Poetose — Submit a Book (and receive TRANSLATING BLUE by Sherre Vernon)
Overview
Poetose is a small press with a declared interest in the revolutionary and the nontraditional, and its current reading period is for books intended for publication in 2027 and 2028. The press explicitly invites anthologies, novels-in-verse, prose poetry, narrative poetry, lyric essays, ars poeticas, works in list form, journals, handwritten works, manifestos, cartoons, and other hybrid or unclassifiable endeavors. This is not a call for individual poems or excerpts; it is a call for complete manuscripts that operate as books. The press states that it welcomes unsolicited submissions from both established and emerging writers, and simultaneous submissions are permitted provided the press is notified if the work is accepted elsewhere. What distinguishes this opportunity is its transparency about both its schedule and its economics. The reading fee is $26, and every submitter receives a copy of *Translating Blue* by Sherre Vernon. The press also maintains a stated policy of waiving the fee for writers experiencing financial hardship, requiring only an email to hello@poetose.com. That combination—a paid submission model with a book in return and a hardship waiver—suggests a press attentive to the material conditions of literary labor, even as it asks writers to participate in the cost of reading. The curatorial vision, as described, favors work that resists easy categorization. The list of encouraged forms is deliberately expansive, moving from the traditional (narrative poetry) to the marginal (cartoons, handwritten works, manifestos) without hierarchy. The phrase 'revolutionary, nontraditional endeavors of love' functions as an aesthetic signal: Poetose appears to be looking for manuscripts that are formally restless and emotionally serious, not merely experimental for its own sake. Writers with book-length projects that sit awkwardly within commercial or academic categories may find this a rare fit.