Sho Poetry Journal

How to submit

• Processs

  Submittable

• Cover letter

  Your cover letter should include the titles you are submitting and a third-person bio (60 words or less). If your poem is ‘after’ another poet, please name the poem it’s after, or provide any relevant details in your cover letter. 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.

• Eligibility

  No specific eligibility requirements

• Formatting

  • Poems should be single-spaced and formatted in a standard 12-point font. Begin each poem on a new page. • Please include page numbers and your name on every page. • If a poem is longer than one page, please indicate if the second or successive page begins with a new stanza. Name your file as follows: FirstName_LastName

• Author's rights

  Shō Poetry Journal requests first serial rights, as well as the right to republish accepted works on our website and/or to use excerpts in our social media feeds. Work may be submitted to venues such as Verse Daily following publication. Rights revert to the author upon publication; however, please credit Shō Poetry Journal with first publication if the work is republished elsewhere. Shō Poetry Journal honors the request of authors who ask that their work not appear online.

• Additional info

  Payment is one contributor’s copy. Authors also receive a discount on the purchase of extra copies. All work accepted for publication will be considered for the Shō Poetry Prize (best poem in issue) and the Sita Martin Prize (best poem by an emerging poet). Each winner receives $250 and a one-year subscription to Shō. We especially encourage submissions from historically underrepresented poets. We nominate select works for The Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, and Best Spiritual Literature. We mail a copy of each issue to outlets such as Verse Daily. You are welcome to submit work more than once in a given reading period, but please do not submit additional work until you’ve heard back from us regarding a previous submission. We recommend submitting a minimum of three poems (max five) — you never know what will land with us, and we often publish multiple poems by a single poet.