Submission Guidelines
Regular Submission Guidelines:
Unsplendid is a triquarterly online journal that accepts poetry written in received forms, which include, though not exclusively:
Sonnet • Villanelle • Sestina • Ballade • Rondeau • Pantoum • Ghazal • Tanka • Heroic Couplets • Blank Verse • and more
Please see Lewis Turco's Book of Forms for a more exhaustive list of forms we will consider.
We welcome translations of poetry in traditional forms, as long as the translator holds the rights to do so (unless the work is in the public domain).
Nonce, or invented, forms, which we define fairly loosely, we are eager to see as well.
We are also looking for well-written reviews of books which contain primarily these forms, and essays on matters of received forms, meter, rhyme, etc.
- Please submit up to 5 poems (if translations, include originals) or one prose piece via the Submittable system.
- You are welcome to query about prose pieces in advance at editor [at] unsplendid [dot] com.
- No multiple submissions, unless you are submitting both poems/translations and a prose piece at the same time. Please allow at least six months to pass between subsequent submissions.
- No previously published work.
- We'll gladly consider simultaneous submissions, provided you tell us they are under consideration elsewhere and notify us immediately should another journal accept a poem you've sent us.
- We will generally respond within 3 months. Feel free to ask "how things are going" if we end up taking longer!
- Please do not send revisions of your poems unless we have accepted your work for publication. We're moving as fast as we can and can't accommodate additional work and correspondence.
- Before you submit please read at least one of our issues all the way through—there are only twenty-five or so poems per issue, and these poems made it into Unsplendid for a reason. If you'd like to have others read your work here, do those who preceded you the courtesy of reading their work first.
- Do not send us unpatterned free verse. A distressing number of prospective contributors send us free verse, perhaps mistaking "blank verse" in our list above for "free verse."
And one last comment: we actually do like "cover letters" appended to the submissions, ones that say more than merely where you've been published before, so send us good cheer!
Speaking of letters, we are also willing to receive letters to the editor, considered responses to work in the journal, thoughts on matters of relevance to poetry in received and nonce forms.
For all work we publish, we accept first North American serial rights and online rights, which revert to the author upon publication. We also hold the right to keep the work archived on the site.