Inside Poetry Publishing: How Editors Read & Select Poems

What actually happens after you submit a poetry collection to a publisher? How do editors read your work, what makes them sit up and take notice, and how do they decide what makes the cut?

Back in January and February 2025, I kept a diary of life as Lead Editor at Dithering Chaps. It turned out to be a particularly busy month: we were reading our own poetry submissions, judging the Bournemouth Writing Prize, preparing an anthology, promoting books and events, and celebrating our first reprint.

Looking back, though, the diary also offers a glimpse behind the scenes of a small independent poetry press — including how we read submissions, what excites us as editors and why we believe every poet who submits deserves a thoughtful response.

How does a poetry editor read submissions?

January 7th — The first week of the new year has brought a flurry of sales and submissions. It's a lovely feeling to know that our efforts to make ourselves known are reaping success.

I make a submissions ‘first reading list’ for the weekend to clear the new backlog, along with the admin tasks of numbering, saving and logging everything.

I can't resist taking a quick peek.

As always, some submissions are so compelling in form or poetic verve that I find myself still ‘flicking through’ an hour later. I pop next door to tell Gena (associate editor/wife) that “we've got some good ’uns.”

One of the joys of reading submissions is never quite knowing what is about to arrive.

January 11th — One of my favourite tasks as Lead Editor is writing a critique of each of the ten-page submissions we receive.

Personalised feedback is one of our USPs at Dithering Chaps. We give each eligible submitter around 300 words of constructive critique: positive, while possibly noting one or two aspects that we think might be developed.

Feedback from poets tells us how helpful, uplifting and downright unusual this can be. I know that from my own experience of submitting to publishers: elsewhere, the best you can sometimes hope for is the ‘soft rejection’ — we'd like to see more of your work.

Our view is simple: you've paid us to read your poems. The least we can do is tell you our reaction to them, even if we don't choose to publish you.

I limit myself to reading three submissions at a time. That matters. My mind needs to be fresh if I'm to be properly receptive to work that someone has nurtured and honed before taking the considerable step of sending it out into the world.

I read my three, write my comments and assign a mark to help me rank the submissions during that reading period.

Then I stop.

There will always be more poems tomorrow.

What makes a poetry submission stand out?

January 26th — Again, my six weekend reading slots are full and more jaw-droppingly good poetry has landed on our virtual doormat.

The biographies are sometimes rollcalls of all the poetic places-to-be-seen in the UK: prize winners and poets published in Acumen, Orbis, Stand, Butcher's Dog, Tears in the Fence and Poetry Wales.

A strong biography can be encouraging — but it isn't what makes us choose a manuscript.

Sometimes we're completely wowed by somebody without those credentials. I've just put down one submission that had me jumping up and down with excitement at its formal experimentation and poetic chutzpah.

Ultimately, it's the poems that have to do the work.

January 31st — We've already beaten our record for submissions in a month, but we're still in the sweet spot where I have enough time to read each submission carefully and write my feedback without impacting too much on other activities — my own reading and writing, Tai Chi, walks with Gena, catching the next episode of Dix Pour Cent…

I find it fascinating to see commonalities between different poets' writing, but what I really love is landing on a take on the world — or on the English language — that I've never encountered before.

We've had several sonnet sequences this time, and it's been fascinating to see contemporary approaches to the form: experiments with voice, blank verse, and the ways fourteen lines can morph and torque to suggest an underlying theme.

Reading other poets' work can even change the way an editor thinks about their own writing. It's made me reconsider my rather staid Shakespearean, iambic-pentameter, final-couplet-zinger sonnets and contemplate being a little more adventurous.

How do poetry editors make their final decisions?

February 4th — Gena and I are judging the Bournemouth Writing Prize, and we've been avidly reading the thirty shortlisted poems separately before comparing notes.

We like to think we're a good editorial team because we look for different things.

Gena homes in on the emotional heft behind a poem; I focus more on form and poetics.

What's interesting is how often our judgements coincide.

We sit down over a pub lunch in Weymouth and share our top three and our top ten. True to form, we've both picked the same top three and the same overall winner.

There is some haggling to do about the final ten. Seven poems appear on both our lists, so we read our remaining choices aloud to one another and explain what has piqued our interest in each.

Over coffee, we agree our final selection.

But we don't submit the result immediately.

We let the poems simmer for a few days.

That's a classic dithering technique, perhaps, but it's also an important part of editorial judgement. Something can leap out at you on a later reading that you missed before.

And because we're judging blind, we have no idea whose poems we've selected.

The poems have to speak for themselves.

What happens behind the scenes at a small poetry press?

January 18th — We've travelled north to Nantwich for the launch of Helen Kay's fabulous collection, It Was Never About the Kingfisher.

A launch is a big moment for a poet. It's also the culmination of a six-month cycle for us as publishers.

We do our best to sprinkle fairy dust — and cakes — on the event. It's another sellout, with standing room only at the back. We sell a healthy stack of books, and conversations with local poets suggest we'll be seeing more submissions from the North-West and Wales in the future.

This is another side of independent publishing that happens away from the submissions inbox: helping a book find its readers.

February 8th — The Bournemouth Writing Prize winners and shortlisted writers have now been chosen, although they don't know it yet.

It's a very Schrödinger's Cat kind of moment for anyone who has entered. You're in that tantalising superposition of I've won this thing! and Darn it! I thought I'd won this thing!

Gena and I may have collapsed the wave function by making our choice, but that cat is still alive and kicking.

I know how hard it is to open an email that starts:

“Sorry, but…”

Being on the other side of that email doesn't make us forget it.

February 11th — We've received Bournemouth University's Style Guide and are working through the shortlisted poems and stories to make sure everything sits correctly on the page for the competition anthology.

This is the less glamorous but essential part of publishing: once the selections have been made, somebody has to turn a collection of individual pieces into a coherent, professionally presented book.

February 12th — Exciting news: sales of Helen Kay's It Was Never About the Kingfisher are going so well that we're about to order a reprint.

It's a first for Dithering Chaps, and we're delighted.

After all the reading, selecting, editing, formatting, designing, launching and promoting, there's something particularly satisfying about discovering that a book needs to be printed again.

What have we learned from reading poetry submissions?

February 20th — I've now been writing this ‘month in the life’ for rather longer than a month. Put it down to my inveterate tendency to dither.

The submissions have kept arriving alongside competition judging, anthology preparation, launches, events and all the other jobs involved in running a small independent poetry press.

But the part I keep returning to is the reading.

Every submission represents somebody deciding that their poems are ready to leave home. We don't take that lightly.

We don't expect every poet to have a glittering publication history. We don't expect every manuscript to be perfect. What catches our attention is work with a distinctive voice, an interesting relationship between form and subject, emotional weight, linguistic energy — or simply something we haven't encountered before.

And when we don't select a collection for publication, we still want the poet to come away knowing what we saw in their work.

That's why we continue to offer personalised editorial feedback on every eligible submission.

If you're considering sending out your own poetry collection, you might also like our guide “Submitting a Poetry Collection: What Publishers Look For – and Why Feedback Matters”, where Gena and I explain in more detail what makes a manuscript rise to the top of our respective piles.

And if you're ready to send us your work, you'll find our current requirements and submission information on the Dithering Chaps Submissions page.

Happy submitting — and remember: sometimes a little dithering is all part of the editorial process.

David Herring
Lead Editor, Dithering Chaps