Spiritual Poetry Publishing

Video Transcript

"What do we mean by spiritual poetry? There's a long tradition of poetry that explores spiritual issues. An awful lot of early poetry, the earliest poetry that we have, going back to Babylon and Samaria, is all to the Gods, about the Gods. Much more recently we have John Dunn, John Milton, Dunn the Holy Sonnets and Milton Sonnets in particular. Up to contemporary poets like Mark Jarman who wrote a book called the Unholy Sonnets. And that's all about exploring his relationship with God. And these kinds of poems fall into all the major religious traditions. They're not just Christian, as most of the religious poetry we see, is. And if you want to write truly spiritual poetry, you need to be familiar with these traditions. You need to have read Gerard Manley Hopkins and probably Alicia Ostriker and Mark Jarman and Dunn and even T. S. Elliot. A lot of whose poetry is quite spiritual. And that's in the tradition of artistically ambitious poetry, and that gets published anywhere, artistically ambitious poetry gets published. All the standard literary journals, some newspapers, the magazine possibilities are perhaps a little broader. Because you can also go to religious magazines for material like this. The more conventional, possibly the more common religious poetry, why I love God, kind of stuff. There are a great many religious magazines, there are church newsletters, newsletters love this stuff. What do you want to get from your poetry? Why are you writing it? If you want to share your feelings about God with your friends and neighbors. Then the church newsletter is going to be perfect for you. If you want to share them with the world. Then you have to write the poetry that the New Yorker, one of the largest circulation magazines that publishes poetry, is going to be interested in. The New Yorker, The Nation, they might take poetry on spiritual issues. But it'll have to be more in the artistic tradition than standard stuff that just rhymes and has a certain beat to it. But you can go to Duotrope.com, D, U, O, T, R, O, P, E.com. And they have a database of markets for poetry. And you can just say, you want spiritual or religious markets or markets that are interested in that kind of poetry. And you'll get a pretty good selection. There are markets for it out there but you have to figure out, what you're writing and who exactly is going to be interested in that. This is again, something I'll be repeating over and over again. You have to know, who wants to read the kind of things that you are writing. And then, it's just a matter of finding them and do it, hope is a good starting point for that."