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Submit Poetry

Submission Guidelines

  • Submissions are open to anyone in Suffolk, England, aged 16 or over
  • Poetry theme(s): (1) The Environment; (2) Positive Mental Health Recovery and Wellbeing; (3) Covid Reflections. Please indicate the theme(s) of your poem in your submission
  • Up to 52 lines in length
  • Do not use words, terms or phrases that are considered offensive, obscene, abusive, inappropriate or mention/infer self-harm
  • Submit by email, to artbranches@icloud.com either inserting your text within the email body or as an attachment
  • Indicate the name, initials, etc., to attribute as the author, or whether you wish to write anonymously
  • Submissions may be accompanied by an optional related image attached to your submission email.  Images must either be your own, have permission granted for you to use or be free-to-use commercially.  If required, a vast range of high quality, free-to-use images can be found at websites such as Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay. If you do not wish to provide an associated image, the organiser may choose something appropriate or present the text without an image.

Notes & Further Information

The organiser, Art Branches CIC, is a not-for-profit community organisation specialising in inclusive creative projects for improving wellbeing in communities across the East of England.

Your name and email address will be used solely for the purpose of poetry collection and communication by the organiser and will not be shared with any other party.

By submitting your content (poetry and any associated image), you agree to the right of the organiser to publish it online and/or in hard copy form on a non-exclusive, royalty-free basis.  You still own the copyright on your content and are not transferring that to the organiser.

The organiser reserves the right to not publish a submission text and/or image or to remove a previously published submission.

For further information, contact us through the organiser's Contact page on the Art Branches website: https://artbranches.org/contact/

Currently Popular Poems:

Love Poem To Myself

Yes, I can, I surely can. Reminding myself that I always have and always will. No need to worry, no need to fret, no need to bite my nails, nor lie awake, nor forget, in clammy doubt wasting sleep-time on negative imaginings. I make positive probabilities more certain and real. I am calm, I am kind, I am fun, brave and generous too. Smiling more than most I see the good in everything you do. Deep breathing with a cheerful heart, I’ll fight your corner, feel your pain, make you laugh. I am a ‘doer’, a helper, a friend. I align my thoughts to health. I let go and I love, dancing in rain and on the edge of a cliff. Silence is better than to deliver a curse, I like to smile and to listen. Encouraging others to be the best that they can be. I am a mender, a maker of things and I am mindful of my consumption. I plant trees, sing songs, make tea and play simply and fairly. I will be as I am the intuitive, the sorter, the lover of life, the mender of minds, the ideas person, the performer, th
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Lichen a Plenty

Lichen a plenty,  With your crispy and crusty Foliose forms Lichen reveals the Hidden substrate beneath. Ashley
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Who Is Saving The World?

The recycler, bicycler, bio-masser and solar paneller, the sustainable developer, the charity worker, the medics (sans frontieres?), fundraisers and carers, givers and listeners, growers of organics, designers of biodegradables. Genetic engineers? Surgeons and researchers, forgivers and forgetters, Billy the bug hunter, Immy the mathematician, Troy the paratriathelete, Wendy the wigwam maker. The ones who go last, the ones who smile, the ones who don’t want to argue about it, the ones who give up their seat, the ones who calm a storm, the ones who cook up a feast, the ones who sing praises, the ones who shine, Auntie Gwen and Malala…… ….and I drink water from a glass bottle. Sue Foster Image by Fernando via Unsplash .
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Bones on the Shore

We walk the shoreline down in that dark dip at year’s end, while life’s still slumbering. The beach is a graveyard. We clamber, beneath ominous skies, through cathedrals of bones. Beached giants, prone on the sand, gaunt skeletons, arms uplifted, feet still reluctant to leave. In the lifetime of my children, these dinosaurs, these mighty oaks have fallen, their forms sculpted by time and weather, yet even in death they hold such power. They lie, steadfast as ever, awesome, majestic, statuesque, garlanded with gifts from the river: soft green fronds, little crabs, bladder wrack decorating their fingers. For centuries they stood strong, hearing the river’s song: ebb, flow, winter, spring, tide and moon rising, falling, curlew calling, calling. We will walk the shorelines at that bright time of new beginnings, now we are awakening. Jan Armstrong Photo by Daniel Lincoln via Unsplash
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Above a Sea of Fog

Caspar David Friedrich, 'Wanderer above a Sea of Fog' (c.1818) She once said I looked like a graceful swan drifting serene across the surface of the water, giving no clue to the feet paddling so furiously beneath me. It was a cliché, small comfort unless you are obsessed with appearances. His wandering, like mine, is threatened by the drifting mist that twists and turns, obscuring paths that lie ahead, decisions that weigh so heavily on lesser minds, not lightly made. Masterful he looks, above this boiling sea, so nicely turned out, so dapper in his neatly tailored coat, perched high above the reach of such disorder, never likely to muddy his resolve. Webbed feet paddle beneath me so constantly I am not always aware. I dress well, tie back my unruly hair leaving a wisp or two free to roam. I do not want to look severe. But the fog creeps. Julia
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Becalmed

I can no longer dot the i’s, nor cross the t’s. A pale haze, like Sunday afternoons, pleasant after a glass of wine too many, drifts across my day. I am at peace. I find myself disposed to acquiesce, content to live life at this gentle pace, content, it seems, with how life’s focus, now diminished, takes on the softened blur of evening light. Something sharp is lost. But the time for mourning it is done. The wind that swelled the sails has dropped, the tide recedes, the fierceness of the sun is quenched, leaving the sunshine’s golden glow that speaks the lateness of the hour. A taste of salt upon my lips - no call for worry or regrets - a bitter-sweet recall of what has gone. Julia Duke
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