Yesterday, I submitted a poem to the blog of an independent press that features a monthly poetry series on a given theme. Next month’s theme is “Me, as a child.” I submitted a poem I had recently written about playing on our school playground. By evening, I had a rejection notice in my inbox, which is far and away the fastest turnaround time I have ever seen. They wanted poems that focus on the individual, whereas my poem focused on children as a group. The positive part of this is that they invited me to send another poem, which feels much better than most of the rejections I’ve received which don’t give any feedback. I don’t know that I will actually submit again for this series; the only poem I have written that deals with my childhood on a personal level would take significant revision to use for this series and I don’t think I have enough brain power to complete it by March 31st. This does give me confidence, though, to submit to their series in the coming months.
Postscript: I was entering my tags for this post and was about to type in “submission” as a tag, but, in these days of 50 Shades of Grey, I thought better of it and opted for “publication submission.” (And, no, I have not read 50 Shades of Grey or seen the movie nor do I plan to do so.)
Joanne Corey 