Tuesday 30 May 2006

Please Read the Submission Guidelines

Bolts of Silk aims to showcase beautiful poetry with something to say. Submissions are welcome at any time. If you would like me to consider your work for publication, please send between three and six poems of up to 40 lines in length in the body of an email, with 'Bolts of Silk' in the Subject Line (this is important as it helps me to keep an eye on submissions!) to Juliet.M.WilsonATgmailDOTcom. Poems should not have been published in the past six months, unless on a personal blog or website. Please note that there may be problems publishing poems that are not simply formatted.

I can accept poems in English, Scots dialects, German, French, Italian or Spanish. I will also consider poems in other languages, especially Rumanian, Dutch or Scandinavian languages. Please however supply English translations! Poems in English will use American or UK (or other accepted variant) Spelling depending on the poets usage. Please proof read your poems before sending them, numerous errors in spelling and grammar reduce the quality of a poem in the eye of an editor and can lead to rejection.

Please include the address of your website or blog if you have one, so I can link to it! I will include your biographical details, where offered, in the comments section under poems. Please let me know your Twitter username if you have one so I can maximise publicity through Twitter!

As Crafty Green Poet I have a particular interest in poems about nature or environmental issues. However, I am keen for Bolts of Silk to cover a range of themes, so send me poetry on any subject, though please no obscenity or indecency. Poems with a seasonal reference are published in the season they refer to, in the hemisphere they were written in.

All contributors will have one weblink in the side panel as well as in the post that contains their poem. Due to the large number of contributers, I can now only offer one sidebar link per poet. This will be to the poet's blog and only if the poet doesn't have an up-to-date blog will it be to a website. I can link to Facebook fan pages but not to Facebook personal profiles.

I will reply as soon as possible to all submissions, this will usually be within a month. If I haven't got back to you within six weeks, please feel free to remind me of your submission. I will publish as and when, depending on how many appropriate submissions I get at any one time, usually two or three poems a week.

Please wait at least two months before sending another submission after publication or rejection.

Rejection is a necessary part of poetry journals. I may not like your poem, but equally I may just feel it won't fit in well with other current poems lined up for publication. Please don't be too disheartened if I do reject your work, but note I can't enter into correspondence about why I've rejected your work.

Although not an essential criterion for publication, I'd like to encourage contributors to link to Bolts of Silk from their website or blog and/or to follow the blog through Networked Blogs or Google Friends.

Copyright for all poems remains with the author.