submit my poems to journals (monthly)

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.

submitted to a themed issue that SallyKitt alerted me to. (It’s the “blue” one, Sally! Thanks.)

re a contest I entered August 16. None of my five submissions placed.

Win some, lose some.

because I checked the website awhile back & saw the winners listed there. However, today I received official notification:

Dear Poet,
Thank you for participating in the eighth annual Lois Cranston Memorial Prize. The selection process was very challenging—we received so much wonderful work. Your work was among the semi-finalists. . . . We are enclosing a recent copy of the Journal as thanks. We encourage you to send future work to CALYX Journal when we are next open (annually 10/1 to 12/31), and we include the guidelines. . . .
[The prize winner] Ms. Strever’s poem was selected from almost 700 poems submitted to the contest from all over the country and Canada . . .

I’m departing from my usual practice & posting the actual name of the journal, because it’s a well-known one (“a journal of art & literature by women”), beautifully produced, & I feel very happy to have been a semifinalist. Yay!

I really oh! love,
do not look up to to you anymore,
mistakes or tragedy ,you may call it,
i became what you wanted in solitude,
where pain fed me with scars,
mistakes or tragedy,
i will haunt now for good,
take me oh!time of the coming I am your unfinished part,
mistakes or tragedy,
call it when you feel something ,
mistakes or tragedy,
I call it the lost prodigy
the broken harp and the lost prodigy.

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.