We publish occasional books and chapbooks, as well as San Pedro River Review, a biannual print journal of poetry and art founded in 2008.San Pedro River Review is indexed in the University of Wisconsin - Madison Special Collections Little Magazine Unit, the collections at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, University at Buffalo, and the library at Texas State University. We are a member of The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses [CLMP].

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                                                   ISSN 1944-5

 

Blue Horse Press poetry book and chapbook publications are found here:

             http://www.bluehorsepress.com/blue-horse-press-books-chapbooks

 

                      We are not currently considering unsolicited book or chapbook manuscripts.

 

 For SPRR, we consider submissions during two 31-day periods: January and July Submission windows close precisely at midnight, Eastern Standard Time. Typically, spring issues are themed (see below).

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 Our representative poets include Naomi Shihab Nye, Ellen Bass, Gary Soto, Afaa Michael Weaver, Joseph Millar, Marge Piercy, Alex Lemon, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Joe Wilkins, Nathalie Handal, Jack Bedell, Tyree Daye, Jack Ridl, Sean Thomas Dougherty, and Larry D. Thomas.

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We publish approximately 60 to 100+ poems and multiple pieces of art per issue. 5.5  x 8.5 in size.

Here is our current issue.  Previous issues may be viewed toward the bottom of the page:

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For our January 1-31 submission window, the theme is Shapes & Secrets. Its interpretation is wide open. Poems or art may speak to one or both these elements. Consider physical shapes as well as the shapes of lives and emotions, of futures and pasts, of remade bodies. Objects or people in good shape or bad. Shapes artists employ in their works. For secrets, we look for lies, prevarications, things untold or deliberately left unsaid, buried feelings and objects. However, we are not considering political or “state” secrets. Something unreckonable. Spiritual secrets. Sandbagging sons-of-bitches. Consider the furtive subtexts we find in out-of-season places like beachfront boardwalks or carnivals shuttered in winter – something about them not apparent when in season and crowded. Again, keep our general guidelines in mind, especially our lack of interest in political takes. Be wary of sending mere descriptions or lists.

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  GENERAL GUIDELINES

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*  CONTACT US IF YOU DO NOT HEAR WITHIN 10 DAYS OF YOUR SUBMISSION, especially if you have not heard by the morning of the day immediately after our submission window closes.

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We seek an economy of language with keen focus on voice and image. A touch of Lorca's duende that loves ledges and wounds, Kant's "crooked timber of humanity", James Agee’s "cruel radiance of what is."

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*  Email your submission to: sprreview [at symbol  ] gmail. com

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*  ONLY ONE SUBMISSION PER SUBMISSION PERIOD. The exception would be when poems are submitted in one email, and art in another. However, except by invitation, we do not consider poems paired with art, if accepting the poem must include the art it is paired with.

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*  Simultaneous submissions are fine.

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*  Please keep cover letters simple. Bloated, overly informational cover letters are a real turnoff. Inscribe your brief third-person bio in the body of the email. Include your address. 

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*  No previously published work. But we're okay with prior publication on blogs or social media.

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*  We rarely comment on work we decline.

 

    POETRY

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*  We consider all forms of poetry, including prose poems. Prose poems may not extend in length beyond half a single page on a standard 8x11 sheet of paper. What we look for in prose poems is what poet Yusef Komunyakaa said of his favorite novel, Moby Dick: "Robust poetry doing its work inside the prose."

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*  Send up to 3 poems in a SINGLE Word document -- do not inscribe them in the body of your email. NO pdf. or .dat files. Nor do we use Google docs.

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*  We will not consider work that has been created by AI.

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*  Do not explain your poems.

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*  No gratuitous sexual or violent scenes meant to shock or be clever.

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*   We have ZERO interest in work centered on the world political scene.

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*   Spare us the philosophical or polemical verse.

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*   No need for word or line count.

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All work must be in English, excluding, of course, the case where a non-English word or term is intrinsic to the poem. Non-English poems may be submitted if accompanied by their English translation.

 

ART

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*  With respect to the Jan 2024 theme, consider scenes of vanishing or vacant places, people in the distance walking away or toward the viewer or appearing partially — as in Francesca Woodman’s work; photos of notes or letters left somewhere; that is, the implied or nuanced, and other renderings of our theme of Shapes & Secrets as described above.

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*  We will not consider work that has been created by AI. However, post-processed art/photography is fine, if post-processing removes blemishes, clarifies, or corrects lighting in the original work.

 

*  For now, only black & white photography. Approximately 1 - 8 pieces. Submit as separate jpegs in a single email. We like Realism: urban or rural decay, obsolescence, wayworn scenes, solitary individuals with a sense of isolation, and night scenes. Otherwise, we also like collages and double-exposures, a touch of the abstract or surreal.

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*   Please do not give your art trite, cliched, cute, or overly descriptive titles. Don't lead the witness. Let the imagination of the viewer compose the piece's narrative. Even single words for titles would be fine.

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By submitting to us you grant us permission, if we select your work, to publish it. No separate author's consent form or proof will be sent out.

 

All work must be that of the submitter.

 

Payment is one contributor copy. Under certain circumstances, contributors outside the US may need to purchase their own copies due to customs fees, taxation, etc. 

 

San Pedro River Review acquires first serial rights to accepted pieces. Copyright reverts to the author after publication.

 

Contributors may purchase additional copies at reduced rates. Discounts are only available through us, not the regular Amazon site. Otherwise, copies for non-contributors are available on Amazon at the regular retail price. 

 

You do not need a Facebook account to access our public Facebook page. This is where we often broadcast updates, such as publication timing and when contributor copies are mailed out. Our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/san.review

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THE EDITORS

 

JC Alfier is a poet and collage and double-exposure artist-photographer. He was a finalist for the Missouri Laureate Prize in 2021. He is 2018 winner of the Angela Consolo Manckiewick Poetry Prize, from Lummox Press. In 2014 he won the Kithara Book Prize, judged by Dennis Maloney. Publication credits include Arkansas Review, Atlanta Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Emerson Review, Faultline, Iron Horse Literary Review, Kestrel, Gargoyle, Hotel Amerika, Los Angeles Review, The Midwest Quarterly, New York Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, Penn Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Rust & Moth, South Carolina Review, Southern Poetry Review, Southwestern American Literature, and Texas Review. His latest collection of poems is The Shadow Field (Louisiana Literature Journal & Press, 2020). 

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Tobi Alfier is published nationally and internationally. Her poems have appeared in Washington Square, The American Journal of Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, Arkansas Review, Atlanta Review, Hawai’i Pacific Review, The Chaffin Journal, Fourth River, Gargoyle, KGB Bar Lit Magazine, The Los Angeles Review,  Nerve Cowboy, Permafrost, Spoon River Poetry Review, Suisun Valley Review, Chiron Review, Cholla Needles, War Literature & the Arts, The Galway Review, The Ogham Stone, and other print and online journals in the US and overseas. In addition to seven chapbooks, she is the author of Grit & Grace (The Orchard Street Press, 2021), Symmetry: earth and sky which was published by Main Street Rag, 2020, Slices of Alice & Other Character Studies, published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, Down Anstruther Way, a collection of Scotland poems, published by FutureCycle Press, Somewhere, Anywhere, Doesn't Matter Where, published by Kelsay Books, Romance and Rust, Lapses & Absences, The Coincidence of Castles, a chapbook of Ireland poems (Glass Lyre Press). Both a reissue of Sanity Among the Wildflowers, and Calendar Girls Poems 2022, a wall calendar, were published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library.  The calendar includes poetry and photographs.

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Truly imaginative writing can bring us back to the living presence of the grass, to the fields that feed us, to the cities we live in and the nature of the men and women among whom we live.

 

       — Phillip Levine

 

 

                                                                                         BACK ISSUES  of SPRR