11 Invaluable Resources Every Poet Should Know
Ever wanted to locate a poem by your favorite writer online? Found the perfect submission opportunities in just a few clicks? Been stuck for inspiration on what to write? We’ve all been there at some point, but online resources can be a fantastic place to get that extra boost of motivation, locate writing opportunities, and expand your poetry community.
If you’re looking to grow your poetry toolkit, look no further than these 11 resources:
Academy of American Poets
This nonprofit organization has been a vital resource for poets since its founding in 1934, producing Poets.org, Poem-a-Day, National Poetry Month, American Poets Magazine, and many other online components. Providing a treasure trove of poetry, both classic and contemporary, the organization seeks “to support American poets at all stages of their careers and to foster the appreciation of contemporary poetry”. Also on their site are programs, prizes/awards, essays, book recommendations, and more to help writers in their poetic journeys.
Poetry Foundation
The Chicago-based literary organization publishes POETRY magazine and provides vital online resources for teachers, writers of any age, and other organizations. Within their list of online resources are poetry archives, online course offerings, resources for educators, and poetry-related organizations and festivals. Their site also has a variety of poems from over the years, interviews, essays, videos, podcasts, upcoming events, as well as a glossary of poetic terms filled with over 200 different poetic must-knows.
Submittable
Here’s just one of the places you can manage your submissions online. Within their submission management system, you can discover contests and calls for submissions from literary magazines and journals—filtered by whether or not they charge a submission fee, the deadline to submit, or the genre you’re looking for specifically. You can further refine your searches by using their available tags, like poetry, LGBTQIA, interviews, politics, and more.
Duotrope
Duotrope is another system you can use to track your submissions, in addition to finding publishers, literary agents, journal listings, and more. Their submission platform Duosuma can be used to submit to various literary magazines/journals. While the submission platform is free to use, the remainder of the site is subscription-based so if you want to view their different poetry features of the site (like searching for a publisher’s response stats or a journal’s acceptance/rejection rates), you’ll need to become a member!
Poets & Writers
This nonprofit organization’s site is filled with essential resources for creative writers. In addition to their award-winning print magazine, they also list opportunities for community-building, publishing contests and presses, promotional outlets, jobs, and workshops. Some of their features include the ability to search for writing grants, small presses, and literary magazines and agents, all of which can be filtered to your specific genre and needs.
CLMP
The Community of Literary Magazines and Presses allows writers to search for publishers, jobs, and writing events. One of the most important parts of their site, however, is the directory of publishers where you can browse through hundreds of literary presses, magazines, and publishers. You can filter the results by publication type (press, magazine, chapbook, etc.) and/or genre (poetry, art, essays, translation, etc.). This makes it super easy to discover a plethora of opportunities, no matter what you’re looking for as part of your creative endeavors!
Entropy
The online magazine and literary community ENTROPY shares writings in a wide variety of genres, posts abouts new and upcoming book releases, and hosts a database of presses and a calendar of literary events. One of their most popular resources, however, is their Where to Submit roundup of submission calls that’s published every quarter. Their lists include hundreds of incredible submission opportunities, whether it be for a press, chapbook publication, journals/anthologies, or fellowships.
Lumiere Review
The Lumiere Review, an online literary magazine, also has two very helpful resources when it comes to submissions: general tips and places open for submissions in a given month. Their lists make it quick and easy to find where to submit if stuck for an opportunity and help the lit community put together the best submissions they can. They’ve done several monthly roundups so far and they include submissions for literary magazines, contests, presses, and applications.
Robert Peake Poetry Writing Prompts
If you’re ever stuck for what to write (and who isn’t at times?), then the Robert Peake Poetry Prompt Generator is an amazing resource. The generator is pretty simple: just select the number of random words you’d like to be given, the number of additional challenges you want to be included, and an option to include an image with your generated prompt. The words and associated challenges are eclectic and engaging and will make your poetry-writing process even more fun.
Metaphor Dice
Created by poet and educator Taylor Mali, this writing tool makes generating images and metaphors a breeze. The Metaphor Dice set includes 12 dice, all with different metaphor-generating words on them. There’s also a paper edition, as well as a erudite expansion set, which is a bit more challenging than the original. An example of a metaphor you might come up as featured on the site is “my father is a broken mirror”. You can then take that phrase and expand upon it in your poem (or do several more rolls of the dice). Mali also runs a virtual Metaphor Dice workshop. Take a chance and give them a roll!
NaPoWriMo
Every year, the National Poetry Writing Month project, helmed by poet Maureen Thorson, posts prompts to help inspire poets in their attempts to write a poem-a-day during the month of April. Though the prompts are only posted one month out of the year, it’s still an essential resource for poets who thrive on prompts and motivation from outside sources. Prompts are archived from April 2013 to this past April so if you’re ever looking for a jumping-off-point for a poem, look at one of the hundreds of prompts available as part of this project.
(BONUS: Of course, Write or Die Tribe also provides writers with invaluable resources and community connection. You can subscribe to the newsletter to receive weekly articles, job opportunities, submission lists, and more!)
Do you have a favorite writing resource? Share it in the comments below!
