How To Submit Your Work

Heron Tree volume 8 will be dedicated to found poems composed from public domain sources. Between 1 September 2020 and 15 January 2021 we will be accepting submissions in the following categories:

– Found poems crafted from any source material(s) in the public domain in the United States. Many things that are public are not public domain: see here for more information about what counts, but, in general, works published before 1925 are in the public domain.

– Found poems created from How to Keep Bees (1905), a handbook by Anna Botsford Comstock.

– Found poems fashioned from public domain sonnets other than Shakespeare’s; Shakespeare’s sonnets have (understandably!) received a fair amount of attention from found poetry practitioners, and we invite you to engage other poems from the sonnet tradition.

We encourage you to read some collections of found poems that we have published in the past: Found in the Public Domain and the pamphlets Songs, From the Blue Fairy, and Of Climates & Continents.

More information:

– We are interested in any and all approaches to found poetry construction and erased or remixed texts.

– Poems that are not created using materials in the public domain in the United States will not be considered for publication in this submission round.

– Send up to 7 poems with a cover letter to submit.herontree@gmail.com. It’s alright to submit poems for more than one of the above categories, but you should not submit more than 7 total.

– In your email cover letter please include a list of your poems’ titles.

– The poems should be attached in a single doc, docx, or pdf file. If your pieces are better viewed as digital images, insert them as jpegs within a single doc, docx, or pdf file. Please do not use headers or footers.

– In the same file as the poems be sure to identify your source(s) for each poem and briefly explain your process of composition. What were your source materials and what did you do with them to yield each poem?

– All submissions will be read blind, so do not include your name in the file with the poems.

– Simultaneous submissions are welcome with timely notification of acceptance elsewhere.

– Poems that have previously appeared online (temporarily or permanently, on your own or a third-party site) should not be submitted, nor should work that has already been published electronically or in print.

–  Once you send your submission, you’ll receive an automatic email reply. If you don’t receive the reply, please check your spam folder and add Heron Tree to your contacts to ensure that you receive future communications about your submission.

– Submissions will be read on a rolling basis.

– You are welcome to submit more than once per submission period, but please do not send a new submission until you have heard from us about your first one.

– If your work is accepted by Heron Tree, you agree to grant us exclusive first publication rights and the non-exclusive right to include your work in the volume 8 collection and our online archives. You agree that if your poem subsequently appears elsewhere you will credit Heron Tree as the original publisher.

– Accepted poems will be published weekly on the Heron Tree website starting in January 2021 and will be included in a free, downloadable PDF volume available later in 2021.

For the sake of complete transparency: Heron Tree does not charge a fee for submitting nor provide payment for publication.

These guidelines are subject to change.