Our next guest edited call will be open from December 12 through December 31.
For our Winter/Spring 2023 issue, Guest Editor Chet’la Sebree will curate a selection of work centered on “Home and Hiraeth.”
There isn’t an English translation for the Welsh word hiraeth. The best approximation is a longing tied to grief and sorrow. Often tethered to something irretrievable or inaccessible, hiraeth is likened to nostalgia or homesickness. But what even is home? Maya Angelou described it as “the safe place where you can go and not be questioned,” while James Baldwin believed it to be “perhaps … not a place but an irrevocable condition.” And what is it to not be able to return there, wherever, whoever, or whatever home may be?
Please send us your work that grapples with home and hiraeth, belonging and loss.
Poet Lore pays contributors $50 per published poem. Contributors also receive one copy of their issue, plus a copy of the following printed issue of Poet Lore.
You may submit up to 3 poems (maximum of 8 pages).
- Include all poems in 1 single document and please only submit once.
- Include the titles of all poems in your cover letter (bullet points or numbers are easiest).
- If a poem is more than one page, please indicate if the second page begins with a new stanza.
- We accept simultaneous submissions, however, let us know in your cover letter if poems are simultaneously submitted, and please inform us immediately if a poem is accepted elsewhere.
- We do not accept work that has been previously published. This includes on personal blogs and social media.
- Upon acceptance, we ask for first serial rights, with rights reverting back to the author upon publication.
We are committed to diversity and inclusivity and highly encourage submissions from marginalized voices. We do not tolerate racism, bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, ableism, or any work that promotes harmful stereotypes and viewpoints.
