Poetry Explained: Submission Guidelines

Your chance to become a poetry critic!

Welcome to Poetry Explained

Poetry Explained does exactly that. Poems — old and not-so-old — are presented and explained — because there is often much more to a poem than might appear at first sight.

These articles give details of the backgrounds of poems and poets, then analyse the poem in question, including information on format, rhyme (if any!), rhythm, and anything that might help the reader either to understand the poem’s obscurities or to gain a fresh insight.

By doing this, it is hoped that readers will be encouraged to explore a poet’s work and find a new source of reading pleasure.

Submission Guidelines

Please follow Medium guidelines for formatting posts and crediting images.

Please supply a title along the lines of “Daffodils: A Poem by William Wordsworth”, and a short subtitle. Also include an image, which can be a portrait of the poet, but need not be if this is your wish.

Always include “Poetry” and the full name of the poet as tags.

It is not always desirable to present the whole poem, especially if it is a long one. There should be no problems as regards copyright, unless the poem is a recent one, in which case this needs to be checked.

It would be helpful if the poem is copied in italic text, which will distinguish it from the accompanying text.

Please try to provide a measure of insight when writing about a poem. Submissions that do little more than reproduce a poem and say “this is a nice poem” are highly likely to be rejected! If you want to be critical about certain aspects of a poem, that is absolutely fine, but your criticism should be reasoned.

At the time of writing, all the articles in Poetry Explained are by me. Have a browse through to maybe get a better idea of what I am looking for. If you want to write a new piece about a poem that is already included, that is perfectly OK.

Please also note that Poetry Explained is concerned with individual poems, as opposed to discussions of poetry collections or biographies/critiques of poets.

To Apply to be a Writer

Apply to be a writer by following Poetry Explained. Then comment on this article: “Please add me as a writer.”

John Welford, Editor