Ludlow Press Poetry
Guidelines
Submit up to 6 short original poems. You must be the author. Any form, including free form, is fine.
You may submit previously published works only if you indicate credit.E-mail submissions only. Please send only ONE e-mail with all your poems cut and pasted
into the body of your e-mail.
Also please include:
(1) your full name,
(2) your favorite email address,
(3) your mailing address (should we need to contact you by regular mail).We will not read attachments due to virus concerns. Any attachments sent will be deleted
without notification. Mail to poetry editorPlease put “Poetry Submission” in the subject line of the e-mail.
If we accept your work, we will contact you by e-mail for your approval. We will ask for one-time,
electronic rights. You’re work will remain available to everyone, posted in our archives.Once published online, all rights revert back to you. We ask that you give Ludlow Press
credit as a previous publisher, but that is a courtesy, not a requirement.
If you are interested in book-length submissions click here.
Hey, we realize how tough it is out there. It's a cold, cruel world for poets!
Check out this excerpt from The Losers' Club to see how one poet—
Richard Perez's alter ego: Martin Sierra—deals with the dreaded ordeal of “submissions.”
From Page 32 of The Losers' Club: Complete Restored Edition!
——————————————
That night, later.—
Bag of chow mein in hand, Martin entered the lobby of his apartment building, stopping at his mailbox. If there was one thing he truly dreaded, this was it .…
Anything? Hmm.
Bills, bills; then two padded business-size envelopes, each conveying Martin’s name and address, in an exact, if all-too-familiar typewritten style.
He knew what they contained without opening them, but opened them anyway.
In the first envelope, along with his returned, badly creased work, was the standard rejection form (dirty and illegible from being copied ad infinitum); in the second he found … nothing. Not even a small “no thank you” note. But wait! What’s this? … Martin slowly unfolded the rumpled page in disbelief. Across the face of one of his best poems—was it? Could it be?—A smeared mustard stain!? …
“Mutha’-fucks!”
14.
Once inside his apartment, Martin calmly locked the door, put down his belongings, unbuttoned his jacket.
That done, he sharply tore the rejection note and mustard-stained page in half—along with all the other ruined copies of his work—and, entering the room, flung them— “Join the party!”—onto the mountain of rejection letters building up in the far corner.
Regaining his composure, Martin regarded the news-print image of Charles Bukowski he had taped on his wall.
“Pop, how did you do it?” he asked aloud. “How did you fuckin’ survive?”
Although perhaps Bukowski’s pocked and ravaged face offered a clue.
“Us against them! Us against them! … ”
With Buk’s image giving him strength, Martin-the-martyr sat before his outmoded portable word-processor, printing out another stack of self-addressed envelopes. Preparing for his next assault.
Beyond the empty Chinese food containers, the fresh copies of his poems and stories—done that day at work— rested neatly in an open file folder on his sofa bed. On top was a fat roll of stamps.
The mind-numbing chore of submitting work to small press publications and periodicals involved the necessary inclusion of a self-addressed-stamped envelope with each manuscript. (Not including a SASE, it was said, would only confirm one’s … “amateur” status.)
Of course (sure as a hangover followed a bout of heavy drinking), it would follow that later—much later—it would be these selfsame envelopes that would return bearing the obligatory bad news.
And much of the humiliation, as Martin saw it, lay right there: it resulted not just from being rejected, but in having to provide your own envelope for it!
At times it was hard to imagine a worse co-dependent relationship.
The author, Richard Perez
“The Losers' Club is a vibrant and hopeful anthem for all of us 'losers' who choose not to wallow (for too long!) in our despair and who find the will to keep searching.”
— Heather Lowcock, Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Lexington KY*BOOK SENSE 76 TOP TEN PICK!*
Find out more about this great title!
