The Poetry Submission Cover Letter
Quick answer: A poetry submission cover letter is four short paragraphs: who you are addressing, what you are sending, two or three lines of biography, and a thank you. It is not a pitch, it does not explain the poems, and nobody has ever been accepted because of one. Its job is to be brief, correctly addressed, and out of the way.
Most advice about cover letters is written by people who want you to believe they matter more than they do. Editors read the poems first. A great letter attached to a weak poem changes nothing, and a plain letter attached to a strong poem costs you nothing. What a bad letter can do is irritate somebody before they reach the work, and that is the only real risk you are managing here.
So the aim is not to be memorable. The aim is to be correct and short, and then get out of the way.
1. Address a person if the masthead gives you one
Open the magazine's masthead or submissions page and look for the poetry editor by name. Use it. Dear Ms Okonkwo beats Dear Editor, and Dear Editor beats To Whom It May Concern by a wide margin.
If there is no name, or the journal rotates readers, Dear Editors is correct and nobody minds. What does get noticed is the wrong name, which usually means a letter copied from a previous submission and not updated.
2. Say what you are sending, by title
One sentence. Name the poems and the count, because the editor needs to check that what arrived matches what you say you sent.
- Do: I am submitting three poems for your consideration: Winter Kitchen, The Long Field, and What the River Kept.
- Do not: Explain what the poems are about, what inspired them, or what they mean. If the poem needs the letter to be understood, the poem is not finished.
3. Two or three lines of biography, in the third person
Where you have been published, any award, and where you live or what you do. Third person, because most journals will reuse it as your contributor note if they take the poem, and rewriting it is one more job for somebody who has a lot of them.
If you have never been published, say so plainly and move on. This is the paragraph most new poets dread and it is the least important one on the page. Editors read for poems, not for CVs, and a first acceptance has to come from somebody who had none.
- Published: Amara Singh's poems have appeared in The Rialto and Rattle. She lives in Leeds and works as a midwife.
- Unpublished: This is Daniel Okafor's first submission. He writes in Lagos, mostly at night.
4. Thank them, and stop
Thank you for your time and for reading. Then your name, and the contact details the guidelines ask for. No sign-off longer than the bio, no promise to follow up, no mention of how much you admire the journal unless you can name an actual poem it published and why it stayed with you.
The template
Dear [Editor's name],
I am submitting [number] poems for your consideration: [Title], [Title] and [Title].
[Your name]'s poems have appeared in [journal] and [journal]. [He/She/They] live[s] in [place] and [one true detail].
Thank you for your time and for reading.
[Your name]
[email] ยท [phone, only if the guidelines ask]
Five mistakes editors notice
- Explaining the poems. The commonest fault and the most damaging. A paragraph telling the editor what to notice tells them you do not trust the poem to do it, and they will read it looking for the weakness you just confessed to.
- Apologising. Sorry to bother you, I know you are busy, I am probably not good enough. This is read as what it is, and it puts the editor in the position of reassuring a stranger before they have read a line.
- Padding the bio. Workshops attended, degrees in other subjects, how long you have been writing. If it would not appear in a contributor note, leave it out.
- Ignoring the guidelines. Six poems where the limit is four, a .docx where they asked for .pdf, no cover letter where one is required. This is the only part of a submission that gets rejected before the poems are read at all.
- Attaching the wrong journal's name. The cost of reusing last week's letter. Read it once before sending, out loud if you can, which catches it every time.
What Writory asks for
Writory does not ask for one. The entry form takes your poem, your name and your contact details, and that is the whole submission. There is no cover letter field because the judging is blind: the people scoring your poem do not see who wrote it, where you were published, or what you said about yourself.
That is worth knowing while you are writing letters for elsewhere. A cover letter cannot help you in a blind contest, and in an open submission it can only lose you ground. Either way, the poem is the thing being read.
Frequently asked questions
What should a poetry submission cover letter say?
Four things and nothing else: who you are addressing, the titles of the poems you are sending, two or three lines of biography in the third person, and a thank you. Keep the whole letter under about 150 words. Do not explain the poems, do not apologise, and do not describe your writing process.
How long should a poetry cover letter be?
Shorter than you think. Around 100 to 150 words, which is four short paragraphs. Editors read hundreds of these; a letter that takes longer to read than one of the poems works against you.
What if I have never been published before?
Say so in one line and move on. This is Daniel Okafor's first submission is a complete and perfectly respectable bio. Every published poet had a first submission with nothing to list, and editors read for the poem rather than the credits.
Should I explain what my poem is about?
No. This is the commonest mistake. If the poem needs an explanation to work, the explanation belongs in the poem or the poem is not finished. An editor who is told what to notice will read looking for the weakness you have just pointed at.
Do poetry contests need a cover letter?
Usually not, and in a blind contest a cover letter cannot be read even if you send one. Writory judges blind: the entry form takes the poem and your contact details, and the people scoring it never see your name. Check each contest's guidelines, because a few still ask for one.
Should I mention that this is a simultaneous submission?
Yes, if the journal allows them, in one short line: These poems are simultaneous submissions and I will withdraw them immediately if they are taken elsewhere. Then actually do it. Failing to withdraw is the one administrative sin editors remember.
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