Starting this week, and going forward, I have decided to talk honestly about the business of how I write poetry. There are people who teach how to create poetry, how to format it, how to submit and how publishing in general works. I am not seeing that many people doing work on what you need to do with your brain and mental attitudes to make that stick, grow and then evolve. HI THERE.
Letās see if we can change that.
In Poetry World, nobody can hear you scream.
I have discovered many things related to how other people measure success in the last six months. Crucially, talking about failure in public is as rare as an absence of queuing at the most popular rides. Those conversations are reserved for the dimly-lit generic Theme Park snack stops, where close friends reassure each other that itāll all be alright in the end. Except you donāt get paid, or your work doesnāt get published.
From time to time, there will be Drama. The smart people distance themselves from it, while secretly watching everything play out across social media in real time. This theme park is so large that it has its own weather system, yet the poet standing next to you can still have no idea of how you were stiffed in broad daylight by the same person. This park needs more meeting places in plain sight.
Crucially, it requires both staff and punters to talk to each other more often.
The bigger problem however, at least for someone like me who has spent many years beating themselves up over work, is the silence that comes from the inevitable consequence of the Poetry Process. A submission window will open, and you will gleefully send off your work. There are also no two places that do this in the same way, but that is a conversation for another time. After you submit, you then wait.
Iād given up on a piece of work which, after six months of hearing absolutely nothing about, Iād assumed had been rejected, but no, there was a reply one day in my Inbox. They loved it, and it was in the magazine. When that publication is finally released, weāll talk about the poem, but for now I need to remind you (but mostly me) that time does not work in the same way for you as it does for other people in the Park.
There are absolutely parts of Poetry World that still think we are in the 1970ās.
In purely practical terms, it takes a fuck of a long time for people to properly process work. I can cite at least one example of a publisher who accepted my work about 30 minutes after it hit his Inbox: Iām betting because he wasnāt inundated with suitable ācontentā, and also had a space to fill in a pamphlet going out. He was, and still is, an exception I wish was more the rule.
Clare Shaw from
took readers last year through the process of them judging the Winchester Poetry Prize. It will take different people differing amounts of time to read every entry enough times to get a feel for work when presented at that scale. Curation is not an easy or necessarily an acquired skill either. It is why many bigger contests employ sifters at the first point of entry.Letās create a fictitious Poetry World Submission as an example of how things work.
Poetry World give you a three-month window for their next Souvenir Brochure. Letās say that fifty people a week submit at least three poems, which means thereās 50 x 3 x 12 pieces of work to look through. 1800 poems canāt all be published, thereās room for 40 tops in the magazine with the additional advertising and product placement Poetry World honchos demand. Weāll need that 1800 down to a manageable level.
Not everyone clocked that you needed a mention of the park in your work (the sub was very clear, you just didnāt read it properly). Lots of this work is unsuitable for the age range of the publication, and many poets did not format their work as was explicitly instructed. The sift team do the heavy lifting and pull the numbers down by nearly half. The editing team then come in to read, and talk about the work.
A 1000 First Sift becomes a 250 work Longlist, which becomes an 80 work Shortlist.
Pamphlets and Collections are a different beast entirely, and I do not envy anyone taking that on. I assume the pay is good (but have no idea) and at least in the example of contests should be covered by the entry fee. Money also comes up in these conversations a LOT, and weāll do a post on that in due course. For now, we know that being paid is not the issue. Itās not going insane whilst waiting, that is.
So, hereās are five things I have made myself do every time I submit, after spending many years at this game, and still being pole-axed when certain decisions do not go my way:
KEEP A LIST OF NOTABLE DATES. A decent publisher will tell you the closing date for entry, when they will announce winners/successful subs, and when you can expect to see your work in print. This will, at least, allow you a sense of participation in a mostly unseen process.
IF THESE DATES SLIDE, TALK TO OTHER POETS. You are not alone. Other people will be stressed as well. If you donāt know someone else who subbed for the call-out or contest, maybe they will. This can and does help enormously when you are worried about the state of a submission that matters a lot to you.
TALK TO MORE POETS THAN YOU DO NOW. Honestly, thatās a piece of advice I will repeat for the rest of time. Find friends who share your interest and who can help you rationalise what is going on in a sensible and adult way. This helps a lot if your first response to drama is to try and burn everything to the ground.
CHECK WEBSITES AND SOCIAL MEDIA REGULARLY. My first shortlisting coincided with the publisher having a lot of Unavoidable Real Life that meant an extra two-month wait for results. Sometimes, shit happens. Itās not you, and itās not your work. Itās simply an occasional consequence of the process.
REALLY, IT IS NOT YOU. Weāll talk about this and the wider consequences of how we place value in our own work next time. If your publisher employs less than three people, or itās simply them and some mates helping out, patience is the key. Your work has value. Nobody else writes exactly the way you do.
Not everyone can wear the Poetry World Crown. Sometimes the successes come like buses, and trust me when I say to you that these should be celebrated as the special and joyous moments they undoubtedly are. Itās really easy to be a Hater, too. Leave that to other people. In the times when all you do is wait, make the most of that space and particularly of the silence.
If you can stomach the ads every other paragraph, Iād suggest this article from Calm as a starting point to learning the importance of silence as not simply relaxation but a growth mindset tool. This can also include time with that previously-used notebook I suggested you use yesterday: read back on what was written before, or maybe consider what youād like to write next.
When you accept you are part of a larger process, everything can become easier.
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