The Emma Press launches biennial call for poetry pamphlet submissions
The Emma Press has announced that it is accepting poetry manuscripts submissions until 24th January 2020. There are two categories – pamphlets for adults and collections for children – which will be judged by publisher Emma Dai’an Wright and poet Edward van de Vendel.
The Birmingham-based publisher is inviting poets to submit 6 pages of poems for either or both categories. There is a £10 submission fee, which is limited to one per poet and allows the poet to submit a manuscript to one or both of the categories. The selected manuscripts will be published in 2021.
The poetry pamphlets for adults will be judged by Emma Dai’an Wright, and poets can choose to submit to any of the three award-winning poetry pamphlet series produced by The Emma Press: The Emma Press Poetry Pamphlets, The Emma Press Picks, and the Art Squares. The Emma Press has been shortlisted for the prestigious Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlet Publishers four times, winning once in 2016.
Bezdelki, an Emma Press Pick by Carol Rumens, won the Michael Marks Award for Best Pamphlet in 2018. Other award-winning pamphlets include Oils by Stephen Sexton, which was the Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice winner in 2014. Malkin by Camille Ralphs and Paisley by Rakhshan Rizwan were both shortlisted for the Michael Marks Award for Best Pamphlet
The poetry collections for children will be judged by Wright and acclaimed Dutch poet Edward van de Vendel, author of the bestselling Superguppie series, the first of which – Super Guppy – was published by The Emma Press earlier this year. Poets are invited to send in manuscripts aimed at children aged 6+ up to teens. The Emma Press specialises in children’s poetry books and is the only publisher of translated children’s poetry in the UK.
The first two original Emma Press children’s poetry books – Moon Juice by Kate Wakeling and Wain by Rachel Plummer – have both been nominated for the Carnegie Medal, and Moon Juice won the CLiPPA in 2017.
Publisher Emma Dai’an Wright said: “The poetry pamphlets and children’s poetry collections are the flagship series of my publishing house and I’m looking forward to adding new voices to them. I feel like poetry pamphlets and children’s poetry books occupy a less-publicised area of the poetry world, with fewer awards and less shelf-space in bookshops, and yet they are both absolutely vital to the poetry ecosystem, in developing poetry writers and readers.”
Poet Edward van de Vendel said: “I think that children’s poetry should be written from within a child’s perspective, as opposed to about a child’s perspective. Rhyme and rhythm, if applied meticulously, are also of great importance. Good children’s poetry should show the reader an aspect of the world in a whole new way.”
The Emma Press was last open for manuscripts in Autumn 2017, and has since published 8 pamphlets from this call, with 5 more due out in 2020. The full submissions guidelines can be read here.
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