Submit Your Poem to Poemancer!

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Table of Contents

• Submissions Are Open Now

• Submission Guidelines

• Poem Formatting

• Prompts and Inspiration

• Rights and Payment

• Archive

Submissions Are Open Now

Tired of submitting your poems to literary journals? Submit to a card game instead!

Poemancer: A Poetry Journey is a forthcoming card game that poets can use to write inspired poetry. We hope to launch a Kickstarter to fundraise for it this year. In the meantime, we’re hard at work getting the game ready to print, and we need your poems to make it happen.

One of our decks, the Transformation deck, features excellent poems and pairs them with a principle of good poetry. We are seeking previously uncurated poems to feature on these cards.

As thanks for joining our mailing list, I’m giving you exclusive access to our submissions window before I announce it elsewhere. So, don’t miss out on this limited-time opportunity. Submissions are capped at 500 responses—get yours in now!

Submission Guidelines

• Submit up to 3 poems in a .doc, .docx, or .pdf file.

• Please title your document with the names of the poems. Do not include your own name in the document title.

• Only 1 submission is allowed per poet. Submissions cannot be edited after they are sent.

• Please do not include any identifying information within the document itself. Poems that reference your own name may be submitted, provided that we cannot easily deduce your identity from the poem.

• Your poems must be previously uncurated.

  • What this means is that your poem cannot have been published anywhere else, including in literary journals, books (both traditionally- and self-published), anthologies, podcasts, or other media.

  • If your poem has appeared solely on a personal blog, website, or social media posting, it is eligible for consideration.

• Plagiarized poetry, which includes poetry generated using LLMs like ChatGPT or Claude, will not be considered.

• We are open to poems that have been submitted simultaneously to other publications. However, if your poem is accepted for publication elsewhere, you must notify us immediately at [email protected] that it is no longer available for consideration.

Poem Formatting

Because these poems will be featured on printed cards, your poem must fit within certain physical constraints.

Your poem will certainly fit on our card if, on a word document, it fits within:

• Dimensions: 2” W x 2.38” L

• Font: 11pt Times New Roman, regular weight, single spacing

This is 30-35 characters per line, 14 lines long (including line breaks).

Here’s a downloadable file with those size constraints that you can use to type your poem in!

We are aware that this constrains a lot of possibilities within poetry. Certainly, we would love to showcase longer, more narrative poems and works of different forms and complexities. Nonetheless, successful poetry is regularly written within these length limits. 🙂 

Prompts and Inspiration

For inspiration and examples, take a look at these prompt pages for writing short poetry:

• The Art of Short Verse

• Writing Short Poems

Rights and Payment

Poemancer will request First North American Serial Rights (FNASR) for publication of your poem.

Additionally, all accepted poets will receive*:

• A free copy of the Poemancer card game upon its successful publication.

• A $25 honorarium, paid via PayPal.

*Contingent upon successful fundraising and launch of Poemancer. We are currently planning to promote a Kickstarter for the game in mid-April, followed by publication of the game by the end of 2026. Payment will be made after we reach our fundraising goal, and your free copy of the game will be distributed upon publication.

If we do not meet our fundraising goals, rights will revert back immediately to poets whose work was accepted for the game.

You can find our submissions window here:

Archive

Check out our full archive of prompts at the Poemancer website!