present! A few of those are simultaneous submissions, but even so, I’m doing better than I ever have with this.

Last March I submitted three poems to a contest. A couple of months later one of those poems was accepted by an online journal, so I sent a notice that I was withdrawing it from the contest.

I have checked the first journal’s website a couple of times this month, & finally today I see that a winner & two runners-up have been announced. The poems themselves are posted too, & honestly I think my submissions were more interesting than the winner. I like one of the runner-up poems more than that one too. You’d think that would discourage me, but quite the opposite—I’m feeling good about the quality of my poems, & tonight I plan to send them off to another journal I’ve had my eye on for a while!

Missed it again. :P

...onwards and upwards…

; )

Somehow I happened onto another contest that seemed worth trying, & the postmark (or electronic sub) deadline was tomorrow. So even though I was out lateish at an event tonight, I stayed up late afterward to choose a set of poems & submit them.

In the poetry category of this contest, a submission constitutes up to 10 pages of poems. I chose five poems, & in a departure from my normal MO, three of them are being considered elsewhere. This contest permits simultaneous submissions, & the timing should work out fine for notifying its organizers if one of these is accepted in the other venue first.

Now I really really am done with October submissions. Unless some other irresistible deadline pops up . . .

Tonight I chose & revised three poems for yet another competition. That envelope is stamped & ready to go.

If nothing else, this process is pushing me to get more poems in decent shape. I now have 27 poems out looking for homes! Responses to 4 of them are due later this month (announcements of winners of other competitions).