Got poems? Submit!

Literary Mama's Poetry department is once again accepting submissions!

After a February in which we caught up, we are now ready to read poems from March 1 to June 1. Our submission guidelines give an idea of what we're looking for. In a nutshell:

We publish poetry that has some element of the unexpected–whether it’s the language, the imagery, or the emotion—yet feels honest. Do you have a poem that acknowledges the intensity of motherhood?

A few years ago, our former poetry editor, Sharon Kraus, and I posted some information about our process, which has changed a bit. We no longer put together theme-based issues (other than Mother's Day, Father's Day, and Desiring Motherhood in October). Now, both Erin (our editorial assistant) and I read every poem, striving to respond to poets within three months. But in terms of what we look for, and how we publish, the basics are the same.

In the second part of the interview with Sharon and me, we discussed writing and revising tips. Here are a few of my favorite suggestions for revitalizing a poem that seems stuck:

A few revision tricks for poems:

• Break it into couplets, triplets, quatrains
• Rearrange stanzas randomly
• Turn it upside-down: rewrite the poem with the last line first, first line last
• Remove all adjectives and adverbs
• Add back the adjectives and adverbs, but describing different words
• Replace all -ing words and all forms of "to be" (is, are, am, being, be)
• Examine your adjectives. If you’re using “tiny” to describe an infant, your unconscious is doing you a favor: look harder, look more closely. Underneath that word is the thing you really mean to name.
• Free associate around the parts you do like and go back to the drawing board

Can't wait to see what you come up with! And remember, if you get a rejection, revise and resubmit!

February: Poems to love

This February's poetry on Literary Mama seeks the sublime in the everyday.

In "A Good Day," Heather Taylor Johnson asks, "Are you aware outside the sun yawns?"

Ashleigh Brown explains in "Cold Coffee" that "A woman drinks cold coffee because / the daily prayers of tangled laundry and crumpled homework are / sacred."

"Woman's Work" for Danelle Lejeune entails "swinging / the scythe back and forth through air / and tall grass."

And even the playground can inspire, as Heather Angier demonstrates in "Yard Duty":

                each
sweat-glittered body
     sparking
              laughter
under a punishing sun—

I'm particularly proud of this issue, as it is the first one I curated on my own. From theme to selecting individual poems, this represents a labor of love. Let these four poets offer a way of looking at the places we visit daily as miraculous in their own ways.

Please enjoy, and let the poets know how their poems affected the way you view your day.

January issue of Literary Mama live!

Attention parents of boys: January's poems, published in Literary Mama today, feature stages of raising sons, from Julie Stotz-Ghosh showing her infant his First Snow to Rebecca Lanning speaking To My Son on the Morning of his Scholastic Aptitude Test.

From toy trains to Bottlecaps, the relationship mothers share with sons as they grow into men is a challenge and a joy.

And if you have daughters, please enjoy these poems as well as last month's poems focusing on raising strong girls!

From Rebekah Denison Hewitt's "Pantoum of Divided Attention":

To understand what a door is,
to understand that something opens,
to see the line of light behind it,
pull and go through.

Enjoy!