How to format for submission

As you know in order for you to be taken seriously you have to cast your masterpiece in the correct format.

Enter William Shunn. He has saved me time and again. Below is an example of how to format a poem for submission to a publication. Next week we’ll have a look at how to format a short story.

Your name and contact information appear in the top-left corner of each poem. If a poem runs more than a single page, each subsequent page requires a header with page number in the upper-right corner. Read more about formatting and submitting poetry manuscripts here.

William Shunn                                            27 lines
12 Courier Lane
Pica's Font, NY 10010
(212) 555-1212
format@shunn.net




                           MEMORY LANE



          She strains at the leash,
          Trying to turn the corner.
          "Not that way," I say.

          But Ella insists,
          So I give in and follow.
          Not that big a deal.

          This short, narrow lane,
          It's a valid path back home,
          Not such a detour.

          Along the sidewalk
          We rush, my arm stretched out straight, 
          Not pausing to sniff.

          She stops at the porch,
          Looks at the door, looks at me,
          Not old now but young.

          We were gone six years,
          Back now in the neighborhood
          Not even six weeks.

          I wish we could knock,
          But our friends are not at home,
          Not now, not for years.

          They fled this city
          Even sooner than we did,
          Not fond of Gotham

          But fond of our dog,
          Who wags on their former stoop,
          Not fenced in by time.

William Shunn                                            18 lines
12 Courier Lane
Pica's Font, NY 10010
(212) 555-1212
format@shunn.net




                SALT CRUSTED ON AUTOMOTIVE GLASS



     Between me, safe in my seat on this bus,
     And the decadent majesty of the salmon-red cliffs of
          eastern Utah,
     A ghost landscape stands sentinel,
     As if etched into the glass by a cadre of capering
          goblins.

     The residue of a hasty window washing--
     Loops and whorls of dirt left untouched, uncleansed,
     Unrepentent, at the bottom of the glass on each fluid
          upstroke--
     It sparkles, gritty and salt-sharp in the oblique
          sunlight,
     Like a series of pearly solar flares,
     Or a graph of the desert's pulsebeat,
     Or spectral negatives of a washed-out sandstone arch,
     Photographed in stages over eons of time--
     Snapshots from a child-god's flip-book--
     Frothing, leaping, peaking, then falling back into the
          ground
     Like fountains of earth,
     A time-lapse planetary signature
     That will melt and return to dust
     With the next unlikely rain.