Hey There Poetry Pals welcome back to another video
this week i'm going to give you some tips on how
to find journals magazines and competitions
to submit your poems to before we go any further please make
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so i've made a couple of videos already about um
how to get your poems published specifically like
how to submit your poems and then also another video
on um your submission spreadsheet but rose p actually commented on a
previous video asking me to do one about how to
find places to submit so that's what we're going to focus on today
in this video i'm going to focus mainly on how to um
find places to publish individual poems or a small number of poems rather than a
whole collection if you'd like me to do a video on how to
find a publisher for your whole collection
let me know in the comments below and i will of course do that and
i hope this video is proof that i do read
and respond to comments so if you do have a request of something that you'd
like me to cover in a video comment down below
and i'll link to my previous videos on how to publish poems in the description
below so you can watch them if you haven't already
i hope you guys find this useful anyway let's crack on with the video
i've come up with a range of tips but they sort of mainly fall into
two categories one is how to find the um publications that you want to
submit to and the other ones are how to decide if
they're the right ones for you so tip number one is angela t
carr's blog i'll link it in the description below but angela
does a lot of hard work to post monthly blog posts with all loads and loads of
um publications and competitions that have submission deadlines that month
they are super great i use that blog all the time
and it is one of the most useful things i've found in my time in
the internet by doing poetry so i'll link it in the
description below um yeah it's super great it's just got a
list of all of the publications that have deadlines in that month
she updates it monthly it's fantastic there you go that's the like number one
thing you can do to find uh publications number two is
submittable now i've talked about submittable in
previous videos i've um yet to do a whole video on how exactly
that works if you do want to um see a video on that just comment down
below but the cool thing uh but basically
submittable is an online platform that some publications use to accept
submissions it's pretty great because you've got all
the information of how to submit and what they're looking for
in one place but relevant to this video submittable also has a discover
tab which has all of their submissions that are
open with their deadlines listed you do have to filter it to poetry as a
lot of different art forms use the same thing and obviously if you are watching
this as a fiction writer or a short story
writer then you can filter it to that as well the list that you get is massive
and from all over the world i've noticed that
most of the ones that you find in there are american
and as i'm uk based generally i like to send most of my submissions to uk based
publications but there's nothing wrong with
submitting to america especially in the age of the internet
hey like let's go global why not but you will do
need to do some research to find out if these ones are
the best place for your poems so tip number three
is books uh if you are a poet and you want to be publishing
your poems then the number one thing you need to be doing is
reading poetry as well the cool thing is is you can use your favorite poetry
books which would be i assume by your favorite
poems and presumably the poets who have influenced
you the most you can use them to find out where they
published their poems near the front of the book will be an
acknowledgements page where they've listed all the places where their poems
have been submitted before or accepted for publication so for
example with don patterson's 40 sonnets which
hey man if you're looking to improve on sonnets
a couple of pages in we've got the acknowledgements page
it does include um you know thanking for people for meticulous comments but
poems in this book have been published by
the blinking eye contemporary poetry and contemporary science
elsewhere granter the guardian hiding in full view jubilee lines
london review of books new yorker new york review of books
one for the trouble plowshares and the sunday telegraph
he's also been commissioned by the national gallery bristol festival life
ideas edinburgh international book festival
mcsweeney's cambridge thresholds project whipple museum and the arden bloomsbury
shakespeare 400 project so that is a very very
impressive acknowledgements page and you're looking to build up your own
acknowledgements page that's the whole reason why we're
submitting individual poems places is so that when we do go to submit our whole
collection we've got a tidy little acknowledgements
page like that but you can use your favorite poets and
like maybe people who have a similar style to you
to see where they got accepted because chances are that's where somewhere you
might get accepted as well so number four is related to number
three but it's just follow other poets on social media if
you're watching this video chances are you're on social media and
if you're following other poets especially people who are maybe in a
similar place to you career-wise but also you
know aspirationally people who are ahead of
you if you're following all of them you'll keep up to date on where
they're getting published and you can add those to your list
the whole idea is that you if you've watched my video
on submission spreadsheet the whole idea is that you want a long list
of uh possible publications to send your poems to
and by following poets that you look up to and admire
you can just borrow the ones that they've
submitted to to put them on your list tip number five
is recruit your poetry pals um i have a fantastic group of poetry
pals and one of the things that i started
doing we started doing when i was on my
masters is for the second term we had to provide
book reports on uh different publications
so each week we'd have to go away and research a different magazine
and come back so that we could share the information with each other
what it ended up being is that by the end of the term each of us had a list of
40 publications that were really well researched we had a strong idea
of the quality of the publication what sort of thing they were looking for
and also the likelihood of us getting published in there
um so yeah recruit your poetry pals make a group like that and share your
lists with each other so the first five tips were all about
finding new places to submit but the next
the next tips are all about deciding whether those places are right for your
work this is really important because you
have put a lot of work into your poems and you want to make sure they have the
right home you want to make sure that they are of
equality that you can see your poems being
in but also that they belong there like what sort of genre
does this publication do and stuff like that so here are my tips on
helping to decide whether you should um submit to these ones so tip number six
is probably the easiest one of these ones which is
check out their website and follow them on social media
this is an easy way to pick up on their vibe often they will say what sort of
work they're looking for although i have to say um a lot of
publishers and publications will be like we're looking for poetry that breaks the
mold and it's all they all say uh really vague things
without actually saying the sort of thing they're looking for
but you can definitely pick up the vibe so still check out their website
it will give you an idea of whether your work is going to fit in there and
whether they're likely to accept you their social media will also give you a
stronger vibe of what the publication is like and also what
their reach is if they're really formal on social media
chances are they're going to be quite a formal magazine but if they're like
really friendly and you know witty and funny then you know that's going to
give you an impression of what sort of place it's going to be
as well not to mention the number of followers will give you an
idea about whether you want to submit there as well now that's not to say
you should judge somewhere if they've got a lower amount of followers like
people but better and worse at social media
but it definitely gives you an idea and you can make up your own minds about
them so tip number seven is to subscribe to
that magazine or buy a previous copy
although it's worth mentioning that some um are available for free
such as ink sweat and tears which is an online poetry magazine which you do not
have to pay to access however most of them especially the
print versions um you do have to pay for the good thing
about paying for a subscription or buying a
previous copy is that you get to actually look at the
quality of the publication and you get to look at the poems that
they are accepting the website unfortunately will only get
you so far but if you look at a copy and you
look at the type of poems that they are accepting and publishing
that will give you a strong idea whether your poems belong with them
as well there are several questions you want to ask do you enjoy the poems in
there what is the quality of publication and
can you see your poems being there the other good thing about subscribing
to or buying a previous copy of a magazine
is that you're supporting a poetry magazine
which is awesome so yeah if you've got the money to do that
you definitely should now obviously one of the cons of doing that
is it does cost money and some of us don't have the money to spare
to spend on poetry magazines which trust and believe i get you so what you
can do is partner up with your poetry pals who
you have recruited in step five um to share your submissions
so i generally will only subscribe to a magazine for a year just because
you generally pay for a year and then um i will swap and share my
subscriptions with other people who have subscriptions so that i can read a wider
range of them definitely worth doing recruit your
poetry pals and yeah so my final tip is that you
should find out what you need to do to submit now
i've done a whole video on how to submit your poems and it's basically
read the submission guidelines and stick to them yes
you should do that but one of the things you need to do is also
have a look if you've got a pay and i've definitely
had a little discussion about this but the thing you need to ask yourself is
and you need to find out is do you need to pay to submit
and are you willing to do that it's not just can you afford it
but are you willing to do that generally my guidance for myself is that i don't
pay to submit to publications um however i
will pay to enter a competition as often the competitions do have prize
money and they make that money from people paying
to enter so i'll i'll pay to enter a competition
i won't necessarily pay to have my poem seen by an
editor unfortunately the poetry publishing world of individual
poems in magazines you know the opportunities where you get
paid for your work being published are few and far between and should be a
lot more frequent um and unfortunately the amount of
publications they expect you to pay not even to be published but
just to be read by the editor and possibly rejected
that's too high in my opinion small rant over
okay done so there you have it that's my advice on finding new
publications to submit your work to i hope you found this useful if you do
have any questions on this subject let me know in the comments
and if you do have any topics that you want me to cover in future videos
go ahead and pop them in the comments as well i hope you're doing all right
it's this weird like lockdown moment where we're not in lockdown and life's
returning to normal but also it isn't oh it's all weird and
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all next week bye