Codhill Press is seeking poetry manuscripts for the second round of its Guest Editor Poetry Series. Designed to both honor its past and expand its poetry offerings into the future, each year, the Guest Editor will select one manuscript for book publication. The inaugural selection, from last year, was Jeddie Sophronius’ Happy Poems & Other Lies, which will be released this summer.
Poets are invited to submit full-length collections focused on a specific theme between May 1-June 30. In choosing a theme for submissions, the press selects an area that feels rich with possibility, representative of the Guest Editor’s interests, and open enough to allow for a wide range of interpretation.
For the 2024 submission period, the theme is: Motion and Stillness/Stillness and Motion. The call looks for books that: start in one realm and end up somewhere else entirely; shift from confusion to understanding; explore the world around us and the movement of necessary change–and/or how we handle the need to pause and examine a world that increasingly spins faster; what we do in the moments after epiphany; the ways in which motion and stillness are inseparable. Importantly, manuscripts might explore these points on personal, communal, national, and/or global levels.
Guest editors are selected from past award winners, and serve a two-year appointment. Robert Krut, who received the Codhill Award in 2018 for The Now Dark Sky, Setting Us All on Fire (and subsequently also published Watch Me Trick Ghosts with the press) is currently in his second year, and will select the manuscript. Also the author of This Is the Ocean and The Spider Sermons, Krut is a long-time teacher of writing at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Krut expands on the press call by saying, “Using a themed approach to submissions feels like a different way to find variety of fresh, unique collections. Last year, we received countless excellent submissions through this approach, and I look forward to the work we receive through this new call.”
Submission Guidelines for the Codhill Press Guest Editor Series follow:
- All submissions should be made through our submittable page.
- This series has a reading period, not a contest/competition. With your submission, please tell us a little about yourself, and share how your manuscript connects with the theme.
- Manuscripts should be between 48-80 pages long, not including front matter. Please include a table of contents; an acknowledgments page is welcomed but not required.
- There is no reading fee for submissions.
- The press is particularly interested in reading work by writers who have been historically underrepresented in, and/or marginalized by, traditional literary institutions.
- We welcome submissions from both emerging and established writers.
- Submissions will be accepted between May 1-June 30; the book selection will be announced by September 1, with publication the following year.
- Simultaneous submissions are accepted; please contact the press immediately if the manuscript is no longer available.
- Books will be published by Codhill Press and distributed by Codhill and SUNY Press; authors will receive 20 copies of the collection and a contract.