ALL TIMES QUOTED FOR OPENING AND CLOSING SUBMISSIONS ARE ISRAELI TIME, please note the time difference from where you live. E.g. we are 7 hours ahead of US east coast time. Better still -- don't leave it to the last hour to submit!
You may submit a maximum of three poems, each via a separate form. If more than three poems are submitted, only the first three will be reviewed.
We do not accept uploaded files: each poem must be typed or copied (pasted) into the "Text of Poem" area of the submission form. Each poem must be submitted in a separate form.
Poems may be up to 60 lines long, including stanza breaks but not including title. Lines longer than 68 characters, including punctuation marks and spaces between words, will be counted as two lines since they will require an overflow line in the printed anthology.
The name of the poet is registered as that of the owner of the account you submit from. Therefore you MUST submit your poems from a Submittable account in your own name (not, for instance, from an account in the name of a relative or friend). Putting your own name into your bio will not change this. Putting your own name anywhere else in the submission form will cause your entry to be discarded (see below). If you submit from someone else's account, your poem, if accepted, will appear in the Anthology under their name not yours. This has happened in the past and the poet did not catch the mistake when checking the proofs -- you have been warned!
Translations of living poets' poems are acceptable as long as the translations have not been previously published. A submitted translation, like a submitted poem, must have been authored by the submitter. You cannot enter a poem or translation by somebody else. If you submit a translation and did not author the original poem, you must have the poet's permission to submit your translation. In that case your bio should make it clear that you are the translator and who the poet is. The bio should be mainly about you since you are the author of the translation that you are submitting for consideration.
Translations of poems by poets no longer alive are accepted only if the poem is in the public domain, i.e. it is no longer in copyright in the countries where it was copyrighted. If the poem is still under copyright, the manager or trustee of the poet's estate must give permission, and finding out who this is, and obtaining permission from them, is so complicated and time-consuming, that nobody actually did it. Therefore we have decided to simply remove the option of including translations of such poems.
Judging is 'blind' so the poem title and text must be entered in separate fields WITHOUT the poet's name or contact information. Submission forms that include your name or contact information anywhere except in the bio will not be considered for the anthology.
No changes and no "later versions" of poems will be accepted after submission. Therefore please check the text of each poem carefully and ensure that this is your final version and that it is typed and punctuated the way you want it. After acceptance for publication, at the proof-reading stage, the only changes that will be made to poems will be simple typos, and mistakes by the anthology producers (not word changes or mistakes you submitted without noticing them). This is because it has proven just too costly, in time, effort, and yes expense, to accommodate the changes poets have been requesting due to last-minute changes of mind.
Changes to bios will be accepted at the proof-reading stage provided they are no longer than the original. By that state, the page divisions have been finalized, therefore changes that cause a page overflow will not be accepted.
Tips for correct formatting:
- Check, before copying from Word, that lines end with <Enter> (not a Word command such as a line-break <shift-enter>, which Submittable does not understand) and that stanza breaks are an additional <Enter> (not a definition in Word of extra space above or below the paragraph, which again Submittable does not understand).
- Submittable does not have a "center" command but you can position lines the way you want by adding spaces at the beginning of each line.
If you have formatted as above and still have a problem, we'll be happy to help - please email us.
Every submission form must include a bio. The judges cannot see the bio -- it is used only for compiling the printed Anthology after completion of the judging process. You can, if you wish, therefore include in the bio your name or other identifying details. As already said, you must not include your name or contact information in any other part of the form.
Please paste your bio into the Bio text area for EVERY poem you submit. In theory of course they should all be the same, but if they're not, the bio used in the Anthology will be the one in the submission form of the first of your poems printed in the Anthology.
When you have filled in the form, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the Submit button. Then if you are submitting another poem, please do so using another form.
Again, if you really have difficulty filling in this form, you can email us. Thank you! We look forward to reading your poems.