S U B M I S S I O N    G U I D E L I N E S
  • Submissions that don't follow these guidelines will neither be read nor replied to.
  • Submissions will be accepted from the 1st through the 10th of the month, Pacific Time,
    capped at 40 submissions, whichever comes first.
  • You may submit (at most) every three months.
  • Upcoming OPTIONAL themes — however you interpret them:
    May 2024 → "Flower Power".
    June 2024 → "June Bug Weddings".
    July 2024 → "Bombs Bursting, Bastille Breached, or Bipartisan Bickering".

Verse-Virtual is both a community and a journal. This is not the place for poets who just want to see their work published. Neither is it a workshop. If you submit, you should be interested in being part of the community.

You should read the ABOUT page before continuing, and read through the current issue of the journal to see what kinds of poetry we publish.

To submit:
  • Write POEMS and your NAME in the subject line of the email.

  • In the body of the email, on separate lines, write your name, location, email address, and a single website address if you have one. Left justify, please.

  • Include a bio note no more than four sentences long, cast in first person. It should include a few interesting personal details and only two or three publishing credits. If you wish, you may substitute a short author's note regarding your poem(s).

  • If you are new to us, please tell me how you heard about Verse-Virtual.

  • List the title(s) of your poems (up to three) on separate lines, in simple, plain text.
    DO NOT OMIT THIS STEP! NB: "simple plain text" means no italics, no bullets, no numbers, no quotes, not bolded.

  • Attach up to three poems in a single document in .doc, .docx, or .rtf format. NO PDFs!
    —Please single-space, use Times Roman 12 point font, and left-align everything, including titles and epigraphs.
    —Poems with peculiar or radical formatting are typically rejected.
    —If you have a photo you want to accompany a poem, it must be attached as a JPG file.

  • I rarely accept Asian forms and have no interest in sequence poems. Certainly no adult content, profanity, hate speech, racist rants, etc. And please, no AI or bot generated work.

  • Send your submission to submissions4vv@gmail.com.

  • If your work is first published in Verse-Virtual, we would appreciate it if you would acknowledge us if it is later published elsewhere.

I try to respond with an acknowledgement of your submission within 3 days, and I send out notifications by the 15th that I have accepted or declined your poem(s).

Simultaneous submissions and reprints are fine. However, if you have a poem accepted somewhere else, you should let me know so it doesn't get published here first, while another journal is expecting to publish it. Copyright of all written material at all times belongs to the author.  

By submitting to Verse-Virtual, you should be aware that you will be added to the email list for announcements and items of interest to the community. I understand that people can be inundated with emails from everywhere, and adding one more may seem like too much. You may unsubscribe here.

Jim Lewis, Editor
April 2024