Editor Interview: bramble

Memorable poetry

Rattle, The Sun, Poem-a-Day (Academy of American Poets), Litmosphere, Wild Roof Journal

Diana Goetsch, Stephen Dobyns, Mary Oliver, Sharon Olds, Richard Blanco, Dorianne Laux, Andrew Hudgins, Kathryn Stripling Byer, Joe Mills, Chen Chen, Jamie Mortara, Rudy Francisco, George T. Wilkerson

We want readers to walk away with a lasting impression from the poems they read. That's why our motto is "poetry that sticks." We want poems that "stick" to our hearts and minds.

Make sure your work answers the question "So what?" That is, why does your work matter? What significance does it have to you? To others? This should ideally be evident from the first read. Generally, we like poems that are more accessible than vague, as well as those that hinge on an image or set of images and/or that tell a story.

The ideal submission checks all (or most) of my boxes:
- engaging first line (and maybe title too)
- content that goes somewhere; could be a story about something that left a lasting impression, or a unique metaphor, or a meditation on gender or the divine or a hotdog; no matter what the content, I want to get something out of it, hence our motto: "poetry that sticks"
- line breaks that enable double meanings and/or subvert the reader's expectations
- an ending that makes some larger point about life or humans, a la Stephen Dobyns
- concision; or, content that says what it needs to in the fewest number of words while still getting its point across
- strong language and imagery
- human created, not AI generated

We're a new publication, so I've yet to see submitters getting anything consistently "wrong." But please read our guidelines before submitting.

I don't care about cover letters or publication credits, so long as the work fulfills our vision and engages minds and hearts. In fact, my co-editor does not see any of the poets' names or bios until after publication.

I read every piece to the end. There's no telling what I might think about a poem as a whole until after I've finished it. Of course, if I run across any epic poems, I may only read part of it!

I choose a subset of poems to send to my co-editor, who is in prison. We generally have the same taste in poems, but I choose those that I like as well as those I think he may like. I also send him ones I'm on the fence about. He reads the poems and tells me his top 5-10 for every batch I send. I keep a spreadsheet of what each of us likes, compare our choices, and try to choose our top 30. We may have a little back and forth to get down to that number.

We limit the number of submissions we receive since it costs money for me to send him the poems. We also have other projects we're working on, together and separately, and don't want to be inundated with submissions. So, I don't have to check the submissions every day, but when I do, I sit down and read all of those I haven't seen so far. I'm able to see poets' bios, but I don't send them to my co-editor, so technically, he reads them blind and I do not. My choices are based on what I like and not what the poet's publishing history is. For all of the poems I choose to send to George, I input the titles and poets' names into a spreadsheet. I use TextBehind to send him each batch of poems (about 50 cents for every 10 pages), which he can see on his tablet and receives a printout of. Then, he texts me his top 5-10 poems per batch via the GettingOut app. I then use color coding in the spreadsheet for his choices and mine. It costs him 2 cents per minute to text me and to read my texts; every text I send him costs me 25 cents. We also talk on the phone a couple times a week ($1.60 per call), so we might spend some time talking about bramble and our choices for the next issue. Communication isn't cheap for prisoners and their friends and family! But it's part of our process, and I wouldn't have it any other way. :-)

I do basic proofreading of the issue, but we don't edit poems that are submitted to us. If I were to have a question about punctuation, grammar, etc., then I would reach out to the poet before publication. If a poet were to see a glaring error after publication, they could contact me and I could fix it, but I hope we'd catch it before then!

Not currently, but it's something I would be open to in the future.