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The Alchemy Spoon (Gold Star Program) Gold Star

The story of The Alchemy Spoon is borrowed from Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, with the spoon representing the importance of balancing creativity and career. We encourage poets to allow the oils of creativity to fall from their spoons in exchange for the pleasure of creating and having their poetry published
The Alchemy Spoon is a platform for poetry without prejudice especially of race, gender or age. We are particularly interested to invite poems from new phase poets. These are poets who have come late to poetry, often following retirement, or a life-change.


The work of new phase poets often has stunning depth and perspective reflecting experiences accumulated from work and life. These poets might be classed among those who have been dubbed the 'lost generation of talent'. Abid Hussain, Diversity Director at the AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council), says: ‘How many would-be working-class artists, artistic directors, choreographers, composers and curators decided to enter accounting, legal, medical and engineering professions instead?’ The Alchemy Spoon aims to demonstrate that this talent was not lost but waiting for a reappraisal of priorities, an unleashing of latent creativity, waiting for its time. The magazine appears three times a year online, with print copy available through ‘print on demand’.

We welcome submissions from both established and unpublished poets, and will devote a significant proportion of each issue to new voices, particularly new phase voices.
We look forward to reading your submissions.

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Issue 10

Temp Closed

When our submission window is open you can access our DUOSUMA submissions portal using our submissions page, but please read the guidelines first! By submitting your work you give permission for The Alchemy Spoon to publish that work and confirm that it has not been published previously in books, magazines, webpages or on social media. The copyright of all submissions remains with the author, if the work is accepted for publication in The Alchemy Spoon then the author agrees that any subsequent publication will acknowledge The Alchemy Spoon as first publisher. Once accepted then we are not able to accept any corrections or edits other than typographical errors or those requested by the editors.

The themes for Issue 10 is 'Friends'

  • You will be asked to create a free account with Duotrope if you are not already registered with them
  • All your poems must be in one word-compatible document
  • You can submit up to 3 poems, you will need to enter the title of each poem (piece) on Duosuma when you submit
  • Poems should be in 11 point Times New Roman with a maximum 40 lines not including the title
  • Enter a brief bio, maximum of 50 words, in the third person in the Duotrope submission manager
  • Start a new page for each poem with your name on each page

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