GETTING YOUR POETRY
PUBLISHED
The Poetry Book Society promotes contemporary poetry by
selling the best new books, rather than by publishing
poetry or commenting on work submitted to us. Please don't
send us your work - we won't be able to do anything with
it. However, we do hope the following guidelines may help
you to get your work published.
Magazines and Competitions
If your poetry has
not previously been published professionally,
we suggest you begin by sending your work to a
wide selection of poetry magazines and entering
poetry competitions. There are now many ways of
tracking down magazines and competitions on the
web.
The Poetry Library
in London produces lists of reputable magazines
and competitions -
www.poetrylibrary.org.uk
Writing Groups and Courses
Joining
a writing group is an excellent way of both improving
your skills and meeting other poetry writers;
they are usually advertised in libraries or in
writing magazines (try Mslexia at
www.mslexia.co.uk or Writers' News at
www.writersnews.co.uk) and are often tutored
by published poets. The Arvon Foundation runs
very good residential courses at its centres in
Yorkshire, Devon and Inverness-shire. Visit
www.arvonfoundation.org for course details.
Poetry Organisations
The
Poetry Society runs a (paid) advisory
service which enables you to send in poems to
be critiqued.
The
Poetry Society
22 Betterton Street
London WC2H 9BU
Tel: 020 7420 9880
www.poetrysociety.org.uk
The Poetry Library (which is currently closed but
is to reopen in June 2007) holds large collections of
20th century poetry and all English-language poetry magazines
which are extremely useful for researching potential markets
for your work. It also has a very useful website and a
wonderful online archive of poetry magazines with full-text
access.
www.poetrymagazines.org.uk
The Poetry Library
Royal Festival Hall
South Bank
London SE1 8XX
Tel: 020 7921 0943
www.poetrylibrary.org.uk
Self Publication
Publication is very hard to achieve and we suggest
that you take a long look at your work before
thinking about trying to find a publisher. Many
people write for their own pleasure and will never
see their work in print - unless they publish
it themselves. This is now entirely possible using
print on demand technology and fairly low cost,
so it may be an option that is worth pursuing
through one of the many companies which have grown
up to support self-publishers.
Another alternative is to do it yourself with
the help of a personal computer and a reasonable
printer, achieving a less professional result.
Do think carefully about distribution and marketing
though, as getting your work to readers is the
difficult part.
Other Forms of Publication
A number of organisations offer publication in
an anthology for a fee or on the assumption that
the poet will buy an expensively produced book.
Advertisements for such schemes appear occasionally
in the press and online.
While this kind of publication
operates within the law, these ventures are primarily
profit-driven and do not tend to benefit poets,
financially or otherwise. But if you feel that
you would like to see your work in print and are
clear about the costs involved, this can be a
way of achieving your dream.
We would however advise
you to avoid so-called ‘vanity publishers’,
who will take quite a lot of your money and offer
very little in return. It is much better to go
down the route of self-publishing, which enables
you to retain control of your work and should
also be much cheaper.
Publishers
Aspiring poets should amass a reasonable
body of material before feeling ready to approach
book publishers, who are only likely to be interested
in publishing book-length collections.
An up-to-date list of UK poetry publishers can be found
in the Poetry
Writers Yearbook.
Read!
Poets who regularly read a wide range of work
which is currently being published are in a better
position to judge the style and quality of their
own poems, and many published poets are members
of the PBS. Creative writing tutors also recommend
that their students should read as much poetry
as possible and keep up to date with what is being
published.
So it’s worth considering joining the Poetry
Book Society, to get the best new poetry chosen
by our Poet Selectors. Join
now. |
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