Call for Submissions Jan. 21st - Feb. 11th: Kenzie Allen's Guest Edited Folio

For our Winter/Spring 2025 issue, Guest Editor Kenzie Allen will curate a folio centered on “The More-Than-Human World.”
 

From Kenzie Allen: I’ve been thinking about “the more-than-human world”** —so, our nonhuman animal and plant and even mineral cousins—all those and all that with which we share this earth. And all the ways we intersect with and impact them, and vice versa. Our responsibilities to each other. Our dreams of each other. Our love songs. Our missteps and misrepresentations and pressures toward extinction and ruin, and also the ways we can learn from and protect and honor the world around us. Their languages. Their constellations and ancestors. The songs they sing.

Lately, I’ve been writing love songs to skunks and alpacas and to the land itself. I’m in the mood to read animal poems, and rock poems, and water poems, and cloud poems (and did I mention animal poems?), geographic poems, ecology poems, volcanic poems, star poems, poems that simmer and shine and soar, poems of longing and celebration, of connection and interconnection. I want us to get outside ourselves, even as we might locate ourselves within that array.

 **The "more-than-human world" as a term comes from David Abram, who writes: 

"The phrase was intended, first and foremost, to indicate that the realm of humankind (with our culture and technology) is a subset within a larger set—that the human world is necessarily embedded within, permeated by, and indeed dependent upon the more-than-human world that exceeds it. Yet by this new phrase I also meant to encourage a new humility on the part of humankind, since the ‘more' could be taken not just in a quantitative but also in a qualitative sense."

He goes on to say, "of course, the recognition of our human embedment within a more-than-human biosphere brimming with its own intelligence is hardly a new insight. On the contrary, this understanding has been common to Indigenous or First Nations peoples on every inhabited continent and archipelago for numberless generations." (Abram, "On the Origin of the Phrase, 'more-than-human'")

Poet Lore pays contributors $50 per published poem. Contributors also receive one copy of their issue, plus a copy of the following printed issue of Poet Lore.

You may submit up to 3 poems (maximum of 8 pages). If you currently have an open submission in our general submission queue, you are welcome to submit a separate submission to this themed call.

Submissions should be typed in Times New Roman, 12pt font, double-spaced, and include a cover page with the poet’s name, contact information, and title of the poem.

• Include all poems in 1 single document and please only submit once.
• Include the titles of all poems in your cover letter (bullet points or numbers are easiest).
• If a poem is more than one page, please indicate if the second page begins with a new stanza.
• We accept simultaneous submissions, however, let us know in your cover letter if poems are simultaneously submitted, and please inform us immediately if a poem is accepted elsewhere.
• We do not accept work that has been previously published. This includes on personal blogs and social media.
• Upon acceptance, we ask for first serial rights, with rights reverting back to the author upon publication.

We are committed to diversity and inclusivity and highly encourage submissions from marginalized voices. We do not tolerate racism, bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, ableism, or any work that promotes harmful stereotypes and viewpoints. 

We have a mission of discovery at Poet Lore. Therefore, every submission is read without regard to reputation by our team of readers and editors.
 

We are open to translation submissions from January 1 - June 30 and from August 1 - November 30.
 

Poet Lore publishes a range of established and award winning poets such as Erika Meitner, Jose Hernandez Diaz, Sharon Olds, Kim Addonizio, Terrance Hayes, Linda Pastan, Mary Oliver & Carl Philips, who share the space with emerging poets. Someone's first published poem may stand alongside another author's 100th. We nominate select published poems for both the Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets.

We are committed to diversity and inclusivity and highly encourage submissions from marginalized voices. We do not tolerate racism, bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, ableism, or any work that promotes harmful stereotypes and viewpoints.

Before submitting translations of works that are not in the public domain, please identify the rights holder and obtain a statement that the rights to publish an English translation are available. Include the original text if possible, as well as a short biography of the writer and the translator, and a short introduction of the work. If there are extenuating circumstances that prevent you from including a copy of the original text at the time of your submission, please note that in the cover letter.  

Poet Lore pays contributors $50 per published poem.

We accept translations on a rolling basis, but hope to return responses within 6-8 months of submission.

You may submit up to 5 English translations of poems. This category is for translation submissions ONLY. Submissions that are original poems and not translations will not be evaluated. Please note that we do not accept self-translations.
 

• Include all poems in 1 single document and please only submit once per submission period.
• Include the titles of all poems in your cover letter (bullet points or numbers are easiest).
• If a poem is more than one page, please indicate if the second page begins with a new stanza.
• We accept simultaneous submissions, however, let us know in your cover letter if poems are simultaneously submitted, and please inform us immediately if a poem is accepted elsewhere.
• We do not accept work that has been previously published. This includes on personal blogs and social media.
• Upon acceptance, we ask for first serial rights, with rights reverting back to the author upon publication.