10 Common Mistakes Poets Make When Submitting to Literary Magazines

Most rejections have less to do with the poems than with the way they arrive. Editors read a great many submissions in a short reading window, often late in the day, and a manuscript can be set aside for reasons that have nothing to do with line breaks or imagery: it landed in February when the magazine opens in March, it contained six poems when the guidelines asked for three, the cover letter spent four paragraphs apologising for its own existence. The writing may be excellent and still never get a fair read.

None of that is a moral failing. It is simply the kind of detail that slips when you are keen to get work out into the world. What follows are the mistakes editors see most often, and the fixes that take minutes rather than months.

Skipping the guidelines

Every magazine keeps a submissions page, and it is not decoration. It tells you whether the reading window is open, how many poems to send, what length the editors prefer, whether they want a biographical note, and how long they take to reply. Read it twice: once when you decide what to send, and again just before you send it.

Editors are not being precious when they ask for three poems rather than six. Someone reads submissions on a phone during a commute, and a submission that ignores the house rules is easy to close. Check, at minimum:

• Reading dates and closing dates, including time zones
• Number of poems, and any line or word limits
• Whether the magazine accepts simultaneous submissions
• Whether poems should be attached or pasted into the body of an email
• File formats, if attachments are welcome
• Whether a bio is requested, and how long it should be
• Whether work that has appeared on a personal blog or social media counts as published
• Response times, and the stated policy on follow-ups

If the guidelines are silent on something you genuinely need to know, ask. Keep it to one short question, and ask well before the deadline rather than on the day the window closes.

Sending the wrong poems for that magazine

Guidelines tell you what an editor will accept. Reading the magazine tells you what they actually publish. Before you submit, read four or five poems from a recent issue and notice the register: spare and imagistic, or narrative and talky; formal; surreal; rooted in a particular place. This is not about imitation. It is about whether your work belongs in that company.

Two related errors cost poets more than they realise. The first is sending a batch in which every poem does the same thing — three meditations on the same dead relative, three variations on the same joke — so the editor sees one idea rather than three. Vary the range without losing the thread. The second is padding: two strong poems and a filler piece that the editor remembers instead of the good ones. Send your three best poems, not your three most recent.

Cover letters that work against you

The cover letter is a label on a jar, not an audition. Three to five sentences will do: greet the editors, name the poems, say whether they are simultaneously submitted, mention one or two relevant publications if you have them, thank them for reading. Address the editor by name if the guidelines give one; otherwise, "Dear Editors" is perfectly good.

What to leave out: apologies for taking up their time, claims that you are not really a poet, lengthy explanations of what each poem means, comparisons to famous writers, gimmicks, and instructions on how the work should be read. A poem that needs a cover letter to make sense is not finished yet.

Dear Editors,

Please consider the three poems enclosed — "Harbour Light", "Six Miles of Fence" and "What the Taxi Driver Said" — for Magazine. They are simultaneously submitted, and I will withdraw them at once if they are taken elsewhere. My work has appeared in Two Rivers Review and North Street. Thank you for your time.

Short, plain, and easy to answer. That is the whole job.

Getting simultaneous submissions wrong

Most magazines accept simultaneous submissions, and most ask you to say so. The word means exactly what it says: you are offering the same poems elsewhere at the same time, and you will tell the editors the moment that changes. If a magazine states that it does not accept them, respect that. Pick one or wait for the reading window to close.

Telling editors, and withdrawing cleanly

The moment a poem is accepted, withdraw it from every other magazine. Use the method each magazine asks for — reply to the confirmation email, use the withdrawal option in the submissions system, or send a brief note to the editor. Two lines is enough: the poem has found a home elsewhere, thank you, please withdraw the submission.

Check whether partial withdrawal is allowed. Many magazines are happy to keep considering the remaining poems; others prefer to close the whole submission. Their guidelines will say, and if they do not, ask. What editors genuinely mind is silence: a poem sitting in a reading pile months after it was published somewhere else. That is the one simultaneous submission mistake that follows a writer around.

Formatting that fights the reader

Manuscripts should be boring to look at. Use a readable twelve-point serif font, keep titles in a consistent style, put your name and email address in the document, and number the pages if the file runs to more than two. Follow the magazine's preference for one document or separate files, and give each file a name that means something.

Stanza breaks and indents are the usual casualties. Pasting into a web form or an email body can collapse white space, so send yourself a test copy first and check that the poem still looks like a poem on the other end. Avoid coloured text, decorative borders, images, tracked changes and fussy layouts. And if the guidelines ask for a .docx, a PDF will not make a better impression.

Submitting drafts, and never reading them aloud

A poem written last night can be a finished poem, but it is worth finding out before you send it. Read it aloud — slowly, and standing up if you can bear it. The ear catches what the eye forgives: the overstuffed line, the two lines that say the same thing, the final stanza that explains what the poem has just shown.

Watch for the usual soft endings. Poems that close by announcing their own significance; poems that begin with the weather or someone waking; poems so private that no reader can find a way in. Then give the draft to two or three readers, at least one of whom does not write poems, and ask a specific question rather than "is it good?" — where did you stop reading, and why? If a poem has been revised twenty times and gone flat, start it again from the strongest line.

Losing track, and chasing too soon

Keep a simple record of what you have sent: poem titles, magazine, date, and the response when it arrives. A spreadsheet or a notebook both work. You need it for three reasons — to know when you are free to

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