30 Best Poetry Publishing Companies (11 Accept Submissions)

You have a collection ready and nowhere obvious to send it. Eleven of the presses below will read a poetry manuscript you send them directly, with no contest to enter and no fee to pay.

Poetry publishing runs on windows, contests and backlogs, so the useful question is not which press is best but which one is open. That is how this page is sorted. Eleven presses take work straight from a poet, no contest and no entry fee. Nine more are open only through a competition or a dated reading period, and most of those charge to enter. Nine are shut right now, several with a published reopening date you can put in a calendar. One does not publish poetry at all, which its own guidelines say in a single line. If you want the wider view afterwards, browse the full list of 3,000 publishing entities.

Windows, fees and reading periods change without notice, so check the press’s own page before you send anything. Last verified: August 1, 2026.

Poetry Publishers Taking Work Directly From Poets

Eleven presses where a poet sends a manuscript and someone reads it. No contest, no entry fee, no window to wait for, though several have conditions you should know about before you spend the postage.

1. Luath

Luath Press accepts submissions, and its own page puts the door wider than anyone else here: “Our submissions are open 24/7, 365 days a year.” No window, no fee, no reading period to wait for.

The Edinburgh publisher wants a clear synopsis of up to 250 words and an explanation of which part of its programme your book fits. Poetry sits alongside Scottish history, politics, travel, Gaelic and Scots-language work, so a collection rooted in place has an obvious argument to make.

2. Codhill

Codhill Press is open to submissions, which is five words most of the presses on this page cannot currently say. Queries go by email to the address on that page, and the press is small enough that you are writing to named people: Susannah Appelbaum is the publisher, David Appelbaum the founder.

The Hudson Valley list runs to poetry, literature, spirituality, philosophy and art, with a chapbook series and the Forsythia Series alongside it. There is also a Guest Editor Poetry Series and the Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award, whose 2025 winner was V.P. Loggins of Annapolis with “A Lively Mask.” The site is kept up to date, so the guidelines you read there are the ones in force.

3. Counterpath Press

Counterpath accepts submissions year-round and charges nothing, which is a rarer combination in poetry than it should be. Send a query with a short sample to the press email, with the subject line beginning “SUBMISSION” or “PROPOSAL,” and join its mailing list first, because it asks. Mailed submissions are fine too. Because of volume it replies only to work it wants to pursue, within three months.

It is also the most likeable entry here. Counterpath at 7935 East 14th Avenue in Denver is a press that is also a building: a free bookstore, a food bank, a community garden, a residency programme, and a calendar of readings, screenings, performances and exhibits. Experimental writing and translation are the centre of the list.

4. Kaya

Kaya Press accepts submissions through an open process, with an editorial board that meets three times a year to discuss manuscripts, so expect months instead of weeks and a considered answer instead of a form.

Founded in 1994 and publishing the literature of the Asian Pacific diaspora, Kaya sits under the academic auspices of USC’s Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. It is direct about fit: it will not respond to submissions that have nothing to do with that mission, so read the list before you send. For poets whose work belongs to that diaspora, this is one of the few standing open doors in American poetry publishing.

5. Manic D Press

Manic D Press accepts submissions of five to ten poems by email, any time of year, to the address on its guidelines page. Postal manuscripts are read in January and July only, and anything that arrives in between waits in a pile until the next reading month comes round.

The San Francisco press has one condition nobody else here asks for, and it is a good one: you must have read one of its books, and your cover letter must say which one and what you thought of it. Be specific, it adds. You are contacted only if the editors want the full manuscript. The guidelines carry an “updated 4/17/19” stamp, so the page is old, but the policy on it is coherent and the press is still publishing.

6. Plan B Press

Plan B Press accepts manuscripts, and it is the one press here that turns you away for being too published: the door is open only to authors with fewer than three books, chapbooks included. It specialises deliberately in writers at the beginning of a career.

What it wants is a complete collection, “a complete thought,” as its page puts it, and what it almost always publishes is chapbooks in the twenty-to-thirty-poem range instead of full-length books. It expects you to be open to editorial feedback, and it would like you to arrive with ideas for the cover. Paper submissions go to the Alexandria, Virginia address; email first for electronic ones. If you are looking at other publishing houses in Virginia, this is the poetry-specific one.

7. Coach House Books

Coach House Books accepts submissions of full-length poetry: at least sixty pages, in one Word or PDF file, with a letter comparing your work to at least two current Coach House titles and a literary CV. Single poems and chapbooks are not what it is looking for.

One condition governs everything: it publishes almost exclusively Canadian authors, and it explains why instead of leaving you to guess. Canadian-owned publishers are made viable in part by federal and provincial grant funding, and access to those grants requires prioritising Canadian writers. It also cannot take work already published with an ISBN, or work that will be self-published while under consideration, and drama submissions are paused until further notice. It particularly encourages Indigenous writers, writers of colour, writers with disabilities and LGBTQ writers.

Its submissions page also carries a warning worth repeating anywhere poets gather: people are impersonating Coach House editors to defraud authors, and any email that does not come from the chbooks.com domain is fake. If you are looking further into Canadian publishing companies, treat any unsolicited offer with the same suspicion.

8. Mansfield Press

Mansfield Press accepts submissions of full poetry manuscripts, and then draws the sharpest line on this page: “That’s Canadian writers and only Canadian writers. We receive weekly international submissions but we just can’t help you. Save your postage and best of luck in placing your manuscript elsewhere.”

If you are Canadian: send the whole manuscript, by post to the Toronto address with a stamped envelope, or by email as a PDF. The cover letter should say why your book belongs at Mansfield with reference to other Mansfield titles, and how you can help sell it. Multiple submissions are fine, and a reply can take six months or longer. One more honest warning from the page: it is unlikely to publish a first book by a poet with no magazine or journal credits, so build the publication history first.

9. Red Hen

Red Hen Press accepts unsolicited submissions, and says so under a heading of its own. It is the most straightforward answer here to the question of where a poetry collection goes when you have no agent and no contest entry fee.

The Los Angeles nonprofit also runs five annual awards, several of them aimed squarely at poets: the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award carries a $3,000 prize and book publication, the Ann Petry Award $3,000, the Quill Prose Award $1,000, and the Cai Emmons Fiction Award $5,000. Its journal, the Los Angeles Review, runs its own seasonal awards in poetry, short fiction, flash fiction and creative nonfiction at $1,000 each. As a publishing company in Los Angeles it is unusually well set up for poets at both ends of a career.

10. Persea Books

Persea Books accepts queries from poets, and this is one place where reading the page carefully changes the answer. Persea is not currently reading unsolicited fiction or nonfiction at all. Poetry is the exception it keeps open: email the poetry department describing the project and your publication history, attaching up to twelve sample pages, and it will ask for more if it is interested.

The honest caveat comes from the press itself. Its commitment to the poets it already publishes limits how many new collections it can add, so the odds here are long. Two annual contests are the alternative route: the Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize in Poetry and the Lexi Rudnitsky/Editor’s Choice Award. If you are surveying publishers in New York City, note that this is a query-first house, not a manuscript-first one.

11. LSU Press

LSU Press accepts proposals directly from poets, and poetry is a named subject on the list of a university press better known for Southern history, which makes it a real and often overlooked route.

The poetry proposal is deliberately short: a cover letter, a one-page summary of the work, a few sample poems and a current CV, addressed to the acquisitions editor whose subjects fit yours. Do not send the whole manuscript at this stage. Expect up to two months for a first response; if the press wants to go further it asks for the full manuscript, reads it in-house, sends it to anonymous outside readers over four to six months, and then puts it to the University Press Committee. One thing to note before you plan a submission: Louisiana State University Press is no longer accepting fiction proposals.

Open, But Only Through A Contest Or A Dated Window

Nine presses where the door exists but has a calendar on it, and in most cases a card reader. Each entry gives the window and the fee, because those two facts decide whether it is worth your time.

12. Tupelo Press

Tupelo Press accepts submissions through named windows instead of a standing inbox, and it runs enough of them that something is nearly always open. Published periods: the Snowbound Chapbook Award, 1 December to 28 February; the Summer Open Reading Period, 1 July to 31 August; the Helena Whitehill Book Award, 15 August to 31 October; and translations, ongoing.

Poets may be previously published or not, and it reads work from anyone writing in English anywhere in the world. It does not publish children’s, inspirational, graphic or religious books, and it will not consider a previously self-published collection, though individual poems that appeared in journals are fine inside a new manuscript with acknowledgments. Everything goes through its Subfolio account or by mail, and emailed manuscripts are refused.

13. BOA Editions

BOA Editions accepts submissions to several annual prizes and reading periods, all listed on one page, and one of them has the feature poets look for hardest: no submission fee. The American Poets Continuum Series reads from 1 April to 31 May 2027, judged by Peter Conners, for manuscripts of 65 to 120 pages, paper submissions only, and it is open to poets who have already published a full-length collection with a traditional publisher.

Alongside it the Rochester nonprofit runs the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize, the Blessings the Boats Selection and the BOA Short Fiction Prize. Bookmark the submissions page above, because it carries all four with their current dates.

14. Four Way Books

Four Way Books accepts submissions in three dated windows, and publishes both the dates and the fees clearly enough that you can plan a year around them.

The Levis Prize in Poetry reads 1 January to 31 March 2027, judged by Laura Kasischke, open to any poet regardless of publication history, with a $1,000 honorarium. The Ellen Bryant Voigt Series in Poetry, until recently just called the June open reading period, takes book-length collections from 1 to 30 June every year, with a $30 processing fee, a $1,000 honorarium and Sally Ball as series editor. An Open Reading Period in Fiction runs 1 to 30 November with a $32 fee. All are online-only, and the New York nonprofit responds to the fiction period by mid-April.

15. Autumn House

Autumn House Press accepts manuscripts for its annual prizes and through its partnership with the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics, and those are the only ways in. It publishes six to eight books a year across poetry, fiction and nonfiction.

For poets the date is the one to note: the poetry prize reads from 1 May to 30 June each year, most recently with Felicia Zamora as final judge. Winners receive publication, a $1,000 honorarium and a $1,500 travel and publicity grant. The fiction prize takes the January-February slot and nonfiction March-April, so the three genres never overlap. The CAAPP Book Prize goes to a first or second book by a writer of African descent. Everything is submitted through Duosuma, and the press states plainly that mailed or emailed manuscripts will not be read or answered. As a publishing company in Pittsburgh it is the city’s most active literary press.

16. Saturnalia Books

Saturnalia Books accepts submissions to its annual contest and to nothing else. Its contact page states the boundary without softening it: the press does not take unsolicited submissions and will not review anything sent outside that competition.

It is an independent poetry press run by people who put their names and direct email addresses on the page: Timothy Liu and Sarah Wetzel as editors and publishers, Henry Israeli as founder and editor-at-large. That accessibility is real, but it is for questions about the contest, the newsletter and events, not a side door for manuscripts. If you are looking at publishing companies in Philadelphia, this is the poetry specialist among them.

17. Moon City Press

Moon City Press accepts submissions only through its contests: “At this time we are limiting submissions to our existing contests.” The Moon City Poetry Award opens in January and closes in May, which makes it one of the easier windows to plan for; the Moon City Short Fiction Award opens around AWP and closes on 1 October. Paul Martinez Pompa won the 2025 poetry award.

There is a second route at this literary press in Missouri, attached to Missouri State University: Moon City Review, its literary annual, takes poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, graphic narrative, translations and book reviews on its own separate terms. Publishing there first is the ordinary way poets come to a press’s attention.

18. White Pine

White Pine Press accepts submissions to its annual poetry contest, and that is now the whole of it: “Due to a large backlog, we are not currently reading new work except as part of our annual poetry contest.”

Two other doors on the same page are shut, and one permanently. Poetry in Translation is not reading new work, for the same backlog reason. The Marie Alexander Poetry Series has been concluded and will consider nothing further, though its backlist stays in print. The Buffalo press also runs the Cliff Becker Prize and the Korean Voices Series. Manuscripts go by post, take three to six months to read, and it asks you not to telephone to check on one.

19. Ohio University Press

Ohio University Press accepts submissions from poets through one competition and no other way: “The press accepts poetry submissions only through the Hollis Summers Poetry Prize competition.” That is the whole poetry policy, and it is stated in a single sentence on the page above.

The rest of the press, publishing under its own name and the Swallow Press imprint, works on book proposals in African studies, Appalachian studies, history and regional subjects, and it asks that you not send a complete manuscript unless an editor has invited it. Useful to know if your poetry sits alongside scholarly work in those fields, since the proposal route is a different conversation from the prize.

20. Black Mountain Press

Black Mountain Press accepts submissions through Submittable, with no window to wait for, and a fee on every route, published openly on the page. Poetry and prose cost $12 to submit, the quarterly chapbook award $12, HerWords and JanusWords $10 each, children’s books $12, the cover art competition $8. If the fee is a barrier the press invites you to email and say so.

Read one more line on that page before you decide, because it is the one that matters most: the press states that it does not currently pay its writers and artists. Its stated focus for 2018 through 2028 is poetry, memoir, novels and short story collections, and a response can take six months. The East Asheville press is part of the Flood Gallery Fine Arts Center, a registered nonprofit, and postal manuscripts are refused. Its site footer is also carrying injected spam text about covid test kits, which is not a reason to avoid the press but is a reason to expect slow answers.

Closed Right Now

Nine presses that are trading, publishing and not reading your manuscript. Where a reopening date is published, it is here, and several are worth a calendar entry instead of a scratch off the list.

21. Copper Canyon Press

Copper Canyon Press is closed to submissions, and the reason is the most flattering one here: it hit its ceiling. Its 2026 Open Reading Period took 850 manuscripts, “the maximum number our editorial team can review,” and shut. The page says it will not take any more into that period and that confirmation emails went to everyone who made it in.

The Port Townsend press expects to hold another Open Reading Period next year and promises roughly two weeks’ advance notice on that page and its social accounts. There is no standing inbox in between, so check the page a few times a year instead of sending anything now. It is one of the most significant poetry publishers in the United States, and worth the wait if the fit is right.

22. Graywolf Press

Graywolf Press does not accept unsolicited submissions. Its editors publish about thirty books a year and find them by seeking work out in magazines, at writing conferences and in other venues, not by opening an inbox.

For poets there are two indirect routes, and both run through other organisations. Graywolf publishes the winner of the Walt Whitman Award, a $5,000 first-book prize administered by the Academy of American Poets that also carries a six-week residency at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Umbria; you enter through the Academy, not through Graywolf. It is also one of the publishers of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a first-book award for African American poets, and publishes every third winner; that one is entered through Cave Canem. Nonfiction comes only through agents, and as of September 2025 the press has concluded its own Nonfiction Prize after twenty years. This publisher based in Minneapolis is a destination, not an application.

23. Milkweed Press

Milkweed is not accepting unsolicited submissions. Its page says the position plainly and promises an announcement through its newsletter, with the page updated, if that changes.

First, a naming correction, because it will cost you a search otherwise: the press trades as Milkweed Editions, not Milkweed Press. Second, the prizes it takes part in are run by other people and the press asks you to send manuscripts to them instead of to Minneapolis. The Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry awards $10,000 and publication to a poet living in Minnesota, Iowa, North or South Dakota, Wisconsin or Michigan. The Jake Adam York Prize, run with Copper Nickel for a first or second collection, awards $2,000 and publication and reads from 1 July to 15 October.

24. Salmon Poetry

Salmon Poetry is not accepting manuscripts, and it has told poets exactly how long the queue is: “Our list is full until the end of 2027.” Editor Jessie Lendennie answers that question and several others on the advice-for-writers page, which is a useful read about how poetry publishing decisions get made.

The press promises to post details of how to submit once the window reopens, on that same page. It operates from the Salmon Bookshop & Literary Centre on Main Street in Ennistymon, County Clare, and has been one of Ireland’s most important poetry publishers for decades.

25. Write Bloody

Write Bloody Publishing is closed to submissions until a date it publishes on its own homepage: submissions open again on 1 February 2027. That is a calendar entry, not a dead end.

It is also one of the most distinctive lists in American poetry: performance-rooted work published since 2004, with the Jack McCarthy prize behind several of its recent books. If your poems were built to be read aloud, this is the press to wait for.

26. Two Sylvias Press

Two Sylvias Press is not accepting unsolicited manuscript submissions, and the sentence appears twice on its contact page, which suggests they were tired of being asked.

What it points to instead is seasonal: check back in September for the Wilder Series Poetry Book Prize. It also runs the Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize and the Russell Prize. Around the publishing it sells a good deal else, including online poetry retreats, an advent calendar of poetry prompts, The Poet Tarot, and paid poem critiques. If you arrive hoping to submit, understand that most of what is currently on sale is for the writing of a collection and not the publishing of one.

27. Giramondo Publishing

Giramondo is closed to submissions at the moment. Its page explains the shape: the Sydney press accepts unsolicited book submissions for a limited period each year through Submittable, and that period is not currently running. The newsletter is where the next window gets announced.

Two other things on the same site are live and often missed. Giramondo publishes HEAT magazine, which takes submissions on its own separate page and is a serious route into the press’s orbit. And it runs two competitions, the Novel Prize and the Poetry in Translation Prize. It also expects writers who submit to have read the books it publishes, which for an Australian press with a distinctive international list is not a formality.

28. Elixir Press

Elixir Press is not accepting submissions for the foreseeable future. That announcement sits on its homepage.

It is also a good reminder that a guidelines page can sit unchanged for years while the homepage tells the truth. The Denver press’s guidelines still advertise two $2,000 competitions, a poetry award and a fiction award, both promising publication, and both posts are dated 2018 and 2019, with the poetry judge still listed as “to be announced later.” Read only that page and you would send an entry fee into a competition that is not running.

29. Black Herald Press

Black Herald Press does not accept unsolicited manuscripts at present, and says so in both its languages: “Nous n’acceptons pas de propositions de manuscrits.” It is a bilingual English and French poetry press, which makes it unusual and worth watching even while the door is shut.

One thing to be clear-eyed about. Co-publisher Paul Stubbs offers a paid poetry manuscript appraisal service, advertised on the same page as the closure notice. That is a service you buy, not a route to being published by the press, and the two should not be confused.

Not A Poetry Publisher At All

30. Yorkshire Publishing

Yorkshire Publishing accepts submissions, and its own guidelines rule out this entire page in one line: “Per our guidelines — we do not accept poetry or single short stories.” If you write poems, this one is not for you, and that is about the guidelines and not the company.

What Yorkshire Publishing Group does take is fiction, non-fiction, devotionals, young adult, middle-grade and picture books. Send the complete manuscript in Word through the form, allow sixty to ninety business days for a review, and expect to certify that your manuscript contains no AI-generated text or images, a requirement that is becoming standard and repays a careful read before you agree to it. If your work is prose, this is a live route.

Final Thoughts

Eleven presses will read a poetry manuscript sent to them directly, and Luath, Codhill and Counterpath are the three with no window, no fee and no conditions attached. If you are Canadian, Coach House and Mansfield double your options. If you are early in a career, Plan B Press is built for exactly that. Red Hen remains the best-known name that still says yes to unsolicited work.

Everything else is a matter of timing or money. Nine presses run contests and reading periods with published dates, and three of those dates fall in the first half of any year: Moon City’s poetry award from January to May, Four Way’s Levis Prize from January to March, Autumn House’s poetry prize in May and June. Nine more are shut, and four of them tell you when they will not be: Write Bloody on 1 February 2027, Salmon Poetry after 2027, Copper Canyon and Giramondo when their next reading periods are announced.

One habit will save you more than any list can. Read the press’s homepage as well as its guidelines page. Elixir Press advertises two live-looking $2,000 contests on a guidelines page while its homepage says it is not reading anything, and it is the homepage that is right. If you want to widen the net further, the guide to selling poetry covers what happens after acceptance, and novella publishers accepting submissions is the nearest neighbour if your work has outgrown the line.