WRITE POEMS THAT GET PUBLISHED ✦ Karan Kapoor & Shannan Mann

Poetry isn’t about publishing. It’s about our bleeding and beating hearts. Right..right!??? Well, that’s true. We’re not cynical over here at ONLY POEMS. But also, many poets do want to see their poems in print or published online (or both!) accessible and available to the whole wide world (such a big world). And those poets might find it hard, sometimes, to fully find the resources they need to know what kind of poems actually get published and how they can fine-tune their own submissions to maximize their chances of acceptance at whatever literary magazines they are targeting.

Let’s face it, usually editors don’t have the best track record of giving you any kind of a solid idea about this. They’ll say things like, “we invite poets to lay before us a small galaxy”. Like, excuse me — grade-school science project much? That’s why, in this workshop, Shannan and Karan will demystify the process of writing poems specifically with an eye towards publication today.

Between the two of us, we have published in over 60 literary magazines ranging from the bigwigs liks AGNI, Rattle, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Cincinnati Review, a whole lot of other reviews, all the way to small-and-might mags.

We’ll read and discuss contemporary poetry, recent contest winners, read from some prominent lit mags as well as up and coming ones. Furthermore, we’ll discuss current challenges in placing poetry in the contemporary lit mag environment. To round it off, we’ll also generate some of the freshest, coolest, most acceptance-est poetry out there right now. So, buckle in poets. We’re taking off to Submit-ville.

Coming Soon!

Karan Kapoor is the Editor-in-Chief of  ONLY POEMS and the Fiction Editor of Strange Pilgrims. His recent work appears in Best New Poets (2024). A finalist for the Felix Pollak Prize & Charles B. Wheeler Prize book prizes and Diode, Tusculum Review, and Iron Horse Literary Review chapbook prizes, their poems have appeared in Best New Poets, AGNI, Shenandoah, Colorado Review, Cincinnati Review, North American Review, and elsewhere, fiction in JOYLAND and the other side of hope, and translations in The Offing and The Los Angeles Review. They’re currently on the editorial board of Alice James Books.

Shannan Mann is the Creative Director of ONLY POEMS, Nonfiction Editor of Strange Pilgrims, and also runs Sub Club. Her upcoming poetry collection God Has Nothing To Do With This was a finalist for the 2025 Michael Waters Poetry Prize. Awarded the Emily Morrison Short Story Award, Alta Lind Cook Writing Award, Irene Adler Essay Prize, Peatsmoke Poetry Prize, and Palette Poetry Love & Eros Prize (selected by Carl Phillips), she’s also placed for the Rattle Poetry Prize, Auburn Witness Prize (selected by Joy Harjo), and the Foster Poetry Prize. Her poems appear in Poetry Daily, Black Warrior Review, ARC, Missouri Review, The Offing, Poet Lore, Gulf Coast,The Literary Review of Canada, EPOCH & elsewhere; essays in Tolka Journal and Going Down Swinging. She also translates Sanskrit poetry.