A Short Guide to Submitting Poetry to Literary Magazines—Heather Cadenhead

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by Heather Cadenhead 

You’ve written a poem that you think might be decent. You email it to a supportive person in your life with some absurd pretense for doing so: “I wrote a poem inspired by our conversation about Baptists and dog breeds! Thought you might like to see!” Then, you attach the file, hit send, and largely forget about the whole thing. You’ve done this, perhaps, for a number of years–and now, you’re reading the Rabbit Room Poetry Substack or some other distinguished purveyor of verse, wondering if you should dust off that poem about Baptists and Bernedoodles. However, your children are asking for snacks and there is a pile of laundry with your name on it. You close your laptop. Next time: plate a few snacks, ignore the laundry–it’s fine if your family needs to fish clothes out of the dryer for a few more days–and reopen this guide. It contains everything a poet needs to begin submitting poems for publication consideration.

Step 1: Write some poems.

Don’t put the cart before the horse. You can’t submit to literary magazines until you’ve written some poems. For the sake of discussion, let’s say you just put the finishing touches on “A Bernedoodle Overturns the Dessert Table.” You even tied in a reference to Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers. You’re feeling pretty good about this poem. Is it time to submit? Not yet. 

First, workshop that poem with a few other writers. If you’re already in community with other writers (i.e., a writing group of some kind), then you know exactly what to do. Share that poem with those writers. Ask specific questions if you have them (“Is the ‘overturns’/‘turnovers’ wordplay in the third stanza a little much?”). If you aren’t in community with other writers, ask your spouse or a good friend if the poem makes sense. Ask if those people can identify certain themes or topics in the poem. Ask what questions they have. Listen to their answers. Don’t defend yourself. Receive their feedback as information; with this data, you can make your poem even better. Pay attention to your natural inclinations. Rule-followers may be apt to take too many suggestions–and, in the process, lose the heartbeat of the poem. Rebels, on the other hand, may be apt to take too few–resulting in a poem so vague or wordy that it never resonates with readers or editors.

Then, write a few more poems. Most literary magazines request anywhere from three to five poems in a submission. This sampling of your work gives editors a better idea of your style than a single poem in isolation. There are a handful of magazines–such as One– that direct the poet to send her “single best poem” and nothing else. These types of publications, however, are the exception rather than the rule. Once you’ve written a handful of poems, workshopped those poems with other writers, and produced final drafts–you’re ready to submit. 

Step 2: Spend some time reviewing literary magazine databases.

Comb through databases of literary magazines, such as NewPages or Chill Subs to find publications that publish the kinds of poems that you write. If you’re a Christian, you might want to look for Christian literary magazines. If you’re a Catholic, there is an entire subgenre of Catholic literary magazines that might be of interest to you. Some journals publish poetry exclusively; others publish a mix of genres. Databases like Chill Subs allow you to search by genre and sundry other categories (e.g., “Pays,” “No fee,” and so forth), doing much of the legwork for you.

Then, identify which journals are in the midst of open reading periods. If I’m hoping to find a home for “A Bernedoodle Overturns the Dessert Table,” I might identify The Southern Baptist Potluck Review and The Journal for Dog People as potential matches. (Hopefully, this doesn’t need to be stated, but these are not real journals.) Unfortunately, The Southern Baptist Potluck Review is closed for submissions at the moment. The magazine website notes that Potluck will reopen on January 1. At this point, I make a note of the date in my day planner. If I’m being extremely proactive, I might also add a reminder on December 15: “Begin prepping Southern Baptist Potluck Review submission.” You can, of course, set up Google Calendar notifications if you prefer. The good news is: The Journal for Dog People is open through the end of the month and they consider up to five poems at a time. I add “A Bernedoodle Overturns the Dessert Table” to a document with four other poems about dogs.

Next, read the submission guidelines very carefully. It might be that you’re a good poet who keeps getting rejected because you aren’t reading submission guidelines carefully. A literary magazine with a Reformed Protestant bent, for example, probably isn’t interested in poems on transubstantiation. Let’s say that The Journal for Dog People wants my poems copied and pasted into the body of an email rather than attached in a specific file format. I double- and triple-check that there is not a specific theme for this issue—some magazines, for example, only publish themed issues (i.e., The Clayjar Review). I would hate to submit five poems about my Bernedoodle for an issue meant to honor French bulldogs. Obviously, it is ideal to read the magazines to which you submit; however, if you aren’t able to read those publications cover-to-cover, you can certainly read a couple of poems on the website to make sure you’re hitting the right tone.

Finally, type up a brief cover letter. You don’t need an all-inclusive list of your prior publications or, heaven forbid, the 400-level creative writing courses you took in college. You can name a couple of highlights in your writing career, especially if the magazine asks for a pre-written bio, but most editors will skim over these and get straight to the work itself. I know this to be true from personal experience—that is exactly what I did when I worked as an editor for a literary magazine.

Many moons ago–aged twenty-two, jobless, and living in an unfamiliar city with no friends or family nearby, I decided that the best course of action was to apply for coffee shop jobs and start an online literary magazine. Growing up, I watched my dad build a couple of businesses from the ground up–and it made sense to dust off that know-how at this pivotal juncture in my life. Selling concrete sealer and soliciting poetry surely weren’t such different endeavors, after all. I asked a couple of friends from the English department at my alma mater to staff the journal with me. We aimed high, reaching out to poets such as Luci Shaw and Terri Kirby Erickson in hopes of featuring their work in our debut issue. To my astonishment, both of these fine poets—and a good number of others—agreed to contribute work.

In my editing days, it was not unusual to accept a piece with a cover letter as sparse as: “Five poems attached. Thank you for your consideration.” This is good news for the novice; your cover letter doesn’t need to look enormously different from the veteran’s. In fact, my personal observation was that the longer the cover letter tended to be, the worse the submission tended to be. People who endlessly extol their own virtues come across as either braggy or inexperienced; neither is a good look. All of that to say: Don’t spend too much time on cover letters. I wouldn’t advise that you skip the cover letter, but a four- to five-sentence email is perfectly fine.

Step 3: Wait patiently. 

Submitting to a literary magazine isn’t like applying for a job. You don’t need to follow up. In fact, some literary magazines specifically note their distaste for this. They haven’t forgotten about your poems; they’re just busy. Few literary magazines boast paid staff; a good number of readers or even editors are unpaid volunteers. The good news is, many literary magazines permit simultaneous submissions. That means that you can submit the same poems to different magazines many times over. When The Southern Baptist Potluck Review reopens for submissions on January 1, I can submit the same five poems I sent to The Journal for Dog People. 

There is one, and only one, scenario in which a writer would ever follow up with a literary magazine. A writer should follow up if her poem is accepted by a different magazine. Let’s say I submit to Potluck on January 1 and, on January 2, The Journal for Dog People accepts “A Bernedoodle Overturns the Dessert Table.” Literary-magazine etiquette dictates that I should follow up with The Southern Baptist Potluck Review. Again, such an email needn’t be lengthy: “Hello Potluck team! My poem, ‘A Bernedoodle Overturns the Dessert Table’ was recently accepted for publication elsewhere. As such, I need to withdraw that poem from consideration at Potluck. My other poems remain available for your consideration.” There is no need to pretend I’m sad that my poem has been accepted by another magazine by using terms like “unfortunately” or “regrettably.” I’m not sad. I’m quite happy my poem has been accepted elsewhere and I aim to be a truthful person. However, there is no need to brag about that acceptance, either. I try not to mention the publication that accepted my piece; there is no reason to name-check another journal. Your goal is to be informative–nothing less and nothing more. For guidance on tracking your own submissions, I recommend Benjamin Davis’ interview with Shannan Mann, the editor of ONLY POEMS.

Some publications are comfortable with reprinted work; typically, those publications will make mention of the fact that they consider previously published work. If there is no mention of reprints, assume that that journal only considers previously unpublished work. Be aware that some journals consider personal blogs a first place of publication. 

If (or, more likely, when—it happens to the best of us) your poetry is rejected, remember that it may have very little to do with the quality of your work. As an editor, I read a good number of thoughtfully crafted poems that my staff and I weren’t able to place in an issue for one reason or another. If I received ten good poems about birds, ten good poems about trees, and ten good poems about pollution, and I had, say, ten spots available in that issue, I usually didn’t pick ten good poems on a single topic. My intention was to select poems on a variety of topics without sacrificing the cohesion of the issue. I might’ve favored poems about birds and trees–adding, perhaps, one or two poems on pollution that emphasized the impact to nature and animals. In this scenario, I might pass over a steampunk-flavored poem about smog-filled factories where mill girls worked during the Industrial Revolution. I recognize that it is a unique and well-written piece; it simply doesn’t fit with the other poems in my issue. 

Finally, being published is unfortunately not a surefire indicator of quality writing. Recently, I combed through dozens of poems I wrote in my twenties. Some of these poems were published in literary magazines. Of those published poems, I marked a handful of pieces that, to me, seemed to have stood the test of time. I found myself wondering why the others had been accepted at all. Meanwhile, I’ve borne witness to some of the tenderest lines of poetry ever spoken in ordinary conversations with other human beings. There are lines of dialogue spoken by department-store cashiers still lodged in my soul, decades later. Part of being human is bearing witness to the triumphs and tragedies of our fellow men. Giving and receiving poetry is one of the best ways I know to do that. To share a poem is to drag a match against a brick wall and light up the darkness with the flame. The Creator knows where those rays of light will fall before we’ve written a single word. So, write your poems and send them out, knowing that your Creator has already seen and received each plainspoken offering.

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Poet and essayist Heather Cadenhead publishes a monthly newsletter about her life as a writer and mother of two sons, one of whom is diagnosed with non-speaking autism.