Submissions
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
- We close for submissions annually from June 15 through September 15.
- 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- We consider only previously unpublished work.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 and need alternative options for submitting your work, please fill out this form. If you’re having technical issues with Submittable, please contact [email protected].
Frequently Asked Questions
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.