Submission Guidelines
Submissions for Issue 109 are closed as of 1st February 2025. Our next submission window will be in July.
(Our submission windows are normally 1st - 31st January and 1st - 31st July. Please do not send us your work outside these periods as it will not be read.)
Please follow the guidelines below when sending us your poems. We expect (hope!) to have a lot of poems to read, so please make it as easy as possible for us to read yours.
1) Please send up to 3 shorter (up to 50 lines) OR 1 longer poem(s). Maximum total length of the batch should be 150 lines, not counting titles, epigraphs or stanza breaks.
2) Poems can be in English, Scots or Gaelic, on any subject. If you are sending a poem in Gaelic, feel free to add an English (verse or prose) translation if you wish to, but this is not a requirement. If you are writing in non-standard Scots or English and wish to provide a glossary for any particularly rare or local word or phrase, by all means do so, but this is not a requirement either. Glossaries / translations, if provided, will not count as part of the total line length.
3) Poems must be the original work of the person sending them and should not have been published elsewhere. If you have sent a poem to us that is accepted elsewhere while we are considering it, please let us know.
4) We can only accept poems by email. Please send your poems as a single attachment in .doc, .docx or .rtf format, with your name and email address at the foot of each page, and the number of lines at the end of each poem. Please use a standard font such as Arial or Times New Roman, at 11 or 12 point. We cannot accept work in other formats.
4a) If you are sending prose poetry please give the line-count relative to an A4 page. Please follow the font/size guideline at 4 above.
4b) If you are sending concrete or visual poetry or other poetry where the formatting on the page is important, please send a pdf as well as the doc / docx / rtf version. Please bear in mind that the magazine format is A4 so the layout needs to work at that page size, and in black-and-white / grayscale only (sorry, but we don't have the dosh for colour).
5) We're keen to find a place in our pages for as many poets (especially new poets) as possible, and we always get far more good submissions than we can make space for. It's a good problem to have, it's true, but to spread the editorial load a little, we ask that if you had a poem published in the most recent issue, you skip one issue before sending work to us again. 6) Please send your poems to poetryscotlandsubmissions@gmail.com as an attachment (plus pdf attachment if relevant) and put "Poetry Scotland Issue 109" in the subject-line. In the body of the email please include your name as you wish it to be used on publication, your postal address and contact telephone number, and the titles of the poems you are sending us.
7) We must receive your poems no later than midnight on either January 31st (for the Spring issue) or July 31st (for the Autumn issue)
8) We will let you know within six weeks of the closing date whether your work has been accepted for publication.
9) We cannot offer comment or criticism on poems sent to us, or enter into correspondence regarding them.
2) Poems can be in English, Scots or Gaelic, on any subject. If you are sending a poem in Gaelic, feel free to add an English (verse or prose) translation if you wish to, but this is not a requirement. If you are writing in non-standard Scots or English and wish to provide a glossary for any particularly rare or local word or phrase, by all means do so, but this is not a requirement either. Glossaries / translations, if provided, will not count as part of the total line length.
3) Poems must be the original work of the person sending them and should not have been published elsewhere. If you have sent a poem to us that is accepted elsewhere while we are considering it, please let us know.
4) We can only accept poems by email. Please send your poems as a single attachment in .doc, .docx or .rtf format, with your name and email address at the foot of each page, and the number of lines at the end of each poem. Please use a standard font such as Arial or Times New Roman, at 11 or 12 point. We cannot accept work in other formats.
4a) If you are sending prose poetry please give the line-count relative to an A4 page. Please follow the font/size guideline at 4 above.
4b) If you are sending concrete or visual poetry or other poetry where the formatting on the page is important, please send a pdf as well as the doc / docx / rtf version. Please bear in mind that the magazine format is A4 so the layout needs to work at that page size, and in black-and-white / grayscale only (sorry, but we don't have the dosh for colour).
5) We're keen to find a place in our pages for as many poets (especially new poets) as possible, and we always get far more good submissions than we can make space for. It's a good problem to have, it's true, but to spread the editorial load a little, we ask that if you had a poem published in the most recent issue, you skip one issue before sending work to us again. 6) Please send your poems to poetryscotlandsubmissions@gmail.com as an attachment (plus pdf attachment if relevant) and put "Poetry Scotland Issue 109" in the subject-line. In the body of the email please include your name as you wish it to be used on publication, your postal address and contact telephone number, and the titles of the poems you are sending us.
7) We must receive your poems no later than midnight on either January 31st (for the Spring issue) or July 31st (for the Autumn issue)
8) We will let you know within six weeks of the closing date whether your work has been accepted for publication.
9) We cannot offer comment or criticism on poems sent to us, or enter into correspondence regarding them.
We cannot pay for the poems we publish (see above under "don't have the dosh") but all poets published will receive a copy of the issue their work appears in.