Submissions
You are welcome to send up to 20 unpublished poems to helios.sparrow@gmail.com. We accept haiku, the haikuesque, disjunctively-inspired poetry; and visual media (paintings, photos, graphics, haiga, etc). We have a rolling submission policy, and usually publish new works on a weekly basis. Please view our “Artist Statements” for some novel approaches. We invite your brilliance and surprise in sparrowforms of your choosing. Uplift us with your heliocentric currents, waft us to the ground in your parachutes that we might find ancientness among new stars. The minimal, the disjunctive, the contrapuntal, made of edges or fulsome plains; skyward-arching trees of the sparrows, fragile; avoid the all-too familiar lacking a language of birds; sing to us.
Please note: We do not send rejection letters. Poems are accepted/passed on within three weeks. Beyond this time they are not under review by Heliosparrow Journal.
We accept previously uncurated work: For an explanation of “uncurated,” please see this essay by Timothy Green, “Uncurated: The Case for a New Term of Art” (16 March 2023, litmagnews.substack.com). Tim writes: “The poems can’t have appeared in any other books or magazines or similarly selected collections, in print or online…. [Uncurated] leaves open the ability to self-publish on social media or blogs or message boards. It allows the work to be shared on podcasts and open mics. Tweet your poems and flash fiction. Tag the person it was written for on Facebook. Workshop stories online. Blog chapters from your novel-in-progress. This is how a literary culture thrives.”
As carbon deep in the mantle of earth’s cratonic zones under exquisite forces became diamond; as the increased flare of laboratory moissanite usurps the concept of organic; the poem arrives from the three times; past, present and future combine, with each song unique.
Artwork: Our house style leans towards supra’naturalism, interiority, and the informal; send at will. Examples here (max 615px width, 72-92 dpi; we can resize).
Copyright & Proofing: You retain copyright to your work—no need to ask permission to republish; Heliosparrow reserves the right to republish your work in our associated print or online anthologies we create (e.g., annual anthys and awards contests). If you later publish a work appearing in Heliosparrow, please cite us as first-publication: “Heliosparrow Poetry Journal, Date.” Each work published has a unique URL; this can be included. For future publications: the new venue must cite Heliosparrow as the original publication. Proofing: We will use our house style on all texts—these will usually be minor changes (e.g., use of our standard em-dash, ellipsis, and font styles). For haibun and prose we adjust margins to suit our formatting. Authors can request changes, if needed.
Thank you, we look forward to your work,
Richard Gilbert & Clayton Beach, Editors