Wednesday 26 March 2014

Submissions and Inspiration

I am making a concerted effort this month to make at least one poetry submission per week - it doesn't sound like much I know but it is far more than i have been doing. I realised that I had let things go woefully on the submissions front when a few weeks ago I decided that maybe it was time to submit to The Rialto again - after all a few months had passed since I last submitted. I was shocked to discover that the last time I submitted work to the journal was actually 2012! It was a real wake-up call. I knew I had been slacking on the submissions front - and even more so since I finished my collection last year. I think the lack of movement on that front has made me lose my enthusiasm somewhat - as well as for some months quashing my creativity altogether. I am pleased to say that I am now back in the writing saddle - in part due to Jo Bell's 52 Blog - every week she posts a writing prompt and links to poems around that week's themes. It has been surprisingly inspiring - and somehow once you start writing again more and more comes. Now I just need to man up and ask the publisher who has had some of my poems for eight months to make a decision.

2 comments:

Tim Love said...

I was talking to a poet last night who said she had 30+ poems in the post. I was relieved I wasn't the only one to carpet-bomb the mags. Indeed, I suspect that many people think in terms of such quantities - good poems to the best mags, but also the not-quite-so-good ones to other mags, just to keep their name in circulation. Many of the US mags allow multiple submissions, so you can have dozens of submissions on the go even if you don't have many poems. Success breeds success.

Julia said...

I should be this pro-active, and I haven't tried sending to US magazines yet either - I need to get my finger out and be less reticent!