123 Literary Magazines Accepting Reprints (Updated for 2019)

While it’s wonderful to create new work and I try to devote 1-4 hours a day to writing and polishing new material, it’s nice to take full advantage of our best previously published pieces and give them more outings when we can. This is a handy list of journals that accept reprints for those days when you just need life to be easy 🙂

Writing Matters

I took the 2016 list entitled “185 Literary Magazines Accepting Reprints” from publishedtodeath.blogspot.com and manually checked each entry. Those which no longer functioned or explicitly stated they only want unpublished work have been removed. New entries are added when discovered. This list update is an ongoing process: last updated November 21, 2019.

50-Word Stories (“Each month, submissions will be open between days 1 and 15 of that month. Any stories received on days 16 to 31 of a month will be deleted, but can be resubmitted the following month.”)

Abstract Magazine (“Abstract will consider work previously published in small-circulation journals, websites, or blogs with credit to first publishers.”)

After the Pause (“We accept simultaneous submissions (please notify us if your work is accepted elsewhere) and reprints (please indicate if this is the case); nonetheless, we prefer unpublished submissions.”)

Ancient Paths Online (“a predominantly Christian publication”)

Auroras & Blossoms Poetry Journal

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In Conversation with Literary Writes Judge Jude Neale

Although the Federation of British Columbia Writers (FBCW) Literary Writes Contest is only open to residents of British Columbia, judge Jude Neale’s poetic insights are worth sharing worldwide. It was such a treat to get to interview her!

Cynthia: There are so many thoughts on what is or is not poetry. What is poetry in your view?

Jude: Poetry to me is the distillation of feelings, thoughts and ideas into the fewest words possible. A good poem does not lie. It is an imagist painting written equally from the heart and the brain.

Cynthia: You’ve published seven books of poetry, with your eighth forthcoming, and have already started work on your ninth. You’re an incredibly accomplished poet and performer, travelling around the province and world for readings. How did you become a poet? When did you first know the value of poetry in your life?

Jude: Thank you Cynthia for your kind words.

How did I become a poet, well it’s always been part of me, of my life. One of my earliest memories involves my grandfather, Herbert William Bilton. Grandpa and grandma lived in a village of 150. He was the Justice of the Peace, Postmaster and raconteur. I remember sitting with my twin on his lap and he would recite Robert Service to us. He memorized all of Service and did all the voices. I loved the meter and the dynamic language. I don’t know when poetry wasn’t important to me, as I was marinated in it.

Cynthia: You’ve mentioned that in some of your books like Splendid in its Silence, you’ve given each poem twenty or more hours of editing. Could you elaborate on the role of editing in securing your best work?

Jude: I was mentored by the great Canadian writer, Elisabeth Harvor. She took no prisoners when it came to editing. She would ferret out the cliches, the sentimental and the maudlin. Get rid of duplicate words, unoriginal language and uncreative metaphor. I still have her on my shoulder when I write today!

Cynthia: What can Literary Writes contestants do to take their work from a first draft to a solid, polished poem?

Jude: Write your first draft. Leave it for a day or two. Go back, listen for your voice. Concentrate on line breaks, the breath of a poem. Read it out loud looking for cadence and sound. Edit again. Don’t be afraid to chop! Repeat the process a couple more times.

Cynthia: What is the mark of a great poem?

Jude: A great poem will take your breath away. It will allow you to connect with another reality.

Cynthia: I love that you come from a collaborative arts background and in particular opera. What is the relationship between music and poetry in your experience?

Jude: I love this question, Cynthia. I first was an opera singer three careers ago. This attention to rhythm and silence has transferred over to writing. For me, breath is everything. My entire use of line breaks depends on this, which I believe makes my poems different. It gives the poem room to expand.

Cynthia: In your  essay “Sum of all parts” for The League of Canadian Poets Feminist Caucus in their publication Women and Multimedia, you say that “Authenticity in collaboration is absolutely critical.” That really struck a chord with me, since you live authentically in all the ways that you work, both independently and with other poets and artists in performances large and small. How can poets bring authenticity to their voice and work?

Jude: I really do believe we should be writing from our own reality. Nothing is so insignificant it can’t be turned into a poem. Love, pain, loss, joy and death are not small and we all recognize this as the human condition. It is something we as poets need to affirm, that no life is so small it can’t be written about. That is what I shall be looking for in this competition.

Cynthia: Who are your favourite poets and influences?

Jude: My favourite poets are Gary Geddes, Leonard Cohen, Lorna Crozier, Rachel Rose, Sylvia Plath and Mark Doty, to name a few.

I was a child of the sixties and because of this I was able to hear some pretty amazing lyrics. I know I was influenced a great deal by Cohen, Dylan and Mitchell.

Cynthia: What poems either classic or contemporary have most resonated with you and what was it about them that captured you?

Jude: “A Display of Mackerel,” by Mark Doty, is my all time favourite poem. In such few words Doty describes death, singularity and common goals using the example of frozen fish. A perfect poem!

Cynthia: You’ve been a tremendous mentor in the writing community, lifting others up and helping them establish trust and confidence in their unique voices, whether one on one informally, through Pandora’s collective Poetic Pairings, school classroom visits or community workshops. We’re incredibly grateful to have you as this year’s contest judge. What advice do you have for our members composing for Literary Writes?

Jude: Share your poem after you’ve edited it to death, and ask your listener or reader which words or phrases they loved the most. It is really important to have a sounding board, another eye and ear.

I’m so looking forward to receiving this year’s poems. I will treat each one gently!

Cynthia: Thank you so much for your time!

Jude: You’re welcome, it’s been a pleasure.

BC Writers can submit to Literary Writes at this link. The rules are posted here too: https://fbcw.submittable.com/submit/153666/fbcw-literary-writes-2020

Jude Neale is a Canadian poet, vocalist, retired master teacher, spoken word performer, editor and mentor. She has been shortlisted, highly commended and a finalist for many international and national competitions. Jude has written eight books. Her poetry collection, A Quiet Coming of Light, (Leaf Press) was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Jude’s book Splendid in its Silence (SPM Publications) won publication in London in 2018. As well, in the same year, Jude and Bonnie Nish started an online collaboration which led them to write Cantata in Two Voices (Ekstasis Editions) in fifty challenging days. Her book, A Blooming, was published (Ekstasis Editions) in May 2019 and We Sing Ourselves Back in June, 2019. One of her poems was chosen by Britain’s Poet Laureate to ride the buses on the Channel Islands where she was a featured reader at the Guernsey International Literary festival. Jude’s volume, Impromptu, will be published by Ekstasis Editions and she also will be writer-in-residence at HistoricJoy Kogawa House in 2020.

The Pandora’s Collective Annual Poetry Contest is officially open!

The Pandora’s Collective Annual Poetry Contest is one of the most affordable contests going and your entry fee supports a fabulous outreach organization!

Deadline: January 15, 2020
Winners announced March 1, 2020

​Entry Fees:
$5/poem (or 5 poems for $20)

Prizes:
1st: $100 & publication, 2nd: $50 & publication, 3rd: $25 & publication.
​Publication is for one year, on the Pandora’s Collective website.
​
This year’s judges are Cynthia Sharp and Trevor Carolan:

Cynthia Sharp is the City of Richmond’s 2019 Writer in Residence. She is a full member of The League of Canadian Poets and The Writers’ Union of Canada and on the executive of the Federation of British Columbia Writers. She’s featured at Word Vancouver, The Simon Fraser University Reading Series, Spoken Ink, Words on Fire in Port Alberni, Poesic Fest in Denver, the Writers Read Series in Toronto and other literary events through North America. Her work has been published and broadcast internationally and is used in classrooms in Canada, the U.S. and Scotland. Poems from her book Rainforest in Russet can be found in journals such as CV2, Lantern Magazine and untethered, among others.

​Trevor Carolan’s work includes many books of non-fiction, poetry, translation, and anthologies, as well as journalism and interviews. He served as literary coordinator for the XV Olympic Winter Games in Calgary, and has been Coordinator of writing and publishing programs at the Banff Centre. He has also worked as media advocate on behalf of Aboriginal land claims and Pacific Coast watershed issues. A former elected Councillor in North Vancouver, he holds a PhD. for studies in Literature, Ecology and ideas of the Sacred in International Relations. His documentary film Cascadia: The Life and Breath of the World features appearances by many distinguished eco-writers. He teaches English and Creative Writing at University of the Fraser Valley, and is Co-editor of Pacific Rim Review of Books. His eco-lit collection Cascadia: The Life and Breath of the World received a Best American Essays Citation in 2013.

You can find out more on the Pandora Outreach Society’s website: Enter Here

Tiny Tweaks

I don’t worry at all about these types of tiny tweaks when writing, but on later rereads, I consider removing “as though” or “seems” when I can and going for a harder hitting line without it. It’s always a judgement call. In act one of a fantasy or speculative fiction story, “as though” might be necessary to bring the reader and character into a new reality, but whenever I can, I take it out. It was the last tweak in my poem “The Emerald,” which is the name of a rare type of hummingbird, as well as an obvious jewel. This is the unpolished draft with “as though” and below it the final copy. I also made a tiny tweak to reduce a dash to a comma. I like to punctuate grammatically correctly in most of my long poems, depending on the mood and voice of the narrator and how formal I want the piece to be, but I try to avoid periods and semicolons when I can and use dashes and commas for flow. If I can use a comma or dash instead of a period, that’s the way I lean for flow. There’s also the debate of whether or not the end of a line needs a comma. I tend to add them when I’m punctuating the whole piece formally, but it’s always an aesthetic and stylistic choice. Different poems can demand different punctuation of us.

My Why as a Writer

As writers we’re often asked to find, connect with and know the why behind our projects and practice. It’s a way of keeping them in control and staying true to ourselves and values through all the stages of creation, editing, publishing and marketing. Hermann Hesse captures so well what the dreaming inner nirvana part of the writing process means to me, my why for this lifestyle of meditating with characters and scenes I channel (or create so passionately it feels like channeling when I’m all the way in with them), of writing down dreams, of creating safe spaces in my mind and bringing some of them to the page for others, the real why for the deep inner stories of gentleness that mean the most to me, the meditative state I long to live in. The photo is from the Gaia Wellness Retreat’s Facebook page. What is your why for writing?

Love After Love by Derek Walcott

This is another poem I like to use in sensory writing workshops. We’ll be reading it at the Minoru Centre for Active Living in Richmond on Tuesday in our session for registered participants, posted here for anyone wanting to peek ahead and anyone wishing they could come but having to work.

Please Come Home by Jane Hooper

This is the poem I often open Sensory Writing Workshops with, “Please Come Home” by Jane Hooper.

I’m still figuring out how to post poetry in WordPress without each line becoming a new paragraph, but for now sharing it is more important than posting it perfectly. For everyone in Richmond who wants to come to my Sensory Writing Workshop but has to work tomorrow and for all of your reading:

Please Come Home

by Jane Hooper

Please come home. Please come home.

Find the place where your feet know how to walk

And follow your own trail home.

Please come home. Please come into your own body,

Your own vessel, your own Earth.

Please come home into each and every cell

And fully into the space that surrounds you.

Please come home. Please come home to trusting yourself,

and your instincts and your ways and your knowings,

And even the particular quirks of your personality.

Please come home. Please come home and once you are firmly there,

please stay awhile and come to deep rest within.

Please treasure your home. Please love and embrace your home.

Please get a deep, deep sense of what it’s like to be truly home.

Please come home. Please come home and when you’re really, really ready,

And there’s a detectable urge on the outbreath, then please come out.

Please come home and please come forward.

Please express who you are to us, and please trust us

To see you and hear you

and recognize you as best we can.

Please come home. Please come home and let us know

all the nooks and crannies that are calling to be seen.

Please come home, and let us know the More

that is there that wants to come out.

Please come home. Please come home,

and when you feel yourself home, please welcome us too,

for we too forget that we belong and are welcome,

and that we are called to express and fully and be who we are.

Please come home. Please come home,

you and you and you and me.

Thank you Earth for welcoming us,

and thank you touch of eyes and ears and skin,

touch of love for welcoming us.

May we wake up and remember who we truly are.

Please come home. Please come home. Please come home.

 

 

 

 

From The Editor’s Chair Week 2

As a writer, I tend to gather up thoughts through the day into a file, especially after a vibrant walk in nature, whether it’s around my block appreciating the beauty of flowers and trees, or by the cleansing ions of an invigorating beach. The first version of the poem “Crescent Moon” was a collection of imagery I scribbled down after walking along the sand admiring the sparkles of minerals eroded into tiny particles and remembering how brave my central Canadian friend was to dip her feet in the cold March water. I didn’t tweak a lot to get it ready for Rainforest in Russet, but I did organize the images into grammatically correct sentences by adding the verb “rest” into the first stanza and deciding to punctuate. I go back and forth on punctuation. I write freely, then experiment with punctuation in the editing stage and trust my gut on which way I prefer the poem to be, punctuated or not, depending on length, theme, voice, etc.

Most writers have our own personal awkwardness to smooth out in the editing stage. Mine is phrasing like “in pastel hues of sky.” My first drafts have a tendency to be laden with unnecessary prepositions. “In pastel hues of sky” got ironed out into “under a pastel sky,” while “tranquility of branches” became “tranquil branches.”

I never worry about awkwardness when I’m gathering thoughts to turn into a poem, but I catch and address elements of it when I read aloud or let the work sit for awhile. As always, this piece could continue to be gently improved. I look at most poems as works in progress and revisit them when preparing for readings.

As for the commas at the end of lines, I go back and forth on that. I’m tending to want to take them out this morning, since the end of a line already implies a pause and they may be redundant. I try to just be consistent with whichever way I go on commas at the end of lines. It’s a tough call – they’re part of formal punctuation and have been used by many classic poets, but if they’re unnecessary, I may need to let them go. It’s important to remember that language is creative, especially in poetry, and while there are grammatical conventions, as publisher and editor Kyle Hawke often reassures writers, it is not essential to adhere to them.

Crescent Moon First Draft

Crescent Moon

the relief of the waves

slowing to a heartbeat

the tranquility of branches

in pastel hues of sky

rhythms of winter 

subsiding to spring 

like light from an ended star

the seashore blessed 

in caramel and lilac shells 

like Aurora Borealis

sprinkled across the sand

brave bare soles and paws

taste the cool ripples

the strength of kindness

in every changing season

 

Crescent Moon Published Version in Rainforest in Russet

Crescent Moon

Tranquil branches rest

under a pastel sky,

waves slow to a heartbeat,

rhythms of winter

subsiding to spring,

like light from an ended star.

The seashore blessed

in caramel and lilac shells,

like Aurora Borealis

sprinkled across the sand,

brave bare soles and paws

taste the cool ripples,

the strength of kindness

in every changing season.

I often feel like two personalities in terms of treating writing and editing as two separate processes. There’s Writer Cynthia, who created these images that might be good and can’t bear to part with them, and there’s Editor Cynthia, who’s trying to clean these poems up for readers. I know that trusting my inner editor is the key to becoming a mature writer, but appeasing Writer Cynthia is a tricky business. Editor Cynthia is usually on the money, so if Writer Cynthia is so ridiculously attached with a few phrases that she feels a need to save them in an imagery file, it can become a sentence in a prose project. At least I tell her that until it’s time to edit the novel it lands in 🙂 When I work too long at the computer, it can seem fuzzy whether to indulge my writer or editor self, but I generally listen to my gut as an editor during the editing stage after the work has sat for awhile.

This is another example of a poem that was trimmed before publishing. I was reading Walt Whitman at the time I penned the phrases, hand washing my clothes in the summer night, noticing that the water sounded like the gentle flute notes that used to come in my window from a neighbour practising music.

Nightingale First Draft

Nightingale

a freely chosen adult life

the moon in an artist’s palette

hands dipping in water

the softness of washing

yellow basin

fuchsia clothes

a rhapsody of flute notes

 

Nightingale Second Draft

Nightingale

a freely chosen adult life

the moon in an artist’s palette

hands dipping in water

a rhapsody of flute notes

The jury is still out on “Nightingale.” On the one hand, the yellow basin and fuchsia clothes add specific colour imagery, and on the other hand, I’m not sure they’re necessary. The next time I spend some editing time with this little piece, I may need to tweak the colour imagery rather than delete it, or consider a different set of lines to add specific visual imagery.

Anyway, thanks for indulging me in sharing my Friday morning activity, the tightening of poems and prose 🙂

 

From the Editor’s Chair

I get asked often about how I edit my work. I consider editing an ongoing process of refining our unique voices to reach our audiences as best as we can. I write and edit in different ways for different purposes and publications.

This piece below is for a new collection, Meditations for Writers, coming out at the end of the month. It’s a cross between poetry and non-fiction, so it’s a little bit lighter than the types of poems I send to literary journals. It’s got a more open, uplifting feel to it than work I send to literary magazines, which tend to favour juxtaposition and a strong turn to the story.

At any rate, tightening techniques can still enhance the piece. This is the first draft, an excerpt from the ongoing file of notes I type to myself as I ease into the day:

 

Following Your Passion

before interruption

the sound of trees

the way it feels to enter morning

on a sacred writing day

skin cleansed in soothing raw honey

tiny increments of movement

dandelion seed sailing in sea air

spiderwebs resilient in cold dawn

all the aspects of peace within

you were always allowed

the wind in July leaves

yourself    stories    freedom

strong from the mountaintop 

 

On a reread a few days later, I let the most abstract line, “all the aspects of peace within,” go, changed “were” to “are” for present tense so that it’s uplifting to the reader rather than an acknowledgement of the sorrow of my past, the struggle with feeling allowed and reclaiming my right to be. For a literary journal, sorrow and struggle create the tension of juxtaposition, which would be welcome in that context, but for a coaching book that’s intended primarily to lift others into their own voices for inner nirvana, I removed the sorrow of my personal struggle and just give readers a momentum of energy to lead them into writing. I also removed “the” from in front of “wind.” Whenever I can without disrupting rhythm or flow, I remove any unnecessary “the” or “that.” It still has a ways to go – “soothing” and “raw” might be one too many adjectives preceding “honey,” but for now, as a second draft, I’m sitting with it to decide. I may need to take out “your” from the title and “always” from the last stanza, but I’ll let it be for a few days before the the third draft.

The second draft reads:

 

Following Your Passion

before interruption

the sound of trees

the way it feels to enter morning

on a sacred writing day

skin cleansed in soothing raw honey

tiny increments of movement

dandelion seed sailing in sea air

spiderwebs resilient in cold dawn

you are always allowed

wind in July leaves

yourself    stories    freedom

strong from the mountaintop

Anyway, that’s the news from the editor’s seat today. Happy Writing & Editing!

 

The Journey Begins

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton