Ten Tips for Getting Published in CounterPunch/Poets’ Basement (or Anywhere Else)

Posted on November 26, 2009 by marcbeaudin

1.
Read the Submission Guidelines and actually follow them. Poetry editors don’t set up guidelines just for kicks: there are specific reasons for each guideline. We receive a lot of submissions and having them formatted a certain way or delivered a certain way means less time making sense of things and more time reading your work. There’s a lot of great poets out there all trying to get published. Why blow your chances of being considered one of them by failing to take some simple steps that are clearly laid out for you? The guidelines are there to help you: use them!

2.
Use standard formatting. Basically this means Times New Roman 12pt. Font (maybe you can get away with Arial or Courier, but why test me?). You can put the title in 14 pt. and/or bold if you like. Single space your poem with one blank space between stanzas. And for gods’ sake, don’t center it!

3.
Proofread, proofread, proofread. Have your friend proofread. Have your mom proofread. Have strangers on the bus proofread. Have your dog proofread! Typos tell an editor one thing (whether or not it’s justified): you don’t take your work very seriously. If you don’t, why should anyone else? A couple techniques that might help: Read your work backwards. This will help you actually see each word rather than seeing what you think is there. Put your poem in a ridiculously big font. Previously hidden typos will jump out at you. (Just be sure to restore it to 12pt. before you send it.)

4.
This goes back to #2, but

that you think looks “poetic.”

5.
This goes for using colors as well.

6.
Don’t tell me to Google you so I can be amazed with your online publishing credits. (Yes, someone did this.) I ask for a short bio. That’s where you can tell me your credentials. I don’t have time to Google you. I’d rather use my time to read your poem. Wouldn’t you?

7.
Read your poem out loud and have others read it to you. Listen to the music of it. Are there “off notes”? Does it flow when it should flow and jar when it should jar?

8.
Read poetry. Read contemporary poetry. Read the classics. Read past installments of Poets’ Basement. Read other journals. Find poets who are better than you and learn from them. Read my poetry (this won’t help you get published anywhere, but it will help me buy my next beer).

9.
Be specific. Your experience and insight is something that no other poet in the world can give me. Stanislavski wrote, “generality is the enemy of all art,” and he was right. The universal is found in the particular.

10.
Beware of adjectives. They are almost always large, unwieldy children.

Read Tips 11 – 20 Here.

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The Last Autumn

Posted on October 27, 2009 by marcbeaudin

Lying on the couch with a fever raging through me, I watch leaves dropping from the cottonwood outside my window. I have one hand on a speaker so I can feel this violin sonata of Mozart. Sometimes hearing just isn’t enough. In my fever, with the gently-refracted light through the streaked glass, I can’t be sure if it’s leaves or little birds that are falling; pine siskins perhaps, or mountain bluebirds.

Suddenly, it’s the last autumn. The final fall. All the birds fall silently from the trees like yellowed leaves. The bears prepare for a hibernation without end. The last of the green bleeds from the earth like the color from our faces when we hear the news. Our skin grows numb and we lose control of our hands. No amount of Mozart can save us now.

The grey of the sky is an iron door continually slamming shut. The mountainsides are crimson with dead trees: the warming brought the beetles and the pines can’t climb any higher to escape. I don’t remember voting for this. I don’t remember choosing profits for oil companies in favor of life. Wasn’t there a moment, some time in the recent past, that we could have said, “No”?

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Submit your Poetry to Poets’ Basement on CounterPunch

Posted on October 5, 2009 by marcbeaudin
CounterPunch is the internationally renowned political newsletter edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. Its weekly poetry installment, Poets’ Basement, has published work by Robert Creeley, Harold Pinter, Laurence Ferlinghetti, Patti Smith, and William Heyen, as well as many talented new and upcoming writers. We generally publish three poems per week: Fridays at CounterPunch.org.Editorial Statement:
For Poets’ Basement, we seek work from the leading edge of the poetic dialogue. Have something to say, and say it with precision, music and electricity. In the words of Miscellaneous Jones, “If you’re going to kill a tree just to write something on it, you’d better have something damn good to say.” … Show us creation, not imitation. Passion, not romance. Blood, not tears. Give us thorns without the crown. … Make us think. … Make us stop thinking. … Amaze us.

Submission Guidelines:
We are open to all genres and styles, although the painfully sentimental and dogmatically religious would have more luck elsewhere. Although CounterPunch is a political journal, poems for Poets’ Basement need not be restricted to political work. In fact, if your work is merely a political screed masquerading as a poem, it will almost surely be rejected. Simultaneous submissions and previously published work are accepted (provided that you retain the rights to any published pieces). Translations are accepted provided the original work is included along with documentation of granted reprint/translation rights. Works published on Poet’s Basement remain the property of the author. At this time, no monetary payment is possible.

To submit to Poets’ Basement, send an e-mail to CounterPunch’s poetry editor, Marc Beaudin at counterpunchpoetry@gmail.com with your name, the titles being submitted, and your website url or e-mail address (if you’d like this to appear with your work). Also indicate whether or not your poems have been previously published and where.  @font-face { font-family: “Times New Roman”; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } For translations, include poem in original language and documentation of granted reprint/translation rights.  Attach up to 5 poems and a short bio, written in 3rd person, as a single Word Document (.doc or .rtf attachments only; no .docx). Expect a response within one month (sometimes longer due to heavy submission periods).

Poems accepted for online publication will be considered for possible inclusion of an upcoming print anthology (details forthcoming).

Ten Tips for Getting Published
Ten More Tips

Posted in poetry, Writing | 3 Comments