Now accepting submissions for cover art (Shō No. 4)
Poetry submissions for Shō No. 4 will reopen on April 1, 2023
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Shō Poetry Journal has published poets such as William Packard, Amy Uyematsu, Jim Simmerman, Virgil Suárez, Todd Moore, Gerald Locklin, Joan Jobe Smith, Fred Voss, A.D. Winans, Lyn Lifshin, and Robert L. Penick.
We welcome submissions of previously unpublished poetry from all poets and especially encourage submissions from historically underrepresented voices. Our current response time for submissions made via Submittable is 2 days – 4 weeks. We attempt to respond to all submissions within one month or less. Please review our guidelines below before submitting.
Please do not send work that has previously appeared in a print journal, online journal, or on social media or a personal website.
We nominate select works for The Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and Best American Poetry.
Guidelines
• Submit up to five poems at a time. Please do not submit additional work until you’ve heard back from us regarding a previous submission.
• While we consider prose poems and poems with longer line lengths, our current print journal size dictates our preference for poems with a maximum line length of approximately 60 characters (including spaces).
• Your cover letter should provide your contact information (including an email address), the titles you are submitting, and a short bio (written in third person), for our contributors’ notes. No cutesy bios, please.
• Simultaneous submissions are fine as long as you specify this in your cover letter and send us a message through Submittable if your work is accepted elsewhere.
Formatting
• Poems should be single-spaced and formatted in a standard 12-point font. Begin each poem on a new page. If you are submitting your submission by mail, print on one side of the page only.
• List your name and address on the first page of your manuscript. Include your name on each page of multiple-page poems.
• If a poem is longer than one page, please indicate if the second or successive page begins with a new stanza.
Payment
Shō is a print journal. Payment is one contributor’s copy. Authors also receive a discount on the purchase of extra copies.
Copyright
Shō Poetry Journal requests first serial rights, except for work that has been previously published, as well as the right to republish accepted works on our website and/or to use excerpts in our social media feeds. Rights revert to the author upon publication; however, please credit Shō Poetry Journal with first publication if the work is republished elsewhere.
Submit by mail
We accept paper submissions from incarcerated writers during our regular reading periods. Please do not submit by mail if you are not an incarcerated writer.
Follow the guidelines outlined above. If your work is accepted elsewhere, please inform us through our contact form.
Shō Poetry Journal
P.O. Box 4410
Chino Valley, AZ 86323
Note: You must enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE) for a reply. Manuscripts will be returned only if specified and if sufficient postage is included. Submissions that do not contain an SASE will not be considered.