Poetry Bulletin: April 2025

Good news and an invitation re: future care packages + upcoming deadlines

listening to moss / dreaming in green / imagining forms of care

Hi poets — Last week I shared the newest care package, a zine by

SG Huerta

. Today I’m sharing more about this part of the Poetry Bulletin, with a wish list for future posts. And good news: this is a paid opportunity that I can finally start offering to more folks!

The essentials . . . care packages at the Poetry Bulletin:

• bring together tangible ideas, practices, examples, or tools from fellow poets.

• are not philosophical essays or abstract-process-craft-think-pieces.

• share openly and refuse the gatekeeping of knowledge and resources in publishing. For example,

  Nancy Reddy
  and I shared actual query letters in the first care package, hopefully giving other poets an easier place to begin.

• resist professionalization, prestige, and the hierarchy of who gets considered an “expert” . . . homegrown knowledge, weird experiments, DIY approaches, publishing outside traditional paths, voices/practices/methods that don’t fit neatly inside institutions, and the like are especially welcomed/needed/loved here.

Care packages are also a way to pay poets for their labor . . . so that the care is mutual, reciprocal.

I didn’t want this to be a “small token of appreciation” kind of payment. I’d rather publish fewer of these and pay poets more. I also don’t have the time/energy/spoons to sift through hundreds of pitches and edit dozens of these in a year. I’ll need to strike a balance with this work, especially given the ebb and flow of paid subscriptions (which help make this possible).

So here’s where we’re at:

• I’m excited to share that the Poetry Bulletin is paying $150 to poets who create a care package. That’s for posts created by one writer.

• For collaborative care packages, where multiple poets contribute, the project can pay $50 to each poet.

Right now, we’re in a good spot to get two more care packages on the books for 2025. This is the start of a wish list:

• Care packages that play with forms . . . a zine? a video? audio? a comic? It doesn’t always have to be written content. It doesn’t have to feel like an essay. What form of sharing is most accessible for you? What form of sharing is best for the practice you’re covering? I can help with idea-shaping, so don’t be shy about trying something new.
  

• A care package on creating an audiobook for your poetry book. The real nuts and bolts on making your book more accessible in this format. Transparent details on how much it costs (with DIY options), how to make and release an audiobook, what labor and learning curve is involved, etc.
  

• A care package on archive-tending/death-and-transition-care for your body of work as a writer . . . I have tools and practices here, and this could potentially be a good collaborative care package.

Leave a comment to add to the wish list or share feedback. It would mean a lot if folks comment here instead of emailing me, so we can share the work of listening and dream in the open on this!

Share your interest in creating or contributing to a care package by emailing me. NO PR ROBOT PITCHES PLEASE and NO BOOK PROMOS—only human poets with beating hearts and a desire to make something thoughtful. (I’m not anti-PR. I just want to be clear that this is not that.)

Upcoming Deadlines for Poetry Manuscripts

Between now and the end of May, there are eight reading periods with presses that do not exclude poets based on their ability to pay. As in: they either charge no submission fee, or if they charge a fee, they offer fee waivers or support.¹

Last I checked, two of these have committed to PACBI: Game Over Books and Broken Sleep Books.

• TODAY! April 15 — Vanderbilt University Literary Prize — fee waivers available, capped at 25.

• April 30 — Green Bottle Press — no reading fee

• April 30 — Texas Review Press — no reading fee

• April 30 — Lamar University Press — no reading fee

• April 30 — Ghost Peach Prize in Poetry — fee waivers available

• April 30 — Word Works Hilary Tham Capital Collection (nominations only) — fee waivers available

• May 31 — Game Over Books — no reading fee, committed to PACBI (FYI: This is my publisher and I had a great experience releasing my debut with them.)

• May 31 — Broken Sleep Books — no reading fee, committed to PACBI

Why PACBI?

If you’re submitting and writing in solidarity with those facing genocide, PACBI is one clear way to find publishers who are in the work too. Publishers for Palestine and Writers Against the War on Gaza have lists of presses committed to PACBI. We know boycotting and protesting works—check out the recent example of the Giller Prize. Don’t be afraid to ask a potential publisher where they stand before you trust them with your work.

---

The bulletin is made by Emily Stoddard, and the big list of poetry publishers came together as she found a publisher (Game Over Books) for her poetry debut, Divination with a Human Heart Attached. If you have updates to a publisher’s listing or want to share a resource, leave a comment. Comments are preferred to email replies when possible, as they get the information out to everyone more freely and quickly.

1. Publisher eligibility for inclusion/waive-to-play: Starting in 2025, there’s no more free advertising in these posts for publishers excluding poets who can’t pay to play.

The bulletin reaches over 5,000 subscribers and consistently sends traffic to presses and submission opportunities. In the spirit of presses who say they depend on exclusionary submission practices to survive, it’s time to adjust the cost of admission to the Poetry Bulletin.

If a press wants to be read by this audience, they can offer zero-fee reading periods, fee waivers for poets who need them, early bird fee-free windows, or other creative options, as shared in this newsletter many times over the years.