Vulgata XVII  Poetry Guidelines

Poetry is a means of exploring the intimate relationships between form and content. A poem that is in the form of raw inspiration dropped out onto a page with line breaks is a very good beginning, but it like an uncut diamond: it is not yet a poem. The process of crafting this raw material into a work is difficult. The inspiration must be carefully cropped and pruned, without killing it. Bad poetry errs in three ways: it is uninspired, it is inspired but not crafted, or it is inspired, and then wrought to death. The great thing to avoid is writing a "poem" that is really just normal prose that has been centered in the middle column of a page; but which has no meter, metaphor, enriched adjectives, etc.

The details

Submit by email, to slushpile@vulgatamagazine.org. In honour of my father-in-law and web-consultant, we prefer non-Microsoft file formats. RTF is good, ODT is better, or just stick the text into the body of your e-mail. I don't care how you format it. I'll be reading on screen, so you needn't bother with standard manuscript format. Just make sure it's in a straight-forward font that won't confuse my computer.

We accept poetry of any length, including epic. Depending on length and merit we pay between 20 and 50 Canadian dollars, upon publication and ask for the right to archive your poem.

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