As soon as I posted the last section, I went to check my emails, I have just had an acceptance. That means I submitted 12 times in September and six have already had an acceptance. One submission has resulted in three being short-listed so I am hoping for an acceptance there too. This not bad when you consider that it includes magazines I have regarded as tricky in the past.
I now have two sets of submissions out with proper poetry magazines. It’s a bit of a culture shift. The editors of Japanese style poetry journals are generally helpful, supportive and encouraging. Many of them are American, and despite my use of “Pollyanna” as an insult, positivity does seem to be an American trait. They are also quicker to give a decision (my most recent six all took less than a month) and publish three or four times a year (with one being monthly). They also accept submissions by email.
Contrast this with the five British based poetry magazines I have submitted to, will be submitting too, or nearly submitted to.
The editor of one is quite aggressive, to the point of telling would be authors he doesn’t give feedback because it isn’t his job. He just closed his submission window early too, so I can’t submit, even though I had planned to.
Peacock – our first butterfly of 2015 – crocuses are the giveaway. It was 10th March when I look it up.
One of the others is nearly as bad, though two, to be fair, are lovely people to deal with. Response time is typically two or three months. Submission is generally via something like Submittable, which I don’t really like, and one still insists on paper submissions. It’s a way of pre-editing, I suppose.
However, if you want to submit traditional European style verse, this is how you have to do it. One day, there may be a change, but as most magazines are happy to tell you that they can only use a small percentage of the submissions they receive, it could be a long time until they need to worry about what the poets think of the service they are given.
Peacock at Mencap gardens
Having finished the email I checked WP – comments working.
So I wrote the post, got ti finished just before midnight, checked WP, found it was not showing comments again, and posted.
