General Poetry Submissions

Deadline: July 31, 2024

Arc accepts unsolicited submissions from poets at all stages of their writing careers during our Spring and Fall submission periods:

January 1March 31

Arc does not accept general submission during this period

April 1July 31

The Spring submissions period

August 1August 31

Arc does not accept general submission during this period

September 1 – December 31

The Fall submissions period

  • Arc accepts pre­vi­ously unpub­lished poetry in English or pre­vi­ously unpub­lished translations of poetry into English, on any sub­ject and in any form.
  • Poets may only submit once per calendar year.
  • Poetry submissions must not exceed three poems or 360 lines of poetry.
  • Submissions of more than one poem must be broken up into two or three files and submitted separately on Submittable, along with the poet’s biog­ra­phy. (This allows Arc to respond to poems individually and update submitters on their submission’s status more promptly.)
  • Arc only accepts poetry submissions using the online submission manager Submittable, except when otherwise indicated.
  • Arc does not accept paper poetry submissions. Submissions received by mail will not be read and will not receive a response.
  • Arc aims to respond to unso­licited sub­mis­sions of poetry within four to six months.
  • Arc cannot promise to respond to inquiries regard­ing the sta­tus of sub­mis­sions before the com­ple­tion of the submission period.

Arc pays for poetry at the rate of $50 per page, with which Arc secures First Cana­dian Serial Rights (meaning that the poems should not appear in any print or digital publication before being published by Arc). Upon pub­li­ca­tion, all rights revert to the author and payment is mailed, as well as one free copy of the issue in which the work appears.

Poets may submit poems that are simultaneously submitted elsewhere. If a poem that has been submitted to Arc is accepted by another publication, it should be withdrawn from Arc immediately via Submittable or by notifying Arc using Submittable’s messaging feature.

  • Submissions must be typed and sin­gle spaced (dou­ble spaces will be inter­preted as blank lines).
  • Submissions must include the poet’s name, email address, and mailing address on each page.
  • Submissions must include the poet’s biog­ra­phy, which should be two to three sentences or approximately 30 words long.
  • Submissions of visual poetry or concrete poetry should be submitted as PDFs.
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