NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines

Beloit Poetry Journal cover

Beloit Poetry Journal

P.O. Box 151

Farmington, ME 04938

Phone: (207)778-0020

E-mail: bpj@bpj.org

Simultaneous submissions: no Email submissions: international submissions only Reading period: year-round Response time: 1 week-4 months Payment: copies Contests: no (see website for Chad Walsh Prize) ISSN: 0005-8661 Founded: 1950 Issues per year: 4 Distributors: Media Solutions, Ubiquity Average pages: 48 Sample copy (postpaid): $5 Copy Price: $5 Subscription (Individuals): $18 Subscription (Libraries): $23

Publisher’s Description: For almost sixty years of continuous publication, the Beloit Poetry Journal has published poetry that matters. We have been distinguished for the extraordinary range of our poetry and our discovery of strong new poets. Among those whose first or very early publication was in the BPJ are Galway Kinnell, W.S. Merwin, Anne Sexton, Sharon Olds, Philip Levine, Charles Bukowski, Adrienne Rich, Eleanor Wilner, Susan Tichy, and Sherman Alexie. More recently, work by Bei Dao, Lucille Clifton, Patricia Goedicke, and Albert Goldbarth has graced our pages alongside work by Ben Lerner, Jessica Goodfellow, Garth Greenwell, and Mary Molinary, poets new to publication but already at the top of their form. We make the final selections for each issue by reading poems aloud without identifying the author. A poem must speak for itself to make it into the BPJ.

Jeannine Hall Galey, writing for NewPages.com, says of us: “The Beloit Poetry Journal is one of the journals that poetry junkies in the know call a must-read because of the consistent quality of the poetry they publish . . . and the terrific reviews. There can be no ‘ho-hum’ response to this journal.... I thrill to the emotional zing and wit of every single poem."

Recent issues:

Summer 2008
Charles Wyatt’s fantasias based on Bach’s Goldberg Variations highlight the Summer 2008 issue, which also features poems by Annie Boutelle, Paul Gibbons, Lizzie Hutton, John Hodgen, Roxane Beth Johnson, Kirun Kapur, Erin Malone, Betsy Sholl, Young Smith, Anne Timberlake, and Margaret Yocom, plus translations from the Romanian of Iona Ieronim.

Spring 2008
A chapbook of political poetry by poets featured at the Split This Rock Festival <http://www.splitthisrock.org>. Includes work by Jimmy Santiago Baca, Robert Bly, Mark Doty, Martín Espada, Carolyn Forché, Joy Harjo, Galway Kinnell, E. Ethelbert Miller, Naomi Shihab Nye, Sonia Sanchez, and Patricia Smith.

Winter 2007/08
Peter Munro’s “Animal Kingdom,” in syllabic terza rima, is the centerpiece of the Winter 2007/08 issue of the BPJ, which also includes poems by Tony Brinkley, Leonore Hildebrandt, Sandra Kohler, Christina LaPrease, Stephen Malin, Nance VanWinckel, Greg Wrenn, and others, as well as Marion K. Stocking’s review of The Best American Poetry 2007.

Fall 2007
The Fall 2007 issue of the Beloit Poetry Journal features a long meditative lyric by Brian Teare, a romp of a “Craft Lecture . . .” by Albert Goldbarth, two poems by Australian poet L. K. Holt, Marion Stocking’s review of new books by Janice Harrington, Susan Tichy, and Jessica Goodfellow, and more.

Summer 2007
The Summer 2007 issue of the BPJ features poems by regular BPJ contributors Hadara Bar-Nadav, Jessica Goodfellow, Lola Haskins, Betsy Sholl, and Susan Tichy alongside work by Barbara Claire Freeman, James Gross, Mary Kathryn Jablonski, Adrianne Kalfopoulou, Kevin Miller, Xan L. Roberti, Emily Rosco, and Suzanne Zweizig. Marion K. Stocking reviews new books by Galway Kinnell, Harryette Mullen, and Ben Lerner, comparing their “linguistic engines.”