The Poet’s Place

Welcome to The Poet’s Place

Where our goal is to find and publish the best new poetry that is out there. 

 “Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech.”  Simonides

Who I Am

Who I am and my mission:

I, like many of you out there, have been a struggling writer for years. I have submitted countless poems to many different magazines and publishers only to be told they weren’t accepting submissions or my work wasn’t what they were looking for. As a poet it is very difficult to get your work out there for others to read and enjoy. Most literary agents work with fiction/nonfiction writers and not poets. Usually the only option a poet has is to self publish their work and then try to promote it themselves. This process can be very time consuming and expensive. So what I do is I recruit poets from around the world to submit their work to me to be included in an anthology.

There are some gimmicks out there where you submit your work and you hear that they would like to publish your work and then they offer you deals to buy the anthology that your work will appear in. Most of these places make all of their money off of the poets whose work they are printing. If you tell them you don’t want to buy their book then your work doesn’t get published in their anthology. I have been taken in by these schemes in the past and therefore know how they work. I got tired of spending $30-$50 to buy an anthology that would include just one of my poems. Then when I wouldn’t buy their book they wouldn’t include my poem. The way I am different is I don’t try to sell you any book. If I choose your work to be included in one of my anthologies it gets published whether or not you buy a copy. My goal is to find the best poems and poets out there and get their work into circulation.

If your work is chosen you will be contacted via email and told what website(s) you can use if you are interested in owning a copy of the book. That’s between you and the book seller/dealer. I don’t handle any of the orders. I’m not in the book selling business. I am a writer and an editor, that’s it. If you wonder how I can afford to do this and pay my bills that is because I am a teacher. I love to teach and I am an advisor to the writing/poetry club at the school where I work. The reason why I decided to start this as a side project is because there is so much good poetry out there I feel it needs to be published some way some how. When we cover poetry in class some of my students don’t like it because it was written by people and about things way before their time. So I started searching for new poetry by new poets to work into my lessons. That is what has led me to this ongoing project to try and find the best works of poetry that are out there today.

I sponsor a couple of poetry contest a year and give out prizes. My Grand Prize is $500. I know that this isn’t much money but I hope that it will help to cover the cost that you may incur. Things like: money spent on paper, printer ink, envelopes, and postage for your submissions and possibly even go towards self publishing your own book of poetry.

Thank you and I look forward to reading your work