Publications Looking For Creative Writing and Poetry

Magazines: It is always a good idea to learn about a magazine’s editorial preferences and guidelines before you send your writing to them.

• Cricket and Spider Magazines. Poetry, fiction, essays. Cricket publishes all ages, Spider, ages 10 and up. Mail entries to Cricket or Spider Magazine: P.O. Box 300, Peru, IL, 61354.
  
  
• Creative Kids: The National Voice for Kids. For more info, call 800-998-2208 or e-mail: creative_kids@prufrock.com
  
  
• Merlyn’s Pen Magazine. Annual publication of teen writing: fiction, essays, poetry. For guidelines, call 800-247-2027, e-mail: merlynspen@aol.com website: http://www.merlynspen.com
  
  
• Potato Hill Poetry. Publishes bimonthly magazine for teachers and students K-12. Poems, exercises, artwork, essays. For more info. call 888-5-POETRY or e-mail: info@potatohill.com
  
  
• Stone Soup: The magazine by young writers and artists. Poetry, fiction, essays, artwork. For more info call 800-447-4569. Website: http://www.stonesoup.com
  
  
• Anthology of Poetry, Inc. 148 Sunset Ave. P.O. Box 698, Asheboro, NC 27204. Publishes annual anthology of student poems grades 1-12.
  
  
• The Children’s Better Health Institute offers 4 magazines in which to publish poetry arranged by age: Children’s Playmate (ages 6-8), Jack And Jill (ages 7-10), Child Life (ages 9-11), and Children’s Digest (ages 10-12). For guidelines call 317-636-8881.
  
  
• Creative With Words Publications publishes two magazines for school-aged children to publish poetry, prose and artwork: We Are Writers, Too!, and Folklore Humor. For guidelines contact: Creative with Words, P.O. Box 223226, Carmel, CA 93922. E-mail cwwpub@usa.net. Website: http://members.tripod.com/CreativeWithWords.
  
  
• Highlights for Children magazine publishes poetry, prose and artwork by children up to pre-teen. For submission information, call 717-253-1164 and ask for the Highlights Company.
  
  
• The Apprentice Writer accepts prose, poetry, photos and artwork submitted by high school students. For submission information contact: Gary Finck, Writers Institute Director, Susquehanna University, Selingsgrove, PA 17870-1001.
  
  
• How On Earth is an online magazine that accepts submissions from youth. For submission guidelines contact: How On Earth!, P.O. Box 1209, Blue Hill, ME 04614. www.how-on-earth.org.

Other Publication Possibilities:

• Call your state's Department of Education to see if they publish a statewide poetry journal or sponsor a statewide poetry/writing contest.
  
  
• Call your state's Council of English Teachers to see if they sponsor an annual book of creative writing.
  
  
• Call local television stations and newspapers: many of them will publish poems and also sponsor annual poetry contests.
  
  
• Market Guide for Young Writers: Fifth Edition: 1996. Over 150 opportunities for writers ages 8-18. (This is an excellent resource.)
  
  
• Contact radio stations about hosting a live on-air poetry reading either at school or their station.
  
  
• Contact local banks and other businesses in your community and ask them to consider displaying student work on their walls. Just as artists use those walls, so too, can poets.
  
  
• Have students put together individual chapbooks of their poems. They should make the same decisions poets do regarding organization: chronologically, thematically, short to long, humorous to serious, good to best, etc. They might include artwork and an autobiographical sketch.
  
  
• Have students put together a classroom anthology of their best poems. Let them make decisions just as editors would.
  
  
• Devote an entire hallway in your school (“The Poetry Hall”) to poems. Put up student work throughout the year, perhaps a new class gets to be published on the wall each month.
  
  
• Start each day with a poem read by a different student in your classroom or before daily announcements for the entire school.
  
  
• Post a poem of the day written by students and others on the school bulletin board for all to see.
  
  
• Set up a classwide or schoolwide poetry reading. Invite parents and the community to hear students read their poems. You might add dancers and musicians to this program.
  
  
• Set up a coffeehouse-style poetry reading in your classroom or home. Have students sign up to read their work. Atmosphere is everything. Don’t forget the refreshments.
  
  
• Host a poetry slam at your school. There are so many ways to set this up. The form is being reinvented all the time. Students can sign up to read their own work, to read the poems of others, to make up poems on the spot when given a subject. Sometimes the audience will vote on these performances. You might be careful how you set this up. It needn’t be competitive.