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SUBMISSIONS IF YOU HAVE NOT YET PUBLISHED POEMS EITHER IN REPUTABLE LITERARY MAGAZINES OR IN A PAMPHLET FROM A REPUTABLE SMALL PRESS, DO NOT SEND US YOUR WORK. Bloodaxe is one of Britain's leading poetry publishers with an internationally renowned list of writers. We do not publish anyone who has only recently started writing. Every poet we take on already has a track record of magazine or small press publication. (These opening comments are set in bold type because 90% of the people who read this page to check our submissions procedure ignore the advice given below.) Bloodaxe now publishes over 300 poets, and we need to keep up with their collective output. This won't be possible if we take on too many new authors, so we are only able to pursue publication in very few cases. If we aren't able to publish your poetry this may have nothing to do with the quality of your work; it's more to do with the restrictions of poetry publishing. However, Bloodaxe is continuing to introduce new poets, and we're still bringing out first collections every year as well as editions introducing major poets from overseas and anthologies aimed at broadening the readership of contemporary poetry. We have been publish around 30-35 new books of poetry a year, and it has not possible for us to do more than that. We will not usually be in a position to publish more than one or two first collections per year. With the government now forcing the Arts Council to cut funding to all its clients by at least a third over the next three years, we will not be able to publish as many new titles. This means it will be even more difficult for new authors to have their books taken on. Although we have a policy of publishing new authors, these are invariably poets whose work has appeared in magazines or pamphlets and who have built up a publishable book-length collection over a period of time. If you have not yet published poems in reputable literary magazines or in a pamphlet from a reputable small press, please do not send your manuscript. We receive up to 100 manuscripts or offers of publication each week, and most authors submitting to us will have a track record of previous publication in magazines or pamphlets. If you do not have a track record of previous publication of this kind, do not send us your work. There are certain firms which charge writers to publish their work or which require the writers to pay for copies of anthologies in which their work appears as a condition of publication: please note that this type of publication does not count as a "track record of previous publication". Listing such publishers and anthologies when submitting work to reputable publishers will be counterproductive: it gives the editor an immediate indication that this writer's work has been published not because of literary merit but because the writer has paid to have it printed. For more information about so-called "vanity publishing", see the advice offered by the Society of Authors. If you wish to submit your work, please send a sample of up to a dozen poems from a book-length collection with return postage. But there's no point in sending a handful of poems if that's all you have.