Poetry publishing companies accepting submissions
River & Sound Review is an independent literary journal and a poetry publishing company accepting submissions from poets, translators and editors across the UK, Ireland, Europe, Australia, Canada and India. It is a new, unaffiliated project that carries no claim to the former brand, and it reads 2 genres in each issue: poetry and prose. The full policy below covers accepted work, word limits, the current reading window, fees (none), and how the editorial board makes its decisions.
The wider field splits into 4 types of outlet. Trade poetry publishers such as Granta Submissions, the Conjunctions Submissions desk and Poetry in Literary Magazines take book-length manuscripts and prize entries; small journals such as River & Sound Review take individual poems and short prose; anthologies take selections from a published body of work; and regional magazines from Birmingham to Brisbane take local voices. River & Sound Review belongs to the second type, and its policy is the one this page documents in full.
River & Sound Review and its reading calendar
River & Sound Review publishes 2 issues a year, one in spring and one in autumn, and its 2026 reading calendar is fixed: the spring issue opens for submissions on 1 September 2025 and closes on 31 January 2026, while the autumn issue opens on 1 March 2026 and closes on 31 July 2026. Work submitted outside a window is not read; the desk does not hold pieces, so timing a submission to a live window is the single most common fix for a missed deadline. The journal keeps a rolling editorial calendar of 12 months, and each issue is edited from a pool of roughly 180 poems and 30 prose pieces per window.
Accepted genres and word limits
The 2 genres River & Sound Review accepts are poetry and literary prose, and the 3 sub-types the desk reads most often are lyric poems, ekphrastic poems and flash fiction. Experimental work is welcome when the experiment serves the piece, and translations are accepted in any currency of style, provided the translator is credited by name. The limits are hard, and the desk rejects at the character count rather than the merit count, so cut before you send:
| Form | Limit | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Single poem | 60 lines | Up to 4 poems per email, 1 poem per page |
| Flash fiction | 750 words | Up to 3 pieces per email |
| Translated poem | 60 lines | Translator named in the email subject |
| Editorial or letter | 250 words | By arrangement only |
Diagram poetry is accepted as a 1 image PDF with a 50 word caption, and the desk treats the caption as part of the poem, not as an afterthought. These limits stay the same for every 2026 submission, and they do not flex for prize entrants.
Fees, payment and rights
River & Sound Review charges 0 fees: submission is free, there is no reading charge, and there is no entry fee for its annual award. The journal pays a 15 USD honorarium per published poem and a 25 USD honorarium per published prose piece, paid by wire or PayPal within 30 days of the issue date. The fee-free model is the reason the journal can keep 100 percent of its review budget on print and distribution rather than on processing submissions. For a poetry book submission, the desk accepts complete manuscripts of 40 to 80 poems once a year, in October, and a published book may be entered in its open category without a fee.
Where to send your work and how to format it
To send work to River & Sound Review, email the submissions address with the subject line in this exact shape: GENRE - Lastname - Piece title. The 3 formatting rules that decide whether a piece reaches a reader are plain text or PDF only, 1 poem or 1 story per page, and full contact details in the email body, not in the document. Do not paste work into the body of the email, and do not attach more than 1 file per poem. The journal logs every email by date, which is what makes its 21 day response standard verifiable. River & Sound Review currently reads the most submissions from the UK and Ireland, but it accepts from any country, including Australia, Canada, India and the US, and it does not weight a piece by the sender's postal address.
How submissions are read and decided
The editorial process at River & Sound Review runs in 3 stages, and a piece must clear all 3 before it is offered publication. In stage 1, the 2025 to 2026 reading window, the editor screens every piece against the 2 genre limits and the line and word counts, and about 1 in 3 pieces is set aside in the first pass. In stage 2, a blind read by 2 editors scores each survivor on language, structure and finish, and a piece needs a majority to move on. In stage 3, the editor places the piece in an issue alongside 4 other pieces that form a quiet conversation across the page, and this placement step is where most accepted poems are finally dated to an issue. The board aims to respond within 21 days for rejections and within 10 days for offers, and silence beyond the 21 day standard should be read as a lost email, not as a verdict. The same 3 stage process applies to anthology submissions, to daily and weekly pieces, and to the annual award, so a writer who understands one submission understands all of them.
Finding other poetry and prose outlets
A poet who submits to River & Sound Review usually keeps a short list of 4 to 6 other outlets, and the list should mix the 3 types that behave differently. Small literary magazines, which include the poetry magazines UK poets submit to most, often read on a rolling basis and respond in 60 to 90 days; prize desks such as the TCK Publishing poetry awards contest run on fixed 2 month entry windows and pay a single winner; and anthologies, including Best American Poetry style annual selections, take only work that is already in print elsewhere, which makes them a 1 year downstream target rather than a first choice. Poetry submissions open now can be checked against each outlet's own calendar, because no site can promise a live window for another publication, and the safest habit is to confirm the window on the outlet's own page in the week you send. For a broader map of poetry journals accepting submissions, a writer in Birmingham, London, Dublin, Sydney or Toronto will find that the UK, Ireland, Australia, Canada and India all host active small presses, and that the same 2 genre split, poetry and prose, recurs across nearly every desk. Fiction magazines accepting submissions follow the same word limit discipline, usually 1,000 to 5,000 words for flash and 8,000 to 15,000 for short fiction, and science fiction magazines accepting submissions add one extra line to the subject: the genre tag. The one rule that holds across all 4 outlet types, and across every poetry submissions free or paid desk, is the same rule River & Sound Review applies: the piece must stand alone, and the format must be exactly the one the desk asked for.