Pocketry knows how hard it is to get your work published by a literary journal which is why we have created this handy mini book. It’s filled with everything you ever wanted to know about getting your poetry into a literary journal and more!
Buy now in our new online shop!
Follow the submission guidelines to a tee. For a small journal Like Pocketry it will be the difference between getting published and knocked back. For larger journals I suspect they won’t even look at your work if you haven’t bothered to take the time to read their submission guidelines and follow them. If you can’t be bothered to do your homework, why should they bother to read and then publish your poems?
A publisher creates submission guidelines to streamline the task of assembling a journal. As you can imagine, a lot of work goes into creating a journal. When you follow the guidelines you make the editor’s job of choosing you easy. With hundreds of submissions and many pieces to publish there simply isn’t time to go back and forth with every contributor.
Pay attention to simple things like document type, font type and size as well as requirements for contact details, author bio, photograph size and format. Get the details right and then your killer poem will shine.
Submissions for Issue two of the Pocketry Almanack have now closed and I am busy reading them all with great pleasure.
Poets and artists from Europe, the Americas and Australia have submitted their work for consideration.
It’s wonderful to know that poetry is alive and well and that there are still so many poets willing to send in their writing. It takes a brave soul to share their vulnerable self with the rest of the world. I thank all the submitters from the bottom of my heart for trusting their work to the Almanack.
The hard part is choosing which ones to include when I have so many favourites. I’m beginning to regret the pocket-size of the Almanack. If only it were bigger, then I would be able to publish so many more poets!
Did you know that as well as publishing emerging and aspiring poets, Pocketry also publishes poems in languages other than English?
I think it’s unfair to limit or restrict access to publication in literary journals to only those who can speak a particular language. As if being proficient in English somehow makes you a better poet. As if mastery of this tongue allows you entrance into the hallowed halls of literature. As if you only get to the part of the converstaion if you speak English.
I want to read poems in other languages even if I can’t understand them. Puzzle over the way foreign letters twist and tumble across the page. Read meaning into the lines of text flowing down and down and down. Find words that look familiar in amongst the strangers.
I know, I only speak English and this post is in English but if you know poets who write in other languages, please tell them about the Pocketry Almanack. Their poems are welcome here.
The Pocketry Almanack grew out of a frustration with getting published in Australian literary journals. It’s incredibly difficult to get a foot in the door with the major poetry journals as they are already swamped with submissions and the standard is incredibly high. It’s even harder to get feedback so you never know if your poem is rejected because it isn’t good enough or doesn’t fit the journal or the editor just doesn’t like that particular style of poetry.
The idea was to create a new poetry journal for emerging and aspiring poets to submit their work and receive feedback. In order to submit to the journal you would have to be unpublished and the aim was to provide feedback for new poets so they could improve their writing and know what standard they are.
Originally the journal was going to be digital and come out several times a year but somehow it morphed into an irregular print almanack with no fixed publication dates. Not surprising really given the founder of Pocketry, Indrani Perera, is a maker with a passion for bookbinding.