2024 Poetry Submission Recap

submissions
Written By Dominique Ahkong

Last year I posted my 2023 Submission Recap (aka Lychee Submission Stats) to Instagram. This year, I’m posting it here.

Lychee Submission Stats 2024

Submitted: 35

I submitted a total of 33 different poems to 34 publications in 2024; a 18% decrease compared to 2023.

This year I submitted work to my first poetry contest (Radar Poetry’s Coniston Prize, which Laura Villareal won a couple of years ago with a group of poems from Girl’s Guide to Leaving) and to my first chapbook contest (The Slapering Hol Chapbook Contest).

Both venues waived submission fees for BIPOC poets (Slapering Hol charged $2 for the Submittable processing fee). I cobbled together packets for both opportunities and submitted them very close to the deadline. I wonder how many poets do this. Bless the readers.

I submitted 75% of my work in Q2 (late April - early June), in between reading submissions for Shō. By the end of May I had written new poems, thanks to Jose Hernandez Diaz’s generative workshop on odes and prose poetry.

Rejected: 30

Of the 30 rejections I received in 2024, 17 were encouraging (48.5%), my highest percentage to date.

Accepted: 9

17 of my poems were accepted by 9 different journals in 2024. One of my poems was also reprinted in Best New Poets! That was one of my biggest surprises this year.

While my acceptances last year were mostly for single poems, I received six double-poem acceptances this year, and one triple-poem acceptance! As a result of the way these acceptances happened, I had to withdraw my entire packet from three different journals—this, too, was a first for me. I would have liked to know how these journals would respond to these poems. Still, not complaining.

Pending: 5

At the time of writing, these are 29 - 226 days out.

Personal Poetry Intentions for 2025

I’m not a fan of new year’s resolutions, but I can get behind setting intentions.

Unless I generate a lot of new poems next year, I intend to steer my focus away from submitting work to journals so I can concentrate on creating bodies of work. I would like to:

  • Figure out my chapbook manuscript; and

  • Submit it for consideration. More than once. More than twice.

  • Figure out how to balance running Shō and tending to my poems;

  • Start writing more poems that are working towards my full-length manuscript;

  • Practice writing poems that are not so tightly wound.

Dominique Ahkong