Tips for Selecting Your Own Haiku (and Senryu) for Submission
So, you’ve written some haiku and you’d like to get them published. How do you decide which pieces to submit and where? This is a question only you can decide—the answer will be different for every poet.
Some poets rank their favorite haiku and/or general poetry publications and use this as a submission order. When they receive a rejection from their first choice of publication, they move on and submit to their second, and so on until a piece gets published. There is an elegant simplicity to this process that I admire, and I can see where it might take the sting out of a rejection to immediately send your haiku to the next journal on the list.
However, publications have their own unique flavor and style—knowing where your work is best suited for publication can save you time and hassle.
- Layout & Format – Does the journal only publish haiku with a 5/7/5 syllable count? A 3/5/3 syllable count? Modern English-language haiku with no discernable preference for lineation? One-line haiku only? Ask yourself: How does my work compare with what I’m seeing in this publication? If I write haiku that involve special formatting, is the journal equipped to handle this?
- Tone & Subject Matter – Does the publication favor haiku about nature? Modern themes? Do the pieces they publish tend to be literal, figurative, or a mix of both? Do they consider speculative works such as scifaiku and horrorku?
- Content – What is the ratio of haiku to senryu? My haiku tend to veer close to the line with senryu, so when I am looking to publish in a more traditional venue, I take care to send work that focuses on the natural world.
As always, you can send your work wherever you choose. Maybe you will push the journal or publication to move in a new direction. But, on average, you can expect more rejections if you deviate from a journal’s stated preferences.
Here are a few other things you might want to consider before sending your haiku out into the world::
Set your poetry aside before submitting it. It is hard to both create and edit from the same headspace. Like a fine wine, give your haiku time to breathe. When you revisit your writing, ask yourself: Is this poem the best it can be? Am I proud to have written it? Does the haiku still resonate with me (feel multi-layered or “sing” on the page)? Am I ready for these poems to go “live” or should I hang on to them for now?
Do your haiku have a common theme? You might wish to set these poems aside for an eventual book or chapbook publication. Most publishers want to see some unpublished work in a poetry manuscript.
Consider the publication. Your published poetry is your calling card; you are building up a poetic reputation. It can be tempting to publish anywhere and everywhere, but it is wise to exhibit restraint. Submit to places where you will be proud to see your work displayed both now and in the future. If the publication is full of typos or only publishes derogatory content, steer clear.
What journals and publications do I read? If you like reading a journal, you should consider writing for it. Conversely, if you haven’t read a journal, or if you read a publication and you don’t like or relate to the poetry there, why submit to it?
Read the submission guidelines every time you submit. Editorial guidelines change more often than people realize. There may be a special issue planned or a guest-editor coming in. Sometimes a journal simply wants to shift focus. Reading over the submission guidelines helps to ensure that your work matches what the editors want.
Does the publication or contest want to see haiku on a specific topic or from a certain subgroup? Matthew Markworth, for example, has had two calls for haiku submissions from poets with a connection to the midwestern United States for The Midwest Haiku Traveling Rock Garden. (Next year’s submission call is baseball-themed.) Corine Timmer has a Zodiac series of haiku books that she has been curating. The most recent collection, Hexagon, celebrates The Year of the Snake. I’d anticipate her next collection will be about horses, although there isn’t a call for this yet.
Keep an eye out for unusual themes—this may help you to place your quirkier haiku. For example, the Frost Entomological Museum at Penn State University runs the annual Hexapod Haiku Challenge. You might save up your best insect haiku for this one!
Are your poems topical? If so, submit to journals with a shorter turnaround time for editorial responses.
Consider having someone look over your submission packet. I say consider here because you should have final say in your own submissions. Sometimes, I run poems past my haiku friends to see how they respond. It surprises me when they have different interpretations of my work than I do; this has led me to write stronger poems. One time, I asked my husband and kids to rank their favorites from a set of haiku I was considering for a specific submission call. I liked the poems about equally well but needed to weed a few out. I wound up enjoying this process because it gave my family a peek into the haiku world and let them see what I’d been writing, as well as helping them to hone their appreciation of haiku.
Submit your best work. I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. Not everything we write needs to be sent out for publication. In my experience, the poems I feel the greatest urge to publish immediately (usually ones I connect with on a deeply emotional level) are the ones that could use the most editing.
For more reading:
New to Haiku: Preparing Your First Submission
Do you have a suggestion for how a poet can select their own haiku for submissions? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments!
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My thanks to Kat Lehmann and Robin Smith for letting me bounce ideas around and providing me with helpful feedback. As always, any remaining errors are mine.
Comments (6)
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Thank you so much for such a great essay on how to put together submissions. I try to read where I am submitting to and look at what style editors are looking for. What I enjoy reading and what I enjoy writing. I try to subscribe to journals when I can. I don’t understand writers that don’t support the print journals, this is where we all began and is something that needs maintaining.
Thank you Julie for the wonderful tips. Thank you Alan, Joshua!!
Quite tough to send poems that are readily accepted by the editors!
I would suggest
Reading as many poems of the respective archives as possible, but not to get overshadowed by them.
Editor’s Choice are my favourite because it tightens our perspectives.
Reading the best seller Haiku books help.
Being wordless is laudable.
As long as we take haiku as meditative formula; peace and win are ensured!
Thank you!
The Pan Haiku Review for its Winter edition is looking for, and at, haiku only.
For anyone who has ever sent work to me, whether to a journal I was co-founder of such as Haijinx-haiku with humor, or Bones Journal, or later with Blo͞o Outlier Journal as sole founder and editor, now absorbed into The Pan Haiku Review, you will know that I am eclectic or rather ‘open’ to approaches and content. In fact many haiku, and other poems in BOJ and PHR have been previously rejected, and I’ve ecstatically accepted them!
What do I look for?
Nothing template or formulaic, or relying on tired or stock words, clichés or tropes, such as:
old
silent
silence
still
stillness
shadow
reflection
And other variations or over-used words and phrases including directly stating the season’s generic name/label (Spring, Summer, Autumn/Fall, falling leaves, Winter).
But I am sucker for twilight or dusk, and for snow! :-)
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I’ve found that if we look for a synonym instead, we’ll either find a much better word or find something unexpectedly different that does the job in another direction.
AVOID:
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“formulaic” synonym:
routine; run-of-the-mill; standard; or stock wording/phrasing; commonplace; overly conventional; stereotyped.
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A heron is not still all of the time!
The Late Peter Williams, born in Watford, England, brought out some marvellous and humorous verses gently poking fun at the innumerable number of clichéd oft-repeated themes or keywords/modifiers that abounded.
These particular haiku were published in 2001 as a mix of fond homage to the clichés back in the 1990s and a nudge to come up with something fresh, and from close and patient observation. I am seeing a number of these start to reappear though! ;-)
These appeared in Blithe Spirit, Journal of The British Haiku Society:
But it wasn’t just a British disease.
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too tired to get up–
my shadow goes and makes
a cup of tea
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midnight pond
a frog jumps over
the moon
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cherry blossom–
time to polish
my shoes
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branch above the river
the heron
moves about a lot
Peter Williams
Blithe Spirit Vol. II No.3 (British Haiku Society journal 2001)
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sick train the night heron shifts silt for all of us
Alan Summers
First publication: a handful of stones (March 2011) ed. Fiona Robyn & Kaspalita Thompson
Anthology: A Blackbird Sings, a small stone anthology ed. Fiona Robyn & Kaspalita Thompson (Woodsmoke Press 2012)
Melissa Allen, now editor of the astounding Password journal said back then:
“speaking of (more or less) experimental haiku I really loved your “handful of stones” entry the other day—wonderful work with the sounds of words, I kept reading it over and over aloud to myself, and most haiku do not tempt me to read them aloud …”
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irezumi the river coils into heron
Alan Summers
Publication Credit: Frogpond autumn 2013 issue (issue 36:3, Haiku Society of America)
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I’ve read, over thirty years, so many haiku, amounting to millions now, that I’m looking forward to something that doesn’t look or feel like it’s repeating something I’ve seen off and on fairly regularly in the last ten to twenty years.
I’m also probably looking for work that other editors might reject because they have a house style, where someone’s submission doesn’t fit into.
My house style?
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It’s whatever I like, love, deep appreciate, surprises, sets off goosebumps, makes me wiser, hits an emotional tone or trigger.
For the next submission re: 2025 Winter Edition (PHR6)
max. two haiku, any style will be considered.
Just two haiku to send, and they can be diametrically opposed in style, voice, tone, approach or topic.
And to add to the fun, they can be outside the 575 count, or within the 575 count:
575 haiku by Alan Summers
https://area17.blogspot.com/2016/03/575haiku-traditional-haiku-as-three.html
They can be controversial too! Why is this one controversial, I have no idea, as it hits all the targets, and though some Freshers couldn’t see the 575 syllable count, which disturbed them, others felt inspired. As a primary goal, syllable counting is not the main purpose, it’s the poem itself wherever it takes us.
Here’s the puzzlingly controversial haiku by some editors but not by others:
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night of small colour
a part of the underworld
becomes one heron
Alan Summers
First publication: Modern Haiku Vol. 45.2 Summer 2014 ed. Paul Miller
Anthology credits:
Haiku 21.2: an anthology of contemporary English-language haiku
ed. Lee Gurga and Scott Metz (Modern Haiku Press, 2025)
Haiku 2015 (Modern Haiku Press, 2015) ed. Lee Gurga and Scott Metz
Poetry as Consciousness – Haiku Forests, Space of Mind, and an Ethics of Freedom
ed. Richard Gilbert pub. Keibunsha (2018, Japan)
This haiku is classified as mythopoetic reality. The mythopoesis [is] evident in the semantic twist of “small colour” of night, a part of which “becomes one heron.”
What lies between realism and imagination, between living and dreaming, [as] a particular form of sanctuary; a space of poiesis. It seems most fragile and nuanced, insignificant and ephemeral—yet it calls or we call, in seeking deeper, more enriching, increasingly multiple, multifarious dimensions of knowing in psyche.
Wallace Stevens refers to this poetical process as “enlargement”.
Richard Gilbert, Japan
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PHR6 will embrace many approaches to haiku through mindful syntax, diction, lyrical line, and prosody. This is where a 575 haiku, a monostich haiku, and all the way through to 4-lines, and even 5 lines can somehow co-habit together!
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PHR6 will also include the debut of the long-intended haiku journal project simply called “Long Haiku Journal”
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This follows the tradition of PHR containing mini-journals inside of itself!
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Above all it’s about exploration and not a perceived blueprint of what editors want or desire or expect.
Pick your duelling haiku!
monostich
duostich
tristich
tetrastich
pentastich
Don’t just send them to PHR, try or nudge other magazines, either within the haikai fold or in other folds.
Alan Summers
Founder, editor, Pan Haiku Review aka PHR
Fantastic essay, Julie! Sage advice for any writer at any stage in their journey.
Here a few tips from my practice:
-Send a variety in each submission—including different topics, techniques, and effects.
-Don’t be afraid to send at least one “weird one” in a batch.
-Don’t give up on poems you believe in.
-One rejection (or even seven or eight) doesn’t mean the poems are ineffective or need revised. They just not have found the right audience. Of course, the opposite might be true.
-Always try to send a full submission (if you can send 5-10 haiku and 3 haibun—don’t just send 5 haiku).
-Send a mix of new and previously rejected work.
-Keep a few bangers in reserve for contests.
Those are all great tips, Joshua! Thanks for sharing. :)
Joshua: Totally agree with every one of your points — all things I keep emphasizing to new haiku writers. I would also add that if they send ten haiku to a journal and one is accepted, it does not necessarily mean the others were “rejected.”