Poetry Bulletin: July 2023

15+ deadlines, worldbuilding as a possibility for your poetry, and more

Photo by Hannah Morgan on Unsplash

Hello poets — hoping your July is off to a good start! I’m here with new possibilities and reading periods, plus an important FYI on deadlines:

Over the past year or two, I’ve noticed many changes in the timing of reading periods. Some presses switched the season they read. Some shortened their reading period, so a deadline that was always at the end of a month is suddenly at the beginning of the month.

If your heart is set on submitting to a certain press, watch their guidelines closely. Some presses only update their guidelines and don’t make a special announcement of a date change elsewhere.

I update all my poetry publisher info annually in January and then frequently (at least once a month) the rest of the year. Even with that kind of attention, I still sometimes miss deadline changes.

Over the coming months, I plan to do more direct outreach to publishers to be sure I’m sharing the most accurate info here. That outreach work is fueled by folks who are supporting this project with a paid subscription. Half of your paid support goes toward taking care of this project (e.g., publisher outreach) and half is given to poets who need a boost to cover submission fees for their books.

Thanks to everyone who is supporting this work by sharing the bulletin with others, chipping in as a paid reader, and making use of the resources to get your poems out to a world that needs them.

With good thoughts for your writing,

Emily Stoddard

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Making the Manuscript

“To me, revision is a liberation. I get to let go of control for this one thing in my life. I am happiest when I have to disassemble and reconstruct a poem because that means I’m not limited by my mental map. Instead, I gleefully entangle in the wayfinding. Ahh, what a relief such slowing down is!” — Lauren Camp in LitHub

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• I loved this post on worldbuilding by

  Morgan Harper Nichols
  , and it made me wonder how worldbuilding could happen more consciously in shaping a poetry manuscript. In poetry-land, we think about project books or themes or extended metaphors or tropes… but worldbuilding (which pulls more from fiction) feels like a different layer to all this, “a necessary imagination” as Morgan writes. For instance, what if instead of asking, “Does this image belong in this poem?” we ask, “What does this image know/promise/predict about the world of this poem?” I could imagine lots of prompts and revision questions from the world-building space.

• A couple years ago I shared “Tea,” a poem by Leila Chatti, in a workshop, and a fellow writer from that group recently reminded me about it. It’s one of those poems that just seems to show up when you need it, so I thought I’d share it here in case you need it too.
  

Creative Support: Fellowships, Residencies & More

• July 15 — The Sundress Reading Series is seeking readers for this fall.

• July 15 — The 2024 poetry.onl Chapbook Fellowship is open for submissions. This is a unique opportunity with a project that’s doing a lot to make poetry more accessible. I love that it includes print, audio, and eBook publication.

• August 15 — A unique opportunity from Annulet: a new virtual lecture series on poetics. They’re accepting nominations and proposals now.

• August 15 — AWP Writer to Writer Mentorship Program
  

Upcoming Manuscript Deadlines

• Searching for chapbook reading periods rather than full-length possibilities? Check out this spreadsheet created by Anna Lena Phillips Bell and Ryan Bloom.

• July 14 — BOA Editions Blessing the Boats Selections, for poetry collections by women of color (no reading fee!)

• July 30 — Technically a chapbook prize rather than a full-length reading period, but they’re open to manuscripts of up to 48 pages: the inaugural Kari Ann Flickinger Memorial Literary Prize from Rare Swan Press.

• July 31 — Press 53 Award for Poetry

• July 31 — Mason Jar Press: 1729 Book Prize in Poetry (no reading fee!)

• July 31 — River River Books Open Reading Period (pay-what-you-can fee)

• July 31 — Tupelo Press Open Reading Period

• July 31 — Wandering Aengus Book Award (free submission period, for up to 25 writers)

• Aug 1 — Acre Books is reading manuscripts by women of color, including writing by trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer writers.

• Aug 1 — Cornerstone Press Portage Poetry Series (no reading fee!)

• Aug 7 — Riot in Your Throat Open Reading Period

• Aug 14 — Omnidawn Open

• Aug 15 — Grayson Books Poetry Prize

• FYI: The Futurepoem Other Futures Award is supposed to open for submissions again this summer, but I haven’t seen a new deadline yet.

• Heads up: The Sowell Emerging Writers Prize will be awarded in poetry this year. They’re interested in books “on themes about and related to the natural world by writers who have published no more than one book in any genre.”

• There are more ongoing opportunities on the big list of publishers (as in, presses reading throughout the year).

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The bulletin is made by Emily Stoddard. If you have ideas, updates to a publisher’s listing, or want to share a resource, say hello by replying to this note.