In Three Hundred Streets of Venice California, poet Tom Laichas has crafted an exceptional collection that is witty, poignant and deeply affecting. You can read my recent review of Laichas' collection in the November features of literary magazine Tupelo Quarterly. 

Click on the image or on the link below to read more about this compelling collection. 
https://www.tupeloquarterly.com/uncategorized/a-review-of-three-hundred-streets-of-venice-california-by-tom-laichas/

The Indianapolis Review, Issue 29: Summer 2024 is now live!
Excited that my poem, 'Resurrection Recipe' is part of it. You can find the poem right here: 
https://theindianapolisreview.com/resurrection-recipe/

Many thanks to American poet, Tom Laichas, for his generous and insightful review of my collection Photofit. Tom's review appears in the current edition of the literary magazine, The High Window (click on the link below):

https://thehighwindowpress.com/2024/06/19/the-high-window-reviews-18-june-2024/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2i5oGnEW8JesKmd2TUAC5RGjtU2ROeTJw2rtBjBPjV_Zenn0WpOOa1dlk_aem_ZmFrZWR1bW15MTZieXRlcw 

The collection came out last year, so I'm delighted to learn people are still reading, writing and talking about Photofit (which you can purchase through the Pindrop Press website; simply click on the cover photo above, left), its profile elevated by such excellent reviews as this one. And let me say how proud I am that it's Tom reviewing the work, since he's an excellent poet and I'm truly humbled by his words. Check out Tom's Three Hundred Streets of Venice California, a truly superb gift of a poetry collection, which you can find right here: 

https://www.abebooks.com/9781952593444/Three-Hundred-Streets-Venice-California-1952593441/plp

Excited to have two new poems in the 2024 Summer Issue of The High Window, which you can read by clicking the link here: https://thehighwindowpress.com/category/poetry/

Thanks to Rick Lupert and everyone @ Cobalt Poets for a wonderful evening of poetry last night. You can still catch the event on Facebook where a recording of the event lives on the Cobalt Poets FB page here: 
https://www.facebook.com/groups/103686959678211

One of the cool things about being Featured Poet at a Cobalt Poets event is the broadside that Rick create of one of the poems. Here's mine about a lonely bear (not about a lonely bear) who keeps coming down from the mountains and breaking into people's homes...

It's the last day of National Poetry Month and here's a link to a recent interview I did with LA Downtown News about the weekly poetry workshop I facilitate for the Los Angeles Public Library's Central branch:

https://www.ladowntownnews.com/features/iambic-pentameter-anyone-poet-and-stage-director-martin-jago-hosts-poetry-workshop-at-central-library/article_50ca3ea0-f3a4-11ee-af4b-af275534c814.html
​

April is not just the cruelest month but National Poetry Month and yesterday I added a getting-your-poetry-in-print workshop to the last hour of the ongoing Saturday Poetry Workshop that I launched last summer in association with the Literature Department @ Central Library in Downtown Los Angeles.

The workshop is going strong and every Saturday I'm humbled by the power of language and the words of others. Our participants come from all walks of life and backgrounds, reflecting the diversity and richness LA has to offer. 

Here's an excerpt of the session handout that includes some helpful stuff for poets submitting work to the literary magazine scene:

GETTING YOUR POETRY IN PRINT
Martin Jago
 
The literary magazine scene is the first and ongoing port of call for poets the world over. It’s exciting getting work published and even better when it’s in a literary magazine that you have long aspired to be published by. Seeing your poem alongside the poems of others’ whose work you recognize as excellent, will give you pride in the work and in yourself. Building a publication list of different journals and magazines where your work has been featured, also builds a readership base for you as a poet. Down the line, you may wish to put together a chapbook and after publication, consider a full collection. This is the three-step traditional route to publishing poetry:
 

• Build your list of individual poems in reputable magazines
• Publish a chapbook
• Publish a full collection

 
Publishing is constantly evolving and there are many ways to get your work out there. This workshop article focuses on the first step in the traditional approach. 
 
With some online research, you’ll find what magazines pique your interest and which ones send you to sleep. Keep a record. Every time you come across an excellent poem, make a note of which journal published it. If it’s a poem that moved you, then you have something in common with the poetry editor who published it because it moved them too.
 
The first rule of submitting poetry to lit. magazines and journals is to make sure the poems you send are final drafts. The eagerness to send out sometimes gets in the way and before we know it, we’ve clicked the Send button, only to discover at a later date, further edits that are needed. So, share your work. Workshop your work. And still wait. Give yourself time away from your babies, let them grow, come back when you hardly recognize them. It will give you the best shot at looking with fresh eyes. 
 
Unfortunately, even when the poems are in the best shape possible, the odds are against you. Receiving rejection emails is not nice, but inevitable. However, it is a cliché but also a truism to say that every rejection is a step closer to getting your work accepted. Try to learn from the experience. Just to be absolutely clear about the kind of odds that poets face, here are some stats from one of the biggest literary magazines out there, Rattle, whose website features a breakdown of poetry submissions received, read, accepted etc. The magazine has published  4,500 poets, including 15 Pulitzer Prize Winners, 11 National Book Award Winners and 12
U.S. Poets Laureate. The magazine has a print run of 11,000, which is just huge, especially for a literary magazine. They read 200, 000 poems a year, publishing just 
300 a year with a publishing rate of 0.2%. I believe the average is somewhere between 1 - 3%. Rattle is highly regarded, widely known and sought out by poets, making the odds about as slim as they could be. 
                          
The other thing to say about rejection letters/emails is that not all rejections are the same. Having received my fair share and discussed the art of rejection with fellow poets and writers, it’s clear that there is a hierarchy to rejection. Rejection usually arrives in one of the following forms:
 

• Standard form rejection
• Rejection with encouragement
• Rejection with zero encouragement 
• Rejection that mentions your poem/s individually, sings their praises, apologizes for not publishing them and leaves you feeling that you came so so close … but were ultimately, rejected. 

 
None of this would matter if it wasn’t for the fact that keeping a record of the more personal responses is a good way to build a connection with editors, know who ‘gets’ your work and who clearly doesn’t. Most editors at lit. journals are poets themselves. They champion new writing, want your work to succeed, and from the moment they read the first line, are literally willing your poem to cut through. 
 
It may be that your work is excellent but simply doesn’t fit the aesthetic of the magazine. It’s a tell-tale sign to the editor that you haven’t even bothered to read the magazine you’re sending your poems to. Get to know the magazines you are sending to and support the community you are part of. If half the writers who send their work out, subscribed to just one or two of the magazines they submit work to, the literary landscape would be so much stronger. No one runs a literary magazine for financial gain. They are a labor of love and editors usually work on a voluntary basis. 
Almost all subs are made in one of three ways.
 

• Through a magazine’s online submission manager
• Through a magazine email address 
• Through Submittable 

 
Some magazines still accept snail-mail subs. It used to be the norm but Submittable is by far the most popular way to submit work. Duotrope is another submission platform but the above three methods cover almost all subs you will ever make. 
 
Submittable charges magazines to use their platform and that’s why most subs carry a $3 submission fee. There are still plenty of free ones out there and you’ll often find that magazines are willing to waive fees for those struggling financially (but that’s weird because that accounts for almost every poet I know, haha).
If you think about it $2 or $3 a go can quickly add up but it’s probably comparable to the cost of sending your work out the snail-mail method. 
 
Do This:
 

• Always follow submission guidelines 
• Always include a cover letter
• Address the editor by name if you know it or can find it
• Keep it brief, polite, and let them know that you know who they are
• Include a brief biography that mentions any previous publications
• Always write a third-person biography 
• Understand that when the magazine says it only accepts ‘previously unpublished’ poems, they mean it. They don’t want work that has appeared anywhere, even on Twitter or Facebook. 
• When a poem is accepted, immediately contact all other magazines you sent it to and withdraw it from consideration.

 
Tips, Hacks, Shortcuts
 

• Keep a Word doc of about 7 poems on your desktop. Use it as your current poems submission file and edit it according to each magazine’s requirements. For example, one magazine might accept a maximum of 5 poems. So, cut two from the file, Save As with the mag name and send it out. 
• Keep a standard cover letter on file and tweak it according to who you send it to 
• Keep several biographies on file of 50, 75, and 100 words 
• If a magazine asks you to send ‘3 – 5 poems’ always send the maximum, never the minimum.  
• A controversial one this but…always ‘simultaneously submit’ even when the guidelines say not to. Yes, I know I just said follow the guidelines but it really is unfair to expect a writer to submit their work to one magazine exclusively, only to wait six months for it to be rejected before sending it out to a different magazine. 
• Look for other ways to submit to your favorite magazines. Besides their regular submission windows, what comps and other submission windows do they have?
• If you’re a nonfiction writer, submit articles and reviews too. It may be that you get published by your favorite magazine in a genre other than poetry but who would know from the sentence: ‘Joe Smith’s writing has appeared in magazines such as…’ And you can be sure that reviews and articles submissions mean your work will be in a much smaller pool than poetry subs. 
• Check submission windows regularly
• Get your subs in at the beginning of the submission window, not the end
• Always keep a record of your submissions. 

There are countless lit. magazines and journals out there. Start building a file of place to send. Here a few to get you started:
 
Rust and Moth
Palette Poetry                                      
Tacoma Literary Review                    
The Sewanee Literary Review           
Tupelo Quarterly                                
Iron Horse Literary Review                
Sundog Lit.                                         
Sierra Nevada Review                        
The Friday Poem 
Timber Journal                                   
RHINO Poetry                                    
The Indianapolis Review                    
Boulevard                                           
Michigan Quarterly Review/MQR     
Conduit                                               
Southeast Review                   
 

Delighted to be one of the featured poets at Casa Macondo this weekend, with gratitude to Colombian poet Antonieta Villamil for inviting me. Con un poco de temor compartiré algo de poesía bilingüe español/inglés frente a un grupo de poetas de habla hispana, pero estoy emocionado de tener la oportunidad.