Editor Interview: Mobius

Socially relevant poems.

Asimov's Science Fiction, Asinine Poetry, DIAGRAM, Failbetter, Neon, Opium, Pemmican, Poetry, Press 1, Right Hand Pointing, Shit Creek Review, Six Little Things, Strange Horizons, Tattoo Highway.

Kim Addonizio, John Ashbery, Marion Boyer, Billy Collins, Denise Duhamel, Russell Edson, Andrew Griffith, Tony Hoagland, Louis Jenkins, Michael Kriesel, Ann K. Schwader.

I put literary quality first and political "message" second.

Have other people look over your work to proofread and critique it.

Extremely brief (or absent) cover letter; brief and interesting bio; wonderful, relevant poems with no misspellings or grammatical errors, whose selection demonstrates familiarity with what has already been published in Mobius.

Either sending poetry that is completely off-topic, or sending pieces that are didactic rants rather than poems.

A cover letter won't significantly affect acceptance if the poems are good, but bad cover letters tend to accompany bad poetry. Mistakes: employment/family history in bio; mentioning more than 5 publications; mentioning any vanity press; philosophical statements.

Because I do not get a large number of submissions, I do read them all. It is generally obvious within a stanza or two that I needn't bother reading further, however. If the submission is bad enough, I read it aloud to family members, and we chuckle over its failings.

Sometimes I ask for changes. Once in a while, acceptance is conditional on the changes being approved by the poet.

Because the volume of submissions is low, I spend most days not editing at all. When submissions come in, I try to answer definite "No"s as soon as I receive them. The rest I may sit on to reread in (ideally!) the next day or two. Since I'm also the art editor and webmaster, I occasionally look for artists online, and there is a flurry of activity at the end of each quarter, when I'm getting the next issue ready to post.