Getting your poetry published
Many poets are keen to see their work in print but it’s actually quite
hard to get taken on by a publisher. This is because most poetry lists
are pretty small. They tend to be either poetry imprints in large publishing
houses, such as (in the UK) the Cape Poetry list at Random House,
long-established independents such as Faber and a number of Arts Council
funded publishers including larger houses such as Bloodaxe, Carcanet and
Salt, and very small ones such as Flambard.
All of these publishers are cautious about what they take on and there
are good reasons for this. Poetry is not in general given much space in
bookshops and it is difficult to find poetry sections that go much beyond
some bestselling backlist and a few new volumes. It’s hard therefore to
achieve any sales for first collections and the publishers have to be
realistic about this.
Working on your poetry
It goes without say that it is important to work at your poetry and
get it into the best state you can before you submit it to anyone.
Writing poetry is just as solitary an activity as other kinds of writing,
although often less productive, in the sense that it often takes longer to
get a book-length collection together. It may be a real help to join a
poetry writing group to get the benefit of other writers’ critical input.
There are many creative writing courses available, both full and part-time,
and also evening classes, and some of these concentrate on poetry.
You can also send it to the Poetry Society, which
runs a paid
advisory service which enables you to send in poems to be critiqued.
www.poetrysociety.org.uk
There are also books which help with getting your poetry into good shape
and published - a good one is by Chris Hamilton-Emery, the
Publishing Director of Salt Publishing, and it's called
101 Ways
to Make Poems Sell. We have
reviewed it on the site.
Read!
Poetry exists in a particular world of its own. Reading as much of it
as you can will not only improve your own work but it will also help you to
understand what is going on in the poetry world you are trying to enter.
If you have problems finding a particular book it is always worth trying
www.poetrybookshoponline.com
(for British poets' work), which should be able to get hold of any poetry
book which is in print in the UK.
If you find it hard to work out which new
poetry is most worth reading, the Poetry Book Society is the world’s only
poetry book club and will recommend and supply the best new collections to
members all over the world.
www.poetrybooks.co.uk
Readings
Take any opportunity you get to publicise your work. Even if it’s
a small and poorly-attended reading, it is still a way of beginning to build
your audience. Similarly, enter as many competitions as you can, as they all
give kudos and cash to the winners, and the big ones, such as the
National Poetry Competition
in the UK (which is open to everyone internationally) and the
Foyle
Young Poets (open only to 12-18 year-olds) are very prestigious too.
Try magazines first
The best way to start getting your name around is by submitting
individual poems, perhaps three or four at a time, to poetry magazines.
There are a great many poetry magazines published in both the US and the UK
and each one has a slightly different editorial brief. A good place to
research them is the UK Poetry
Library’s
poetry
magazines site. In the UK the most important magazines are Poetry
Review, PN Review and Poetry London, whereas in the States the
most prominent are the distinguished Poetry and American Poetry
Review. Bear in mind though that
the smaller and less well-known, magazines may be a better place to start.
Book publication
Don’t even try to approach publishers until you have a
collection-length amount of material to offer. Your chances will be much
better even then if you can point to publication of your poems in magazines.
Don’t waste any time trying to get a literary agent to represent you.
Only the best-known poets have representation, because there is just so
little money in it that agents don’t bother. If you can muster any kind
of contact or referral, it is a way of getting your work noticed, but it is
still a long, hard road to publication.
Self-publishing
You may feel that it is better to hedge your options by going the
self-publishing route. Fortunately this is now very much cheaper than it
used to be and the final result is much more satisfactory. Once you have
your collection in your hand you will have to figure out how to sell it, but
fortunately print on demand economies mean that the financial hit is not too
great. The great advantage is that you can sell it directly, after
readings or from your website. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t
publish it properly and have it listed on Amazon as well.
So, good luck to all those poets out there!
WritersPrintShop –
WritersServices’ self-publishing service.
Finding an agent
Making submissions
Avoiding rejection
Dealing with
Rejection
