Poetry submissions at The Canberra Times
July 21, 2022
Poetry submissions are open at The Canberra Times from today until 8th August. Read the information below before submitting. Unfortunately, due to difficulties with payment, submissions can only be accepted from poets in Australia.
Canberra Times Submission Guidelines July 2022
ALL CORRESPONDENCE REGARDING THE CANBERRA TIMES/PANORAMA POETRY SUBMISSIONS SHOULD BE SENT TO THE CANBERRA TIMES POETRY EMAIL ADDRESS:
poetrycanbt@gmail.com
POETRY SUBMISSION: Do not submit until there is a call-out. The dates will vary depending on the number of accepted poems awaiting publication. The Poetry Editor Penelope Cottier will be making selections. If you are not sure if there is a current call-out, please send her a query rather than sending poems.
• Poems suitable for a general audience in most styles and on most subject matters are welcome.
• Please send up to 3 UNpublished (includes blogs, social media etc.) poems of up to 24 lines. Shorter poems are much preferred.
• The 24 line maximum includes quotes/notes/references (but not title and stanza breaks).
• Attach all poems in one Word file — include your name in the document title. (You are welcome to also attach a PDF if you are concerned that formatting might slip in the Word doc. But do not send only a PDF. Pasting into an email, if you have to, is fine too.)
• Please submit poems during submission periods only.
• Poems should not be on offer to other print or online publications.
• You will be notified by email either way, 6-8 weeks after close of submissions.
• If selected, your poem should generally be published in the Panorama arts section during the following several months.
• Poets selected for publication are asked not to submit during the next submission period.
NB While everything possible is done to reduce the risk of a selected poem not appearing
The Canberra Times cannot guarantee publication. Poets who submit poems
should understand there is a chance their poem may not appear, even if selected.
Hints
• Send your stand-out poem(s). Don’t feel you have to send in three!
• Send a variety.
• Be strategic — remember that poems are selected months in advance of publication.
• Sometimes poems are published in a smaller font due to space limitations — if you have an issue with this you might prefer to submit shorter poems. Space limitations may also mean that slight layout changes must be made.
• For the same reason it is better not to send poems with very long lines or elaborate formatting.
Bio
A biographical note is not necessary but is of interest — just one or two sentences will do.
PLEASE KEEP READING:
The Canberra Times publishes one poem per week in its Saturday Panorama arts section, pending space availability. Payment is $60 per poem after publication.
The aims are to ensure a diversity of voices, and to publish poems on a wide variety of subjects.
Poets selected for publication are asked to skip the next submission window.
The Canberra Times receives hundreds of poems and has space for just a fraction of those. Many quality submissions have to be declined each time.
If you can access The Canberra Times where you live, please buy it every Saturday. Or you can subscribe to the on-line paper, to support fellow poets and a major newspaper that still publishes poetry.
Penelope (PS) Cottier
The Canberra Times Poetry Editor
Cassowary
July 15, 2022
Cassowary Only the emu and ostrich outgrow them, these flightless, man-sized, razored birds, scuttling through the thick leaf litter like a nightmare turkey; all wattle and claw. I hear you run at 50 K an hour, leap fences like a show-jumper, and swim like a plumed platypus. Long-lived as any cockatoo, deep-voiced as a baritone, you strode your forests these many million years. Accessorised bright blue and red, you balance on stretched palm-leaf feet, and only fight when there is no escape. But no bird can outrun the ropes of road we push into your world, those hard nets of bitumen, tightening like a noose around Queensland's neck. Huge eggs hatched for aeons before we brought pigs and dogs and cars into that humid, secret, fruitful world. However brave the male who guards the heap of leaf which hides tomorrow's clutch of many birds, he can't see us off, with our strangling wire, and our certain need for boundaries. Cassowaries wear their casques like crowns; but how long can the regal booming sound, or chicks survive, in their bright-striped down? P.S. Cottier I wrote that poem over ten years ago, and it was first published in The Canberra Times. I am republishing it as I saw my first wild cassowary earlier this week in far north Queensland, where they live. A male with a single chick revealed himself after six hours searching.
Scifaiku via link
July 1, 2022
Just had a number of science fiction haiku (scifaiku) published at Starlight SciFaiku Review Issue 2. Tap here to go there. The more I edit poetry for a newspaper, the more I seem to be writing speculative poetry. I am also having a scifaiku published every month at AntipodeanSF, which can be read here.
Poem via link: Osteoporosis
May 31, 2022
It’s been too long since I posted here, which is not (only) due to laziness, but because I have been incredibly busy. I am coming up to my first year anniversary as Poetry Editor at The Canberra Times, have been doing multiple book reviews, and just gave a reading. I was very pleased to have a poem published in an American journal called Please See Me, in a special issue on Women’s Health.
I am reaching the age where they start to monitor my body for all sorts of complaints and illnesses, and this inspired the poem. I also read the poem at the page linked to above.
Tuesday poem: The night I grew wings
April 12, 2022
I woke from uneasy sleep, as feathers tickled my suddenly sneezy nose. That has not stopped, and I need to bless myself twelve times a day. I carry tissues tucked between the feathers. If you are hit by sodden snow, it is probably a cloud-like tissue, slipping from inexpert wings. I would call the wings adequate, though, as I do not miss the morning commute. Please do not mistake me for an angel. I often swear, up here amongst the fluff, and my fingers pluck no cunning harp. Mittens cradle my blue-cold hands, and a beanie holds my head like an egg. Why this happened to me, I can't really say. Who has not dreamt of flight? Yet so few wake to feather doonas sprouting from shoulders like quotation marks. 'Anything becomes usual, given you have enough time to get used to it,' as I said to the press. I ride updrafts, and predict the patterns of sneeze. It is quietly wonderful, to share a life with pigeons, and to perch, a woolly gargoyle, for a quick cup of tea. PS Cottier
A fun poem, more than the illustration by Hans Tegner, which is excellent but a bit grim. And everyone should recognise the origin of that first phrase!
PS Cottier 