We read submissions year-round and aim to respond within four weeks (often sooner). We accept simultaneous submissions, but please notify us promptly if your work is accepted elsewhere.
What We Publish
Original, previously unpublished poetry, including translations—We are chasing timeless beauty with natural, mythic or philosophic tones—in traditional forms, including (but not limited to):
Alliterative Verse (accentual-alliterative traditions, or new alliterative structures provided the alliteration is structural rather than decorative)
Metrical & Rhymed forms (sonnets & variants—blank verse, odes, elegies, pastoral)
*Posts to your own social media are not considered ‘published’ work.
Note on Diction:
You may employ any poetic diction from any age; we do not discriminate against appropriately deployed archaisms or inversions of grammar. We simply feel that the language should feel inevitable. We do not believe that beauty can mean or require the abandonment of older forms of language—or that artistic merit is only located in the latest unheard-of constructions. Do not be afraid to use modifiers or construct narratives or be accessible to a common audience—a poem that is understood after one or two readings can be as good or better than something that requires academic analysis.
If you have an audio or video recording of your poem, please include a link; we’d love to feature readings alongside work.
Themes are open but we prefer verse that will speak through the ages and reference existing myth or be mythopoeic. We seek work that is universal, not wholly absorbed with the self-reference—through precise, accessible imagery, balancing wonder and restraint, vulnerability and intellectual seriousness. Please read the selection criteria below for more information.
The Five Criteria (Not dogmas)
Disciplined Formal Structure
The poem must demonstrate commanding use of traditional prosody (meter, rhyme, stanzaic patterns) as a generative framework, not ornament. Variations or departures are purposeful—serving thematic revelation rather than mere rebellion—acknowledging form’s role in reflecting an ontological order while allowing contemporary adaptation.
Sonic Inevitability and Musical Depth
Language must aspire to musicality through rhythm, end and or internal rhyme, alliteration. Every word earns its place, feels inevitable rather than forced, fostering delight and memorability rather than arbitrary experimentation.
Coherent Vision Amid Complexity
While permitting controlled discontinuity or ambiguity to mirror modern experience, the poem must pursue underlying unity and coherence. Fragmentation, if present, resolves into meaningful order—rejecting postmodern “unmaking” in favor of a trajectory toward insight or transcendence.
Reverent yet Transformative Engagement with Tradition
Intertextuality and allusion engage precursors (mythic, literary, philosophical) with reverence for the Western tradition’s pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty, but metabolize them graciously, illuminating loss, longing, or renewal rather than mere subversion.
Balanced Emotional and Metaphysical Resonance
Tone achieves multivalent equilibrium: wonder and restraint, vulnerability and intellectual seriousness, subtle irony tempered by humane affirmation. The poem discloses something of being—often liminal or sacred—through precise, accessible imagery, avoiding cynicism, or opaque detachment.
What we do not publish
- Free verse that lacks systematic structural use of meter, rhyme, or alliteration
- Work that relies on an abundance of overly abstract, novel metaphors that do not inform the reader but are in fact, opaque or incongruent.
- Work that prioritizes (rather than attempting to resolve or transcend)—the mundane, the cynical, shock, grievance, ironic fragmentation, depressing rumination, or conceptual incoherence.
- Erotica, extreme violence, or writing containing excessive explicit language, or unfair prejudice.
- Work that is overt political activism
- Work that is not entirely the author’s own creation.
Submission Guidelines
- Send 3 short poems (less than 40 lines each) or one longer piece up to (approx. 150 lines) in a single .docx file to traditionalpoet@proton.me
- Each poem should be on a separate page.
- If you would like to add an explanatory note or gloss to your work feel free to do so. We have a specific Author’s Note section under poems that is hidden unless accessed by the reader. We believe people may gain a greater appreciation for poetry they can understand. See an example under the poem Uther & Igraine
- Include a brief third-person bio (up to 200 words) and any relevant social media handles as well as headshot image (if you want to)
- Use standard font (Times New Roman, size 12)
- Attach the .docx file to the email. No other file types or links to files, please.
- Reprints are considered on a case-by-case basis (we prefer unpublished work).
Rights and Publication
Authors retain all rights. By submitting, you grant The Fyr first serial rights and permission to archive the work online and publish the work in (an electronic or print) monthly or annual review issue.
Contributors will receive a complimentary PDF of any issue in which their work appears and will be featured on our social media accounts.
Payment
We do not offer payment to authors at present. We do however run “contests” that offer guaranteed prizes, check the menus for information.
We offer careful editorial attention, prompt and respectful responses, and a committed readership that values your poetry.