Editor Interview: Poetic Medicine

Well-crafted poetry

Word Riot, Barbaric Yawp, Hubbub, New Vilna Review, Literary Bohemian, just to name a few. I enjoy finding new and interesting poems in obscure journals. For online publications, I appreciate journals that have a clean, easy to read format and layout.

Marge Piercy, Naomi Shihab Nye, Stephen Dunn, Joy Harjo, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Charles Bukowski, Anne Sexton, Raymond Carver, Kimiko Hahn, Li Young Lee, Mary Oliver

Poetic Medicine started as a collection of other people's previously published poems. My goal was to make poetry more accessible - just because poets have published books doesn't mean many people are reading it. But I wanted there to be a place online where people can go to find a poem they heard once and want to re-read again. It always pleases me when I google a particular poet's name or poem title and Poetic Medicine comes up as one of the top sites for that poem.
I started publishing new work in November of 2010 because I know a lot of talented poets, and realized I wanted the opportunity to put their work out there as well. It's been really exciting to hear from so many people -- many of whom I believe found Poetic Medicine through Duotrope -- who I don't know in real life but whose work I've gotten to read and publish.

Read your poems aloud before submitting them. Do the line breaks reflect how you hear the poem in your head? Does your poem have something interesting and new to say? Is it imagery-rich? I prefer a poem that paints a picture to one that is didactic or too involved in experimenting with language to make a clear narrative.

I don't really have an idea submission. I'm interested in poems that move me and speak to me. If I think your voice and your work has potential but the particular poem doesn't speak to me, I'll write you back and tell you that -- please submit more poems to me if I do. I encourage that. I am also prone to offering minor edits on poems - if I see potential in a poem but think it needs a little cleaning up, I'll offer you feedback. I value feedback on my poems, I hope other poets value feedback on theirs.

Don't assume the gender of the editor. Or that there's more than one person sitting in her home doing this, working around a full time job.

I always publish a short bio with poems I publish. I prefer bios that say a little something about the person, not just what they've published, but I use whatever people want to send me for their bio.

I always read over poems 2-3 times, and never reject a poem without going away and coming back to it. Sometimes I like a poem better the second or third time. Sometimes I see parts that are weaker that I missed the first time.

No other additional evaluations. Just me. I do prefer to space out how often I publish a particular author, since I only feature one new poem a week.

I download all the new submissions and put them into my "Submissions" folder on my desktop. I enter the author's name and date submitted into my Excel tracking sheet. At some later date (I have a full time job and a family and a social life) I read each poem over. If I immediately love it, I drop the author a note right away. If I'm not sure, I save it for a second or third re-reading. I try to respond to all submissions within a few weeks, a month tops.