Submit! Submit!

Well, we’re coming back to life now, and about time. Either you’ve been writing poems all year and want somewhere to think about sending them out to, or maybe like me you’ve barely been able to write anything, and you feel you need a spur to your creative unconscious. (Or maybe something to wake you up.) Here are four things that might help.

I’ve recently learned about a couple of very interesting new web-based poetry publications here in the UK.

‘Smarter than your average bear’

The first, PERVERSE — edited by Chrissie Williams (a founding member of my workshop group, 12 years ago; her first collection, Bear, was chosen as one of the 50 Telegraph’s best books of the year in 2017, and her second, LOW, is due out in May, both with Bloodaxe) — is ‘a poetry magazine for “deliberate, obstinate, unreasonable or unacceptable poems, contrary to the accepted or expected standard or practice”.’ It’s not actually that new, but it’s fizzing. You can see it here, or click the image at the top to go directly to a folder full of the complete back issues

Not just hothouse flowers

The second is Andrew Neilson and Kathryn Gray’s gorgeous ‘Bad Lilies’. They have just celebrated their first issue and it’s a cracker. Andrew and Kathryn are as close as it gets to a poetry power couple; Andrew is a widely published poet and critic of many years’ standing, and Kathryn’s first collection, Never-Never (Seren Books, 2004), was the first first-collection ever to be shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. Her second, in 2017, was fittingly enough called Flowers. You can see their submissions page here, or click on the photo above to go to the main page.

She’s doing all the work so you don’t have to!

The third resource for your springtime of submitting is Robin Houghton’s newsletter, which if you are a practicing poet and don’t subscribe to, you better had. This is a free sheet that lists all the upcoming submission windows, competitions, subs deadlines and so on. It’s a one-stop to keep track of the increasingly murky thicket of different reading schedules. I can’t even imagine how someone would take on such a thankless and nightmarish unpaid task, just for the good of all, but Robin has! Here’s the sign-up page. Get on it.

Your year of poetry submitting awaits

And your fourth resource, of course, is my new Saturday morning critical feedback workshop! Whether it’s a way to get down to brass tacks with all your lockdown poems, or a way to rise up from the lockdown torpor and start writing some fresh stuff, we are here for you and the goal is to make it — like Ezra Pound told us to — new. We start this weekend, Saturday the 24th. All the details are here — or else click on the image. I’d love you to join us, and start getting those poems flying out.