Editor Interview: Public School Poetry

desires & curiosities

Some that come to mind for me are Adroit Journal, Muzzle, and diode. Other editors noted we also admire poetry presses, especially during these times of funding cuts. Shoutout to all of them including BOA, Milkweed, Sundress, Copper Canyon, Alice James, & Sarabande.

There are five of us, so I doubt there’s firm agreement on our favorite writers. We aim to honor a range of aesthetics rather than a single aesthetic in our pages, in the inclusive spirit of “public school.” One of the thrills of editing the journal is to learn the work of new writers who submit to us, as well as old favorites we haven’t heard from in a while.

This poetry-essay exchange element is a significant departure from most other publications! It means that our contributors have to engage with each other in a sustained, thoughtful way. It gives poets a place to write about poetry outside of the normal feedback-oriented, workshop-directive genres. And it gives poets a chance to have their work considered seriously, with empathy and creativity–a kind of sustained reading of their work usually only reserved for writers who occupy some kind of canonical space.
And since the poetry-essay exchange is anonymous, it makes the issue launch more fun–it’s the big reveal of who read and responded to whose work!

We try to publish 3-4 poems per poet, so send us a set of strong poems that work well together. Also, when filling out the enrollment form, dismissive answers that make it seem like you’re too cool for the essay assignment probably won’t make us like you.

We deliberately do not champion a particular aesthetic, school, taste, vision, or experience. That said, work that surprises us or rouses immediate curiosity formally or tonally tends to get discussed.

A fair number of folks assume we want public school related poems, and while we do like and publish some school-related poems, mostly we want to be amazed and astonished at what we open and read. We like a wide variety of work, and don’t have preferences for form or content as long as the writing is fresh and feels new and exciting to us.

We know next to nothing about the people submitting to us, unless they mention something in their enrollment agreement. It feels good to judge the work on the page as it is—much like actual public school. We like that anonymous feel to our submissions.

If the first few stanzas aren’t ready for publication, then the piece isn’t ready for publication. If it’s ready then we’ll read it in full.

Currently, all five of us read everything and then meet at a zoom table with our individual wish lists and hash it out. There’s definitely overlaps and there’s definitely divergences. We hold space for one another and the work and are more interested in what ignites passion rather than general consensus.

As editors we all do things a little differently, but I think for all of us there’s a build-up of excitement as we see submissions start to roll in. There’s a real joy-of-surprise factor happening–we never know what we’ll get to read, with the poems first, and then especially as our selected poets start submitting essays about each other’s work!

With the exception of basic proofreading, we don’t, even when we want to. (Sometimes we just tell Megan to pretend a last line doesn’t exist.) Part of our ethos is respect for the human who created the artifact that is the poem, and we are far more curious about perceived imperfections that get us talking than in poems that make us make that “good poem” grunt-sigh.

We nominate poems for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prizes.

An annual bake sale and donations. That’s it. That’s how we fund everything. Thankfully, Ellen makes the best pound cake east of the Mississippi.

Branded pencils. A newsletter. A fight song. A virtual book fair on our site. A little social media, but mostly word-of-mouth. Readings, both public and virtual, including one at Poe’s grave at AWP 2026. (5pm Thursday. Goth attire encouraged.) Game blimps to come! Or maybe those “Who’s #1?” foam fingers with author names on them.