Editor Interview: WestWard Quarterly

"A breath of fresh air."

We do not have particular favorites, but in each issue we present a "Featured Writer" from among our contributors.

A magazine with high standards, rich in poetry, fellowship, inspiration, with regular articles about better writing. We do not publish material that is crude, dark, or negative in tone.

Say something unique! We toss cliche and greeting card type poems. Use a fresh perspective about your topic in a positive way. Do your homework on grammar, spelling, (rhyme and meter if it’s a rhyming poem) and flow if it’s free verse.

It has date, name, and address on each page, and is neatly typed without errors in spelling and grammar. It has something meaningful to say in a unique way.

They submit too many poems too often. Bear in mind we publish only four issues a year. Very often the seasonal material does not arrive in time.

We like brief bios. We judge each poem on its own merit. A long list of credits does not impress us if we do not like the poem.

We can usually tell with the first four lines whether the poem is acceptable or not. If it's bad writing we don't bother to read the whole poem.

In addition to being well written, we ask: does it fit the standards of the magazine, do we have too many other similar submissions, do we have space in the proper issue, and will our readers enjoy it?

We try to read submissions every few days, while working on the planning and formatting of the next issue. We usually process submissions in the order they are received. If other responsibilities are taking up our time, our response will take longer than usual.

We edit the poem according to its style, e.g. if the entire poem is without capital letters or punctuation we do not alter that. However, we look for consistency in punctuation so we may add a comma, period, capitalization, etc. where appropriate. Of course we correct spelling errors or the wrong word. e.g. "it's" where it should be "its." In our guidelines we reserve the right to make edits, so we do not normally provide a proof to the author. However, occasionally we may ask an author to approve a suggested change of a word or phrase before we publish the poem.

No, we do not do that.

Through annual subscriptions and the sale of individual copies. We are a registered non-profit corporation.

Through our web site and Facebook page. We do not promote individual contributors to the magazine.