- At April 08, 2005
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
4
After a recent discussion on one of the poetry-related mailing lists about how long to wait for a response on a poem, I thought I should talk about a submission from August 1 of 2004, about which I had queried the journal multiple times with no response. This submission story just had a happy ending – the journal contacted me to say they wanted to publish one of the poems, and apologized for having multiple e-mail problems that prevented them from answering sooner. So, don’t necessarily write off those older submissions, especially if it’s a journal you like. And, two, don’t rely on e-mail to work – follow up once with snail mail and once with e-mail, if you like, that way you’ve got all the bases covered.
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
Suzanne
Yay!!!!!!!!
early hours of sky
this is the first happy ending I’ve ever heard to that sort of story. I am glad. Congrats.
jeannine
Thanks TE and Suzanne! It’s the second time I’ve had this happen in the last two months – another submissio I’d written off (e-mail, to a British journal, of all things) after ten or eleven months wrote to say they wanted to publish a poem I had sent them. The poem had already been published in my chapbook, but they wanted to publish it anyway. So, although I’ve always been one to say, write off those old submissions! Move on with your life! Now I’m not so sure…
Kells
Very cool! J9- Email me! and let me know who.
I have a couple out from fall of 2004 I should probably respond to as well.