Poetry isn’t about publishing. It’s about our bleeding and beating hearts. Right..right!??? Well, that’s true. We’re not cynical over here at ONLY POEMS. But also, many poets do want to see their poems in print or published online (or both!) accessible and available to the whole wide world (such a big world). And those poets might find it hard, sometimes, to fully find the resources they need to know what kind of poems actually get published and how they can fine-tune their own submissions to maximize their chances of acceptance at whatever literary magazines they are targeting.

Let’s face it, usually editors don’t have the best track record of giving you any kind of a solid idea about this. They’ll say things like, “we invite poets to lay before us a small galaxy”. Like, excuse me — grade-school science project much? That’s why, in this workshop, Shannan and Karan will demystify the process of writing poems specifically with an eye towards publication today.

Between the two of us, we have published in over 60 literary magazines ranging from the bigwigs liks AGNI, Rattle, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Cincinnati Review, a whole lot of other reviews, all the way to small-and-might mags.

We’ll read and discuss contemporary poetry, recent contest winners, read from some prominent lit mags as well as up and coming ones. Furthermore, we’ll discuss current challenges in placing poetry in the contemporary lit mag environment.

Please bring along recent submissions you’ve made to mags or new poems you’ve written. Also, have a list of dream mags you’d like to publish in someday (soon!).

Let’s buckle in poets. We’re taking off to Submit-ville.

Shannan Mann is the Founding Editor of ONLY POEMS. Her recent work appears in Best New Poets (2024). She has been awarded or placed for the Palette Love & Eros Prize, Rattle Poetry Prize, Auburn Witness Prize, Foster Poetry Prize, among others. Her poems appear in Poetry Daily, Black Warrior Review, Missouri Review, Poet Lore, Gulf Coast, The Literary Review of Canada, EPOCH, december, & elsewhere. She is the Poet Laureate’s pick for Exile. Her essays appear in Tolka Journal and Going Down Swinging; they have been awarded the Alta Lind Cook Prize and the Irene Adler Essay Prize. She also translates Sanskrit poetry.

Karan Kapoor is the Editor-in-Chief of ONLY POEMS. Their recent work appears in Best New Poets (2024). A finalist for the Felix Pollak Prize & Charles B. Wheeler Prize book prizes and Diode, Tusculum Review, and Iron Horse Literary Review chapbook prizes, their poems have appeared in Best New Poets, AGNI, Shenandoah, Colorado Review, Cincinnati Review, North American Review, and elsewhere, fiction in JOYLAND and the other side of hope, and translations in The Offing and The Los Angeles Review. They’re currently on the editorial board of Alice James Books.