Submissions — How to Submit Your Work

New to poetry & to the perils of submitting your work to magazines? Go here.

Want to submit a book manuscript? Go here.

Shearsmanmagazine now operates a "reading-window" system, and no longer accepts submissions throughout the year. The windows run from 1 March to 31 March, when we read work for the October issue, and from 1 September to 30 September, when we read work for the April issue. Please note that this window system applies only to the magazine; books may be submitted at any time — follow the link above for further details. Responses take up to 3 months, usually, although some submissions will be dealt with more quickly, as time permits. We do not pay for accepted manuscripts, but do provide two free copies of the issue in which the selected work appears. It would be better if we could pay, but the magazine just about breaks even as it is, and paying fees would simply ensure the journal's rapid closure. 


We accept electronic submissions, provided they are in PDF form and are sent via the upload facility on this site's Contact page for the upload facility, OR are embedded in the text of an e-mail message and sent to editor_AT_shearsman_DOT_com. If the formatting of the poems is affected adversely by the e-mailing process, this will be obvious and I will let you know if an alternative submission is required. Please also to include a covering letter explaining who you are and what your track-record is. NEVER send attachments with your Emails, unless they are PDFs. Any other uninvited attachments (especially MS-Word files, videos, sound files) will be destroyed, unread, because of the possibility of viruses or malware arriving with them. 


Hardcopy manuscripts intended for consideration by the magazine should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope, and a covering letter of some kind. Poems — no more than 5 or 6 pages for a first submission — should be printed on one side of a sheet of paper, and each sheet should carry the author's name and address, so that there's no confusion if the covering letter becomes detached. This applies also to PDFs submitted online.


Would international correspondents please note that we can only use British stamps here in the U.K., just as one can only use American stamps in the U.S.A., Canadian stamps in Canada, etc. In view of the difficulties presented by international submissions of hardcopy texts, I suggest that you supply recyclable copies of your manuscripts and permit e-mail responses wherever possible, or, better still, submit by email or file upload (see above).


The mailing address for hardcopy submissions is:-


Shearsman Books Ltd
PO Box 4239

Swindon

SN3 9FN

United Kingdom


Please note that postal submissions that are not accompanied by sufficient return postage and that do not allow for email responses, will be destroyed, unacknowledged. Submissions that are accompanied by penalty charges for bearing insufficient postage will be rejected, and presumably returned to source by the Royal Mail, or destroyed. 


A Little Rant:

Would-be contributors often fail to carry out even the most cursory of checks on the "market" to which they wish to present their work. In the case of Shearsman there should be enough content on this website for you to judge whether your work fits in with the overall aesthetic of the magazine or the press. If you can't see what that aesthetic might be, then you're very likely in the wrong place to start with. If you don't like the kind of poetry you see on the website, or in the printed version of the magazine, ditto, and you can probably save yourself a lot of wasted time, effort, and postage stamps. And, if you don't like it anyway, why would you wish to submit your work here anyway? Unsolicited material does have a good chance of getting into Shearsman , and all issues contain some such work, frequently from writers with whom I have had no previous contact, and sometimes from those who are new to publishing their work. The key to their acceptance was that they either brought something new, and of quality, to the magazine, or that their work was in tune with what the magazine was all about. Without such editorial surprises, the magazine would die from atrophy: new blood is always needed. As with real blood transfusions, however, the blood needs to be of the right type.


We actively encourage diverse submissions, and would be delighted to see more poetry submitted by women, and by writers from BAME, disabled and LGBTQ backgrounds and any who have traditionally been poorly represented in poetry publishing. In the magazine at least, we seem to have had some success in rebalancing the gender profile, but we can't rebalance totally if the submissions don't come in. 


If you are a frequent contributor, or would-be contributor, to poetry magazines, please do try to buy a book from one of their associated small presses from time to time, or indeed from Shearsman Books. Most independent presses survive only through sales, even if they do receive some subvention, and, if they cannot sell to people who are actually part of the tiny minority that is interested in poetry, they are almost certainly doomed. Small presses keep the art of poetry alive, not the big publishers — who take very few risks and tend to be closed-minded concerning new developments. The more small presses and journals that disappear through lack of sales, the less potential homes there are for your work. Some years ago, the director of one fine small press that was closing down observed that, had even one in ten of his unsolicited correspondents actually bought a single book from his press, then the press would not have had to close down. It's worth remembering. Needless to say, purchasing a book or a subscription does not guarantee publication of your work, so please do not be disappointed if, after having bought something, your work is not accepted for publication. Vanity presses do that; we don't. But we would hope that you enjoy the book that you've acquired, and that you gain something from it.

 

Share by: