Preparing a Submission
In brief: A strong poem can be rejected for a weak submission. Learn the quiet craft of sending work out properly, so your poems arrive looking like they belong.
Every editor and contest judge reads hundreds of submissions. Before they reach your first line, they see your formatting, your file name, your cover note. None of these things can make a mediocre poem win, but any of them can make a good poem easy to dismiss. Preparing a submission well is not about tricks. It is about removing every small obstacle between your poem and a fair reading.
This lesson walks through the practical steps: choosing which poems to send, formatting them cleanly, reading the guidelines like a contract, and writing a cover note that helps rather than hurts. These habits take an evening to learn and they serve you for the rest of your writing life.
Choose the Right Poems, Not Just Your Favourites
The poem you love most is not always the poem a particular venue needs. Read a few past winners or published pieces from the journal or contest you are targeting. Notice length, tone and subject. If the venue publishes tight, imagistic free verse and you send a four-page rhyming narrative, you are not wrong, you are simply mismatched, and mismatches read like rejections waiting to happen.
When a contest publishes its judging criteria, use them as a checklist. Writory, for example, scores every poem on creativity, emotion, structure, language and theme, and every entrant sees their score afterward. Knowing that, you would pick the poem that is strong across all five areas rather than the one with a single dazzling line and a saggy middle.
Send your most finished work, not your most recent. A poem usually needs to rest for a few weeks after drafting before you can judge it honestly. If you finished it last night, it is probably not ready to represent you.
Read the Guidelines Twice, Then Follow Them Exactly
Guidelines exist because venues receive thousands of files and need them to be comparable. Line limits, file formats, anonymity rules, one poem per entry or three: every rule you break gives a tired reader a reason to stop. Some contests disqualify silently. You will never know your poem was set aside because your name appeared on a page that was supposed to be anonymous.
Make a habit of reading guidelines twice: once before you choose your poems, and once immediately before you hit send. Check the small things people miss: whether previously published work is allowed, whether simultaneous submissions are accepted, what counts as a line for the line limit, and whether the deadline is midnight in your time zone or theirs.
Simultaneous submissions deserve special care. Most journals allow you to send the same poem to several venues at once, but the etiquette is strict: the moment one venue accepts it, you withdraw it everywhere else, that same day, with a two-line note such as “I am writing to withdraw my poem ‘Kitchen in Winter’ from consideration, as it has been accepted elsewhere. Thank you for reading it.” Editors remember writers who let an accepted poem ride. Contests are usually stricter, and many do not allow simultaneous entries at all, so check before you double up.
Format Your Manuscript So It Disappears
Good formatting is invisible. Use a plain, readable font such as Times New Roman or Garamond at 11 or 12 point. Single space within stanzas, leave a blank line between them, and start each poem on a new page if you are sending several. Left-align unless the poem's shape demands otherwise. Do not decorate: no borders, no images, no coloured text.
Name your file sensibly. Something like Lastname_PoemTitle.pdf tells an editor everything, while final_FINAL_v3.docx tells them something else. If the venue asks for anonymity, strip your name from the file name, the header and the document metadata. Word processors store author names in file properties, and careful contests do check.
Send the format requested and nothing fancier. If they ask for a PDF, send a PDF. If they ask for text pasted into a form, paste it and then preview it, because forms often eat indentation and you may need to adjust.
Write a Cover Note That Stays Out of the Way
A cover note should be short, polite and factual: what you are sending, a two-line bio if requested, and thanks. Do not summarise the poem, explain what it means, or tell the editor how much the piece matters to you. The poem must do that work alone, and a note that argues for the poem suggests the poem cannot argue for itself.
Keep records of what you send where. A simple spreadsheet with the venue, poem titles, date sent and result prevents the embarrassment of submitting the same poem to the same place twice, and it shows you patterns over time: which poems get close, which never do, and where your work seems to land best.
Know the rhythms so silence does not rattle you. Journals commonly take one to six months to respond, and some respected ones take longer; contests usually announce on a published schedule, often four to eight weeks after the deadline. Do not query before the venue's stated window has passed, and when you do, keep it to one polite line asking whether the piece is still under consideration. A poem that has been out for four months is not a poem in trouble. It is a poem in a queue, and queues are where publication happens.
Do This Before You Submit Anywhere
Here is one evening of preparation that will put you ahead of most of the pile. First, choose a venue you would be proud to appear in and read its most recent issue, or its last set of winners, from start to finish without skimming. Pick the three poems you liked most and write one sentence each about why they belong there. You have just built a picture of the venue's taste that no guidelines page can give you.
Second, make your tracker before you need it: columns for venue, poem titles, date sent, guidelines link, response window and result. Add the venue you just studied as row one, with a real deadline. An empty tracker is a plan; a tracker with one dated row is a commitment.
Third, run a dress rehearsal. Format one finished poem to the venue's exact specifications, write the cover note, name the file properly and save everything in a folder named for the venue. Then close the laptop and send it tomorrow, after one final read of the guidelines with fresh eyes. You will repeat this routine for years, and doing it slowly once teaches your hands the whole of it.
A submission checklist you can reuse
Before sending, I confirm:
1. I read the guidelines today, not last month.
2. The poem fits the line limit and theme.
3. My name is removed if the reading is anonymous.
4. The file is named cleanly and saved in the requested format.
5. The cover note is under 100 words.
6. I logged the submission in my tracker.
A physical checklist catches the errors that nerves cause. Most disqualifications come from steps 1 and 3.
Cover note, weak vs strong
Weak: “Dear Editor, this poem is about my grandmother's death and it is the most honest thing I have ever written. I really hope you love it as much as I do.”
Strong: “Dear Editors, please find attached my poem ‘Kitchen in Winter’ for your March issue. My work has appeared in two regional anthologies. Thank you for reading.”
The weak note pleads and explains. The strong note gives facts and gets out of the way, which is what busy readers appreciate.
Exercises
- Pick one poem you consider finished and format it to a standard manuscript style: readable font, clean spacing, sensible file name. Save it as a PDF.
- Find the guidelines for any contest or journal and rewrite them in your own words as a five-point checklist. Notice which rules you would have missed.
- Write a cover note of under 80 words for a real submission. Cut every sentence that explains or praises the poem.
- Set up a submission tracker with columns for venue, poems, date sent, deadline and result. Add at least one planned submission with a date.
Key takeaways
- Editors see your formatting and file name before your first line, so make both invisible and clean.
- Read guidelines twice: before choosing poems and right before sending.
- Match the poem to the venue by studying what it has published or awarded before.
- Keep cover notes short and factual, and never explain the poem.
- Track every submission in a simple log so you learn from patterns over time.
Related lessons
Part of Publishing & Contests in the free Writory Academy: about 9 minutes, Intermediate level, with a quiz that counts toward a signed certificate on the Certificate Track. By the Writory editorial team. Updated July 2026.