Submission
Poetry submissions, open year round
Strange Horizons
At a glance
- Deadline
- Applications are taken as they come. They say: "The Poetry Department is open to submissions year-round"
- Fee
- No fee to apply
- Who may apply
- previously unpublished speculative poems, in English
- Where
- submitted online from anywhere
Not a contest: a magazine pays you if it buys your poem. 50 US dollars per poem, whatever its length, and the department reads all year round. You may send up to six poems at a time. Nothing to pay to submit.
Applications are taken as they come. They say: “The Poetry Department is open to submissions year-round” Read it on their page
The facts
- What you get
- 50 US dollars per poem, regardless of length or complexity
- Where
- submitted online from anywhere
- Share of the prize or equity they take
- You keep the poem.
Where you stand
This one is free. There is no fee to apply, and nobody should ask you for money at any point.
What they ask for
- previously unpublished speculative poems, in English
- no work written with AI, at most six poems in one submission
Get ready to apply
Built only from what this listing states.
A short application, by our reading.
1. What to get ready
It asks for something outside the usual documents; read it below.
In their words: “up to six previously unpublished poems”
2. Dates
- No closing date is stated.
- Openings with no closing date can close once they have enough people, so sooner is safer. Our advice
- On the date, the listing says: the poetry department reads all year.
Download checklist (.txt) Send to WhatsApp
The download is a small text file. You can read it later without data. It also lists each condition they set, so you can tick yourself against them. WhatsApp sends the same list to you, or to somebody helping you.
No CV yet? Make a plain one from your answers. Nothing you type is kept.
Tips for applying for a submission
General advice from us, the same for every submission. It is not what this organisation says; that is above.
- Read the guidelines first: length, format, language and theme.
- Check who owns your work after you send it. The rules usually say.
- Send it a day early. Upload pages are often slow near a deadline.
All our tips and messages to copy. Practise answering, with nothing kept. Received an offer? Check whether it is real, then read before you say yes.
How to apply
You apply on Strange Horizons's own website, not here. We never send an application for anybody and we never ask you for anything to pass on. Check their page for anything not shown here.
More like this, open now
How we checked this
This was opened and verified at Strange Horizons's own website on 5 October 2026: it was real, still open, and open to people from African countries. If anything here is wrong, tell us.