Monday Musings: Poetry sites to visit or submit your work to
As noted in previous posts, there are plenty of great poetry sites out there to browse, get ideas from, or submit your own material to: https://zumpoems.com/2025/10/14/poetry-publications/ I have also mentioned Chill Subs and Duotrope as easy-to-use resources to discover poetry journals.
I want to call out one site I have not mentioned previously — great for browsing, sparking creative ideas for your own poems, and submitting poems that would be thoughtfully reviewed and not automatically rejected because they don’t align with current MFA biases. This site effectively curates material to provide a good dose of optimism, focusing on “exploring themes of joy, healing, and the sacred in everyday life.” The editor of the site has been voted one of the top ten editors by users of Chill Subs: https://www.chillsubs.com/lists/great-editors-2025, and Duotrope has also featured an interview with this editor: https://duotrope.com/interview/editor/38154/feed-the-holy. The editor also has other duties (editor of Masticadores USA), which she excels at.
The site is Feed the Holly, located at https://feedthehol.blogspot.com/ and edited by Barbara Leonhard. Feed the Holly currently accepts reprints and poems previously shared on blogs. Back in 2024, Barbara provided some useful insight on her launch of Feed the Holy: https://extraordinarysunshineweaver.blog/2024/11/13/feed-the-holy-a-new-literary-ezine/
Another site that focuses on positive poetry and accepts reprints and blog posts is Euonia Review founded and edited by Ian Chung: https://eunoiareview.wordpress.com/
For those that write in or love to read contemporary formal verse, I highly recommend The Society of Classical Poets whose chief editor is Evan Mantyk
Still another website that accepts blog posts and reprints is Edge of Humanity Magazine: https://edgeofhumanity.com/ Editor and curator extraordinaire Joelcy Kay takes this one step further and uses this journal to promote individual contributors’ websites. All of these sites include a link to your website (what is termed backlinks and which help visibility of your site in search engine and AI queries), but Edge of Humanity includes other information that will help drive traffic to your website, including listing published books and additional website links.
I also want to mention an example of Light Verse with substance, Celeste DeSario’s latest poem at New Verse News: https://thenewversenews.substack.com/p/nvn-monday-im-sorry-dave-im-afraid. This piece digs deep into the essence of the risk of AI — risk not driven by ill intent, or any other emotion, but by just executing an objective and sometimes inadvertently becoming a “math equation gone wild.”
I have previously mentioned New Verse News multiple times here, but glad to mention it again — it’s a great journal for poets of all backgrounds and poetic preferences to submit their work, knowing it will be judged on merit and not because it strictly follows any particular style favored or expected by the editor. James Penha is the New Verse News editor and, as is the case with each of the editors mentioned earlier, deserves high praise for his selection of material and for providing readers an engaging reading experience; also, as is the case with the other editors mentioned, he will welcome your submissions with the respect and consideration they deserve.
