Helena Nelson
Eight Tips for New Poets
1 Read modern, current verse.
Byron, Blake, Burns in the bin.
Ancients out, Motion in.
2 Subscribe to two or three good quality small press magazines.
What dreams may come? But here’s the rub:
they will not print your poems in exchange for your sub.
3 Join a Writers’ Group.
Consult the Poetry Society to see if there is one in your area.
If there is none, it is scary. If there is one, it is scarier.
4 If you use traditional forms, do it in a new way.
For several hundred years the sonnet has stayed the same because nobody
dared change it.
Rearrange it.
5 Create an audience for your work.
Practise reading poems aloud.
Invite friends round. Dispense drink. Read to the assembled crowd.
Retire upstairs to your study, unbowed
but bloody-minded.
6 Win a National Competition.
If you’re hesitating whether to win or wait,
win. Don’t hesitate.
7 Write your name and address on every sheet submitted; but not © Bill.
The former is professional and subtly revealing.
The latter suggests you are pompous & regard your poems as worth stealing.
8 Do not submit poems with a eulogistic letter citing
previous publications.
If your work has Merit, the rest is history.
(How so much garbage is printed every month while yours is returned
is a mystery).
Page(s) 64
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The