A Beginner's Guide to Submitting Poetry to UK Literary Magazines

Your first batch of poems is finished. You have read them aloud, changed a line, changed it back, and now you are staring at a submission form on a literary magazine's website wondering whether the whole business is worth the bother. It is. UK poetry magazines publish a great deal of work by writers nobody has heard of yet, and most editors are quietly hoping you will send them something they cannot forget. What separates the poems that get read from the ones that get closed after a glance is rarely talent alone. It is preparation.

Read the Magazine Before You Send a Single Poem

Every magazine has a personality, and it is usually visible after ten minutes of reading. Some lean towards lyric and formal craft; others want the strange, the experimental, the political, or the prose poem. The Rialto, Magma, The North, Poetry Wales, Mslexia, Under the Radar, The Moth — they are not interchangeable, and a poem that would sit beautifully in one can look lost in another.

Do not guess at that personality. Buy an issue or read the free samples most magazines keep online, and spend an evening with a back issue if you can find one. Look for the poems you wish you had written, then ask what they have in common: length, tone, the way they handle endings, whether they favour received forms or free verse.

What the guidelines actually tell you

Read the submission guidelines twice. They will tell you the line limit, whether the magazine reads all year or in a specific window, whether it accepts simultaneous submissions, whether it reads blind, and whether it wants a short bio. Note the difference between "we read year-round" and "submissions open in March". Sending in December to a magazine that opens in spring is not a rejection, but it is a wasted postage stamp of hope.

Formatting: Boring Is Correct

Editors read a lot of poems in a short space of time. Anything that makes the page harder to read works against you. Keep it plain:

• One poem per page, unless the guidelines ask for everything in a single document.
• A clear, readable font at 12pt, black on white, A4, with normal margins.
• The title at the top of the poem in bold or capitals, followed by the text.
• Your name and contact details, if the magazine is not reading blind.
• Line breaks exactly as you intend them; indent any line that would otherwise wrap.
• Consistent stanza breaks — no extra blank lines for decoration.
• A sensible filename such as surname-title.docx, saved in the format requested.

If a magazine reads blind, strip your name from the document itself as well as the filename, and put your details in the covering email or the box provided. A good number of submissions are returned unread for exactly this reason.

The Cover Letter: Short and Unremarkable

Three or four sentences is plenty. Say who you are, list the titles enclosed, mention previous publications if they are relevant, and thank the editor for reading. If you have no credits, leave them out; almost nobody minds, and an apologetic "this is my first submission" reads worse than saying nothing at all.

Skip the life story, the explanation of what the poem means, and the disclaimer that you are not sure whether it is any good. The poems have to do that work on their own.

Simultaneous Submissions, Fees and Response Times

Most UK magazines accept simultaneous submissions — the same poems sent to several places at once — provided you withdraw immediately if a poem is accepted elsewhere. A polite two-line email withdrawing a poem costs you nothing and builds a good name for you.

Many magazines are free to submit to; others charge a small reading fee, and competitions almost always do. If money is tight, prioritise the free windows and put your budget towards one competition a year rather than six. Check what rights a magazine asks for, too. First British serial rights are standard, but some ask for more, and a poem already published elsewhere needs mentioning before it appears rather than after.

Response times vary from a fortnight to six months. A polite query after the stated reading period has passed is acceptable; a query after three weeks usually is not.

Dealing With Rejection

You will be rejected. A great deal. That is not a verdict on your worth as a writer, though it will feel like one at first. A magazine might receive hundreds of submissions for a handful of slots, and many perfectly good poems are turned away because the issue already had three poems about the sea.

Read the rejection properly before you do anything else. A form rejection means nothing beyond "not this time". A note that says "send more" or "we liked this one" is worth taking seriously. And do not reply in anger, however tempting it is at eleven o'clock at night; editors remember names, and the poetry world in the UK is smaller than it looks.

If you get feedback

Feedback is rare and usually brief. Take it as a gift, not an instruction manual. If two readers independently say the ending of a poem is unclear, it is worth a look. If one reader dislikes something you care about, you can thank them and keep the poem as it is. A poem rejected by five magazines may be a weak poem, or it may simply be looking for the wrong five magazines.

A Simple Routine That Keeps You Sending

Submitting is a habit, not an event. Set aside one evening a month. Keep a list of ten to fifteen magazines whose work you actually enjoy, note their reading windows, and send three to five poems at a time rather than a single one. Track everything in a plain spreadsheet: magazine, date sent, poems sent, response, rights requested, and whether you can resubmit.

Then close the spreadsheet and go back to the writing, which is the part that matters and the part no editor can do for you. Poems tend to find a home when they have been sent out often enough to be in the right place at the right time.

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