by Mary Walsh

My last feature gave you the story of me trying to organise my work. Have you done yours yet? Are there still nooks and crannies filled with odd bits of writing? Have you retrieved all this precious treasure and bullied it into some sort of order? I hope so.

After many years of secret writing, I bit the bullet and organised my work. Collating my seven-hundred-plus poems and pieces of prose into one Word doc with items listed in alphabetical order.

This was a mammoth task; one that was well worth spending a couple of days on, because it has enabled me to submit poems to competitions and also to put together an 85-poem collection and a children’s poetry collection.

My next task was to re-read and edit the poems I’d selected. There are programmes on your computer that help you to edit spelling and grammar. Microsoft Word Editor is a great tool, because it allows you to see a score for the item you are editing. Your aim is to score 100%.

To achieve this, the MS Word Editor checked my spelling and grammar, checked for clarity, conciseness, formality, inclusiveness and punctuation conventions, while giving me tips on vocabulary. A spell check will only highlight words that were spelled wrongly, but if I had transposed letters as in form and from it wasn’t picked up, so watch out for that.

This tool is great for checking the technical content of your work but doesn’t look at the poetic nature of the piece. For this, you really need an experienced editor. This can be a friendly English teacher if you have one in the cupboard, or a poetry tutor. You may have to pay for a professional edit if you want to submit to a publisher and this can be costly but worth it if you want to be a career poet/writer.

I used Constellations Literary Consultancy run by Claire Steel and Jill Glen. The fees were reasonable and the feedback invaluable. I looked at it as an investment in my writing journey.

Listen to your editor and take their feedback as a gift.

This process resulted in a five-part poetry collection which I collated under the titles of Nature, Memoir, The World Around Me, Love and Haiku & Strict Forms.

So now what? Yes, it’s time to submit, find a publisher, get famous, buy a Mercedes and a big house in the country… No! that’s just me daydreaming again, something I always got told off for at school! So where was I? Oh yes…

Submitting your work. Finding a publisher. There are many different routes you can follow into print. Whichever you choose, make sure you have a cover letter with a short biography you can attach if required.

The first rule is FOLLOW THE SUBMISSION RULES. Publishers have a small submission window and submitting outside these times will mean your work will be rejected without anyone having looked at it. Read the rules at least twice. This was useful, as I thought my work was ready to submit and then found that my bio needed to be in the third person!

For example: Mary is a good poet and has written poetry for many years but sometimes is forgetful! Again, your third person bio should be much more serious and include the kinds of things you have written, including any publishing successes and anything else you think is interesting. Here’s an example about the poet Hannah Lowe:

Hannah Lowe FRSL (born 1976) is a British writer, known for her collection of poetry Chick, her family memoir Long Time, No See (2015) and her research into the historicising of the HMT Empire Windrush and postwar Caribbean migration to Britain. Her 2021 book The Kids won the Costa Book Of The Year award.

Try and find a publisher who is a good fit for your work. Then submit when you’re ready. I submitted my collection to Bad Betty Press and received a rather nice rejection letter from them a few weeks later. Don’t be put off by this; rejection letters are part of your journey as a writer. Even the best writers have had their work rejected before they became famous. JK Rowling is one I could mention. Be like Robert the Bruce and: “Try. Try again.”

Because my collection was in five parts I was able to split it easily and enter some chapbook competitions. A chapbook is a booklet of 20 to 30 poems. I entered the Rattle Chapbook Prize and the Cerabus chapbook competition. Some have fees and some do not. Fees can range from £5.00 for one poem up to £25.00. The Cerabus chapbook competition is free.

I have also submitted individual poems to Crannog Magazine, A New Ulster Magazine, The Wivenhoe Poets Group and, of course, to Pen to Print. All of this was made easier by being able to find a piece of work that fits with the competition theme.

So once your work is organised it’s a lot easier to find pieces to file together and send them off for publishing. DO NOT BE AFRAID.

Most recently I submitted three poems to the histories map as part of Lancaster’s Litfest: 128 poems were placed on the map and 12 were selected for inclusion, including my poem An Irish Childhood In Dagenham to be read on the night for use in Lancaster Litfest Histories Gala and introduced by Hannah Lowe. This was nerve-wracking, as I had to submit a video for them to use. I hate being on camera but if I want my work heard then I need to get over it and just do it!

I also submitted three poems  to the Sean Dunne Poetry Contest this year. It’s based in Ireland and I was delighted to be selected on both the long and the short lists with my poem Mackerel Fishing In The Gaeltacht. The short list was 35 poets out of an original 1100 entries. Even though I didn’t win, I took it as a massive achievement and, of course, told everyone.

So if you persevere, pushing yourself past the rejection letters or emails, each time you do, you learn how to improve your work and even be a winner next time. One of our team, Lucy Kaufman, wrote a poem made up of her rejection letters!

In conclusion, the main point is to organise your work so it can be found easily, send your work off for competitions, chapbooks and mainstream publishing and, of course, you can always submit to us at Write On! via PentoPrint.org.

DON’T GIVE UP. YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE.

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Here are some of the competitions/submission opportunities I mentioned:

Rattle Chapbook Prize | Rattle: Poetry

Cerasus Poetry Chapbook Prize 

The Sean Dunne Poetry Contest

 

And you might like to read my original feature, where I shared how I got organised: https://pentoprint.org/write-on-features-keep-track-poetry-other-writing/ 

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You can hear great new ideas, creative work and writing tips on Write On! Audio. Find us on all major podcast platforms, including Apple and Google Podcasts and Spotify. Type Pen to Print into your browser and look for our logo, or find us on Podcasters.Spotify.com.

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