How to submit poetry like you have forgotten what rejection feels like

Poetry wise, I spent most of 2024 preparing to self publish my collection. This focus meant I did not have the time to focus on other opportunities to get my work into the world. And now I am in less of a bad mood with January¹ I am ready to start playing the game again.

I have a selection of poems that did not fit the book that I am preparing to submit to journals and competitions that I spot. I know I did right to keep them out of the book. It would have become too unwieldy and some of these poems did not fit the narrative threads I chose to include in the book. So now I am ready to find them new homes. I am also ready to write new work. That’s the really fun part!

Where I look

I find opportunities in various places, but largely all online. I sign up to emails from publishers and spoken word organisations, I look on here for occasional poetry sharing opportunties like

The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press Newsletter

, social media² , I look at Submittable, I look at Apples and Snakes, I look at Write Out Loud, Mslexia, and I always, always look at Wordbox. I am also part of the Poetry Society, who have lots of opportunities and adverts for courses in their beautiful quarterly magazine.

It is important to look at the guidelines and the type of work they typically publish. Some charge (competitions), some don’t, some have a tip jar system to pay the publications for their time in reading and creating the platform for other poets to share their work. Not all opportunities I find will be appropriate for my work and that is ok. I won’t always have time to seek out and submit to opportunities on time either. That is ok too. And I will get rejected plenty more times than I will get accepted. That is the only guarantee in this game. I will also have to holder tighter to words I would love nothing more than to share. I love the connection of sharing my work. Playing a longer game will defer that particular pleasure. I am hoping it is all the sweeter for being patient. We will see!

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Making the time

I used to run an instagram account called Community Poetry Officer where I would re-share opportunities and events for poets in the UK. I did the same on Twitter. The account gained lots of followers very quickly, with lots of genuine appreciation. Sometimes people would tell me what opportunities or night they had enjoyed because of what I shared. I loved that. I stopped running it at the end of 2023 for two reasons, one to claim back some time for myself to write, and to not be on social media so much. The other was when I tried to run a fundraiser through the account (for a well known and in need charity), mistakenly thinking that years of goodwill would be paid back and I think I raised £20. I had gone into the adventure for free, no tip jar, no pattern, no substack subscription, so I had no right to expect anything back, but it was still a wake up call to look at what I wanted out of being online a bit more. Why was I sharing all this stuff. I genuinely connected people and amplified events and opportunities. I genuinely enjoyed knowing that was happening. But I gave it a year off in 2024 and, well, in the nicest possible way, no one really noticed. The world moves on. People will still find the opportunities. They are still all there and finding people. Poets are still making connections. That is the point of being a poet. An inbuilt need to share, and find their audience, their next inspiration. Everyone was absolutely fine. I kept the account dormant throughout 2024 and I shared my book to the story once at the end of 2024. When that got no connection at all I came to the conclusion the account would not be resurrected post book launch, as I sometimes thought it might be. I deactivated the account earlier this month. It was a part of my ‘poetry personality’ for a while. I would put it in my bio’s and spoken word set intros. But as my poetry should be the main source of my ‘poetry personality’ I will continue to re-focus that time to doing just that.

Onwards

I hope to attend some more courses this year (mainly online where I can find them) and writing and submitting. I have started the spreadsheet approach and I will keep going, editing, learning, reading, listening and submitting my work. I am excited to be rejected, long listed and maybe shortlisted, maybe published again. I’ll share how I am getting on. I expect it will be mainly rejection, as is always the way with these things… but I will keep going through the no’s to get to some yes’s (how do you spell the multiple of yes?).

Photo by Florian Schmetz on Unsplash

Whilst you are here you may be interested to hear the podcast that I recently had the pleasure of recording a podcast with

The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press

where I talk about my collection and read some poems from it - try before you buy - or just to hear me say some of the poems you may have already read!

Episode 41 - Lisa O´Hare

Thank you for reading Poems and That, where I write about things I have learned from becoming a poet, beyond the poetry itself. My collection Proving I Exist is available on Amazon now.

1. Too long, too cold, too dark. Social media is at it’s worst, and that’s before you could see fascism at work in nearly every scroll.

2. Just instagram and Facebook , X was deleted in the summer,. I found bluesky boring so it went after about 3 months of trying to use it and then I deleted threads this month, having found the constant ads to really silly not necessarily true stories every time I used Facebook or instagram. This is probably a whole other article.