Gaslamp Pulp: Gaslamp Pulp vol.7 FANTASY — Poetry

Overview
Gaslamp Pulp is a magazine that takes the term 'pulp' not as a pejorative but as a lineage—the tradition of writing that prioritizes narrative drive, vivid imagery, and a certain unapologetic pleasure in the strange. Volume 7 turns its attention to fantasy, a mode capacious enough to accommodate sword-and-sorcery, mythic retellings, weird fable, and speculative lyric. The editors signal a preference for the pulpy, but the qualifier 'not required' leaves room for work that engages fantasy's atmospheres and architectures without adopting its genre furniture wholesale. The reading period runs through January 2027, and the magazine reads blind, a practice that asks poets to trust the work itself to carry the submission. What the magazine offers is publication in a digital issue and a free digital copy of that issue for each contributor. There is no fee to submit, no prize attached, and no cash payment. This is a literary magazine operating within the economy of exposure and community that has long sustained small-press poetry—an economy that poets should assess honestly against their own goals. The absence of a fee is meaningful; it lowers the barrier to entry and signals that the editors are not monetizing the slush pile. The absence of payment is also meaningful, and poets who require remuneration for their work should look elsewhere without prejudice. The constraints are few but firm. Submissions must be original and human-authored; AI-generated work is explicitly disqualified. Previously published poems are accepted, provided the poet discloses the prior publication and the work was not previously accepted by Nat 1. Fan fiction and work that infringes existing copyright are excluded. Simultaneous submissions are permitted, with the expectation that the poet will notify the magazine if the work is accepted elsewhere so that first publication credit can be assigned correctly. The blind-reading policy requires that no identifying information appear anywhere on the submission, including the file name—a detail that trips up more poets than it should.