Submit Your Poetry
We Want to Read Your Work
Breadcrumb Scabs is actively seeking powerful confessional poetry for upcoming monthly issues. We believe the best contemporary verse comes from poets willing to take risks, embrace discomfort, and trust their own honest voices.
What We're Looking For
We publish poetry that refuses to look away. If your work explores the messy, complicated, unflattering aspects of human experience - if it combines beauty with ugliness, love with cruelty, hope with despair - we want to read it.
Our ideal submissions:
- Embrace confessional mode without self-indulgence
- Use specific, visceral imagery
- Take formal or thematic risks
- Reveal rather than conceal emotional complexity
- Trust readers to handle difficult content
- Balance sentimentality with grittiness
We particularly welcome work by queer poets and women writers, though all poets who share our aesthetic vision are encouraged to submit. International submissions are welcome and encouraged.
Submission Guidelines
What to Send
- Poetry: 3-5 poems per submission
- Length: Any length, though most published poems are 20-60 lines
- Previously Published: We accept simultaneous submissions but require notification if work is accepted elsewhere
- Format: Standard manuscript format, Times New Roman or similar readable font
How to Submit
Email submissions to: [email protected]
- Include all poems in a single document (Word or PDF)
- Use "Poetry Submission - [Your Name]" as subject line
- Include brief bio (50-100 words) in email body
- Attach poems as document, not in email body
Response Time
Our median response time is 10 days. We pride ourselves on rapid, respectful communication with poets. All submissions receive a personal response, not a form letter.
According to Poets & Writers, fast response times demonstrate respect for poets' time and work. We believe poets deserve to know quickly whether their work fits our current needs.
What Happens After You Submit
Our editorial team reviews all submissions carefully. We read for both craft and vision - technical skill matters, but so does the courage to take risks and explore difficult territory.
If we accept your work, you'll receive a contract outlining publication timeline and rights. We typically publish accepted pieces within 3 months. You retain all rights to your work; we request only first publication rights and the right to archive published work.
If we decline your work, we often provide brief feedback on why it didn't fit our current needs. Rejection doesn't mean your poetry isn't good - it means it wasn't right for our particular aesthetic at this particular moment. We encourage resubmission of new work.
Themes We Gravitate Toward
While we don't publish themed issues, certain subjects consistently resonate with our editorial vision:
- Guilt: Moral complexity, complicity, the weight of conscience
- Grit: Survival, struggle, resilience without romanticization
- Sex: Desire in all forms, erotic ambiguity, embodied experience
- Scabs: Healing and reopening wounds, trauma and recovery
- Identity: Especially queer identity, gender fluidity, selfhood
- Mental Health: Depression, anxiety, psychological complexity
- Relationships: Love that's complicated, messy, difficult
What Doesn't Work for Us
To save everyone time, here's what we typically decline:
- Sentimental poetry that prioritizes comfort over honesty
- Abstract, overly intellectual work divorced from embodied experience
- Genre poetry (fantasy, sci-fi) unless it transcends genre conventions
- Poetry that tells rather than shows emotional states
- Work that relies heavily on clichéd imagery or phrasing
- Poetry written primarily for shock value without deeper resonance
For Visual Artists
We occasionally feature visual art that complements our literary content. If you create art exploring similar themes - gritty, honest, unflinching work about human experience - we'd love to see it. Email samples and a brief artist statement to the same submission address.
Questions?
If you have questions about whether your work fits our aesthetic, feel free to email us before submitting. We're happy to provide guidance. You can also review our past issues to get a sense of what we publish.
We're excited to read your work. Send us poetry that takes risks, that refuses to flinch, that trusts in the power of honest language to reveal difficult truths.