There is a large poetry market for individual poems and whole manuscripts.

Literary journals publish many poems and some publishers publish poetry books. Poetry remains a niche market for bookstores.  A good bookstore carries poetry books (and you should buy some.)  They carry classic poets, academic anthologies, and well-known poets. Most poets don’t reach this level.  If you have a relationship with your local bookstore owner (and you should get to know him/her,) this individual is likely to carry a few copies of your new book.  I left three copies of my latest book with a local bookstore, and it sold all three copies, but it took about a year.

The best way for a new poet to publish is in a poetry journal or magazine.  Split This Rock offers an online list of literary journals https://www.splitthisrock.org/resources/literary-arts-journals.

You need to do some homework to figure out with which journals your poetry will resonate and want whatever poetry you have to offer.

You may not want to start with well-established journals like The Kenyon Review or The American Poetry Journal, but there are many to choose from.  Starry Starry Kite https://www.lindacastronovo.com/theonlinejournal, a new online journal, is open to submissions of poetry.

Publication in literary journals is also important to book publishers.  I’ve heard that some publishers look for a 25 percent ratio of published poems to 75 percent nonpublished when looking at a book manuscript.  This percentage will vary publisher to publisher, but the publisher wants to know the poems in the manuscript were considered publishable by the literary journals.

In nearly all cases, these book publishers will only publish a new poet if they have a track record with the literary journals.

Each journal has its own submission procedures, but as a rule, they don’t want more than five or six poems per submission.  Rejections are more common than not, so be prepared for this.  You should get an idea of what the journal is publishing by looking online at poetry from that journal going to your local library and looking at old issues, or just buying a sample issue.  A good sponsor for a good journal is a university, so check the journal’s affiliations. If you like the poetry the journal offers, it’s a good sign that the journal might like your poetry. Read the journal’s submission guidelines carefully.

I published in about 25 literary journals, including Nebo, The California Quarterly, Taproot Literary Quarterly and Crosswinds Literary Journal, before I published my first book of poetry. 

I chose to submit to small, independent publishers who were known to publish new poets.

I have a new manuscript, Dread and Splendor: Paintings and Poems for a New Earth, out for consideration with a few small independent publishers.  This is my first collaborative manuscript with the Norwegian artist, Irene Christensen.  She did a series of paintings about women at the heart of the environmental movement for which I wrote poem responses.  This is specialized publishing as the publisher needs to be experienced with four-color visuals as well as poetry. I don’t know if this will get published, but we never know for sure as poets.

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