Four ways to deal with poetry rejections
And a sidebar on moon vs sea
Dear beloved subscriber of A Poet’s Work,
I hope this finds you with a glass of champagne in hand and an eager crowd outside your door, eagerly waiting to celebrate your latest poetry triumph with you.
Even if that is the case today, however, I bet you will still have experienced a poetry rejection or two in your time. Read on for four tried-and-tested ways (tested by me) to deal with poetry rejections to add to your arsenal. If you have any tried-and-tested methods of your own, let me know in the comments or by reply & I’ll share in the next issue. And if you enjoyed this newsletter, don’t forget to share it with a friend.
Best poetry wishes,
Rachel x
P.S. If you haven’t already, do go ahead and…
Four ways to deal with poetry rejections
These ways to deal with rejection are all tried and tested by yours truly. I’ve given them two ranking scores from 1 - 5, one based on fun and one based on actual usefulness (the higher the score, the better they do on that metric).
1. Sulk
My first poetry knockback occurred when I was a teenager. I wrote a poem about Halloween and showed it to my teacher. She told me it was “a bit cliché”. I didn’t write anything after that for a year.
To enact this method:
Reflect deeply on the unfairness of the rejection, at length, on your own and with other people. Don’t worry about boring them. They need to understand how you feel.
Allow the rejection to fester. Let it prevent you from seeking new opportunities or writing for a while.
Eventually, carry on writing again.
Fun - 5/5
Usefulness - 1/5
2. Celebrate
To enact this method:
Set a target for a number of rejections you’d like receive in a set time period (e.g. 3 a month, 25 a year).
Keep a tally of rejections you receive.
If you’re worried you won’t reach the target, push yourself to seek out more opportunities to be rejected from. This could be opportunities for publication, prizes, performances, connections with other poets… get creative with things to fail at.
When you hit your target, celebrate!
I went through a phase of doing this publicly every year on Instagram and I loved it. It reframed rejection for me as a sign I was putting work out there.
Fun - 3/5
Usefulness - 5/5
3. Track obsessively
To enact this method:
Keep a track of every poem you submit for publication. When it gets rejected, mark it, then submit it again. (I use a Trello board for this with a card for each poem).
If a poem gets to a certain number of rejections (I use 10), take it out of circulation and work on it again. If 10 editors didn’t like it, maybe something really isn’t working in it.
Fun - 2/5
Usefulness - 4/5
4. Remember there’s no one thing
There have been many times in my writing life where I thought one thing would change everything, if only I could get it. That if I could be published by this place, or win this prize, or get accepted by this course, that that would be it. I would have made it. But even when the thing I wanted so badly happened, which occasionally it did, it was never quite it. There’s always more to do. It recalls a Terry Pratchett quote I like - “Your reward for doing something good is to do something else good.” Tedious, perhaps, but true.
Fun - 1/5
Usefulness - 5/5
Sidebar - moon vs sea
I’ve been asking new subscribers to share whether, if they could only have one in a poem, they would pick the moon or the sea. So far it’s a dead heat. Cast your deciding vote below.