Agents and Poetry

Hopefully someone with more knowledge will chime in, but I think that poetry might be something that you submit to independent publishers on your own without an agent.

DL Shepherd is right. Poetry publication is completely different from prose. There are a handful of poetry publishers (small literary presses) that accept direct submissions of first manuscripts (e.g. debut collections). The vast majority of literary presses use first book contests to select one or two books to publish per year. Most fledgling poets find their way by publishing individual poems in well-established literary journals. After five or six poems in a debut collection have been published individually, the collection as a whole is more likely to find a publisher when it is submitted either through a contest or over the transom.

You'll find this process is much easier if you read contemporary poetry journals. You'll know which editors like poems in your style, and you'll grow more familiar with the list of journals whose editorial standards are sufficiently respected to give your manuscript as a whole a lift when you submit it to publishers.

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

What litdawg said. Literary magazines (or specialty magazines that take poems) are the way to go for individual poems. contests are the way to go for first books.

Agents aren't usually interested in poetry, because poetry books rarely ever have large advances. The exception might be by a well-known songwriter or the estate of a well-known poet.

If you can handle reading in front of people, you might look around for a local poetry reading group. Libraries and bookstores are the places to look.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

Here is a place to start: https://www.pw.org/grants?sort=asc&order=Deadline&apage=*

Select poetry under genre and peruse what comes up. You should really browse a few issues of the top twenty or thirty lit journals though so that you get a sense of where your work might find a home. Think of it like music. Suppose you are an acoustic guitar singer/songrwiter. You'll experience nothing but rejection if you keep submitting your work to death metal and punk journals.

Focus first on getting individual poems published in good places. As you build up a reputation, you will learn more about the market and might eventually find a publisher willing to take on your collection. But it's a fiercely competitive field and you have to be very good to do well.

calisterol said:

I have found it quite difficult to find any agents who actually say they are interested in poetry books. Do most Literary agents just not like poetry? Does poetry never get published? How should I go about finding a Literary agent for my poetry book even though most websites like AgentQuerry don't even have a genre called poetry? It is just overall confusing and is making me wonder if poetry is even something that is considered to get published.

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Agents like to get paid for their work. There's no money in poetry, unfortunately; hence their professional disinterest.

Meanwhile, to add to the general usefulness of the thread for future seekers, and to my own surprise, I have encountered a few poets with agents, and they are all poets who have published full-length collections (not chapbooks) Someone recently emailed me info. about one agent who is looking for poetry to represent (and I am not ready to even inquire but saved the link): http://foliolit.com/katherine-latshaw

Finally, another poet recently recommended to me a Yahoo Group email list which posts numerous vetted calls for submission including contests: CRWROPP list, moderated by Allison Joseph. Google that to find the access link; signing up requires moderator approval which takes a few days. Also, Poets & Writers has a list of similar opportunities that many people use.

If you have some showmanship skills, look into Instragram poetry, and using that as a springboard to sell merch.