About that poem in Superpresent

Since my poem 'No News' was accepted by the exciting US magazine Superpresent, I've been brooding and worrying at a couple of … well, thoughts, for want of a better word.

First, I've been thinking about how much has changed since I was last submitting regularly to magazines (probably pre-2010). Submission fees, for instance: when did that start? But while it's a culture shock, to someone old enough to remember having to include a stamped, self-addressed envelope for the return of the rejected poems (or an international reply coupon, for those ambitious enough to be rejected by American journals) I guess the submission fee makes sense. Magazines aren't going to survive on sales.

Then there's Submittable. Not sure I approve. Especially where there's a ceiling built into the window. It feels like there's some abdication or avoidance or subversion of editorial activity there. I mean, I'm not a massive fan of submission windows at all, but I sympathise with the deluged drudges of the world's poetry zines, fending off a tsunami of haiku and pantoums and ghazals and sapphics...

I grow old, I grow old...

And when did themed issues become a thing? It's hard to believe that there are poets out there who find it possible to write to that kind of order, and that editors could expect such poems to achieve any kind of quality. And - probably because I write so slowly and uncertainly, usually picking disgustedly away at drafts for months and months - I find it hard to believe that there are poets out there with a heap of unsubmitted poems just waiting for a suitably themed issue or competition to be announced.

But that brings me to another thing that's been on my mind, and part of this poem's originating brew, its primeval soup of grudge and poetics. Stepping back into the world of poetry publishing, I'm struck by the near-universality of the poem-with-a-message. Some kind of uplfit or reassurance, some hope or enlightenment, seems to be compulsory, and also seems to excuse all kinds of dullness.

I just don't think that that's what art is for.

And I just don't have good news to bring.

Or any news at all.

But how and ever, as my old friend Ned would have said, 'No News' is in the current issue of Superpresent magazine - you can download a PDF or better still subscribe here.