Yesterday was 84 degrees and the sky so clear I could see three mountains at once: Adams, Hood, and St. Helens. Now, the clouds shade the foothills and the snow caps. Our washing machine officially died two days ago and it’s muggy hot. I spent most of the morning at the laundromat with ten loads of laundry spinning into a vortex of Saturday morning blues. The sounds of the wash similar to the wet of a summer storm starting and stopping, pouring down and agitating the ground.
My poetry feels like one of these washing machines spinning around and around. Submit, reject, submit, reject, submit, reject. In the last month, I received 15 rejections from various journals, contests, and workshops.
Regardless, from the first of May to now, I submitted about twenty different poems to contests and regular submission calls. I sent a collection to Crab Creek Review for their 2024 contest, which is the first time I’ve submitted to their publication. I also submitted to the American Poetry Review’s Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize, AGNI and Mom Egg Review’s regular submissions, Boulevard’s poetry contest, and Poet Lore’s special guest edited submissions call for ekphrastic poetry.
One submission I want to highlight is The Bridport Prize for poetry. This is an annual contest and the deadline is May 31st every single year. Since 2019, it is a yearly tradition for me to send my best poems to Bridport and hope for the best. A handful of times, my poems have been short listed or they made the finalist list. Bridport is my yearly marker and deadline. The editors and guest readers are always kind and generous and I feel they treat the deluge of submissions they receive with care and consideration. I can’t imagine the time and process of reading every submission, but it happens every year and they always inform rejections and acceptances in a timely manner.
If I don’t do anything else, I must submit to Bridport. It is my great motivator to get my poems ready for summer submission season and start polishing newer material for September and October submissions. I consider Bridport’s deadline as a national poetry holiday for myself. It’s something I look forward to every year, and I never forget it. It’s permanently on my personal calendar, with reminders months in advance.
It’s almost like a religious holiday. A moment of pause and reflection. A reminder to look at all the poems I’ve written in the last six months to a year and assess where I’m at, where I’m headed, and whether I am on track for the yearly poetry goals I set for myself on January 1st.
For the next few submissions in June, I’m planning to submit to Poetry Magazine and Narrative Magazine to meet their June 15th deadlines. Lastly, Mississippi Review’s Art Issue sub call will close my month on June 30th. There may be a few more submissions that crop up through the rest of the month. But in the meantime, on to writing new poems!
Do any of you have a poetry submission or deadline that you set for yourself each year? What is one contest or regular submission call that you submit to each year without fail?
Happy Poeming!
I took a snap shot from my Submittable account below (AGNI not included, since they use their own submission website).
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