Getting Poetry published in the UK

Books are harder to publish nowadays, and paper magazines are struggling to survive. Competition for publication is fiercer, thanks to all the budding poets produced by creative writing courses. If you're going to be published you'll need be professional and stubborn. Here are some suggestions.

New Possibilities

Perhaps there was a time when budding poets got published in ever better magazines until they were finally ready to send a book manuscript to a publisher. You can still pursue that route (details at the end) but the times they are achangin'.

There's a world beyond paper. It can replace paper for some people. For others it's a way to make progress towards book publication

• Performance - Venues continue to open
• Festivals - In summer there's a string of festivals - a chance to see and be seen.
• Creative Writing - Opportunities have emerged around Creative Writing courses and education in general - residencies, schools, etc. Once you're on a Creative Writing course you'll be able to develop a network of contacts.
• Interning - Various organisations (especially magazines) offer foot-in-the-door chances
• Grants and Fellowships - A few exist for developing writers. Contact your regional arts board
• The WWW - Some web publications are very respectable, or you could start your own. You could put recordings online. At least you could become part of the scene by contributing to discussion boards and blogs. If you want to quickly find out what's going on in the small-press world, try these blogs
  • Baroque in Hackney (Katy Evans-Bush)
  • Surroundings (Rob Mackenzie)
  • Poets On Fire
  • BRITISH-IRISH-POETS (a bit of a "research lab")
  • George Szirtes
  Web magazines are already appearing on the Acknowledgements pages of books. Here are just a few of the UK ones
  • Horizon Review
  • Neon
  • Shadowtrain

If you're young there are special opportunities

• The "Foyle's Young Poet of the Year" prize is for under-18s
• The "Eric Gregory Awards" are for under-30s. These have been going for a long time.
• Mentoring - a number of organisations (not least of which Faber!) have been given money to foster young talent, often leading to pamphlet publication. Smiths Knoll's mentoring scheme has led to several successful publications.
• Age-limited anthologies pop up every-so-often too

Traditional Routes

First decide on what your aims are and why you have them. Poetry is a tiny world - the amount of fame (or even respect) available is limited.

• According to Nielsen Bookscan, not one of the shortlisted collections in the 2007 T.S. Eliot Prize for poetry had sold more than 1000 copies by 2008. The winner ("The Drowned Book" by Sean O'Brien) sold 785. "Hawks to Doves" by Alan Gill had sold 39 copies.

And "who-you-know" still matters. Here's part of an article from "The Wolf", issue 15, (Summer 2007) by its editor

• Recently I visited a sifter for a leading poetry mag in the UK. She asked me to cast an eye over a stack-pile of submissions with a clear preference on ordering all poems (and prose) into 'Friends' and 'unknowns' piles. All 'Friends' would be placed in the provisional PUBLISH folder, often before the intention to read a line of their work. Apparently this is 'how the magazine has operated for years.'

Several publishers (including many of the bigger ones) don't read their slush pile. They depend on recommendations, so you'll need to get yourself noticed. Paper magazines are a rather slow way of doing this.

Paper Magazines

A poem published in a poetry group newsletter probably gets read more than a poem in some of the magazines mentioned below. In the poetry world I think these are the big hitters

• PN Review
• Stand (prose too)
• Poetry Review
• London Magazine (prose too)
• Rialto

The following are smaller or less established than the magazines in the previous section, but in other respects just as serious. Some even pay.

• Poetry London
• The North
• Interpreter's House
• Other Poetry
• Smiths Knoll
• Magma
• Acumen (pays)
• Agenda
• Assent
• Weyfarers
• Orbis
• The Dark Horse
• Envoi
• Iota
• Seam
• Staple (prose too)
• Ambit (prose too)
• The Wolf

The easiest way to research these is to visit the National Poetry Library on the South Bank, or see

• The poetry library's magazine list - http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/magazines/
• poetry magazine (full-text) archive - http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/
• My UK magazines list - http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~tpl/ukmags.html

A few of these accept online submissions. See http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/pbonline.html for a list of 700+ poetry magazines publishers worldwide who accept electronic submissions.

Competitions

Many competitions offer few bragging rights and not that much money. Even success in the big ones doesn't lead to book publication The bigger ones are

• Arvon (every 2 years)
• The Bridport Prize
• National Poetry Competition (over 6000 entries)

A longer list of competitions is maintained by the poetry library.

Pamphlets

Also known as chapbooks. More publishers are producing them now. A few competitions offer pamphlet publication as the prize. They're one of the most promising ways to be published if the competition's respectable - no networking necessary, and you won't need to wait years for a verdict. The ones below are worthwhile, but the entry fees are about 20 quid.

• Poetry Business competition
• Templar Poetry competition
• Iota shots

A list of UK small press poetry publishers is online.

Books

Not easy nowadays. Read "101 Ways to Make Poems Sell: The Salt Guide to Getting and Staying Published" by Chris Hamilton-Emery. There's a sample chapter at the Salt site. Salt's How do I get published is useful too. There's a lot more to getting a book published than just sending the manuscript away.

Further Information

See England focus - http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~tpl/lit/ukfocus.html - for other options.