Meta: Editing for Ideomancer
Mar. 16th, 2012 04:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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poetreeHello! Good morning, members of poetree, and thanks for the invite to write about my experience as the poetry editor of Ideomancer!
Ideomancer is a speculative fiction webzine that debuted in 1999 and began to publish poetry in 2005. In the world of speculative fiction webzines, where new zines tend to pop up and...go pop?...on a monthly basis, I suppose it is unusually persistent.
I joined the staff of Ideomancer as a fiction editor (one of many – I’m guessing one of the secrets to Ideomancer’s longevity is that we really like to spread the work around) in 2007, and became the poetry editor last year after![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
stillnotbored left to work on her forthcoming fantasy trilogy. At the time she left, I was the Ideomancer volunteer with the greatest interest in poetry; I was already the poetry editor of filling Station, a Canadian magazine of experimental writing (but more on that later).
Life as a webzine’s poetry editor is simple; I receive poems, read them, and decide whether or not to publish them. Then I send rejection notices or contracts as applicable. I do this all by email, as the volume of submissions I receive is really too low to bother with any kind of submissions management software.
I also work with the authors of accepted poems to make any needed edits to their work, and I have a small role in publicizing new issues of Ideomancer through social media.
Deep, deep thoughts
The main questions I deal with in editing poetry for Ideomancer are about community. Let’s face it; literary magazines, except for perhaps the most prestigious ones, are read primarily by writers, and speculative poetry webzines are read by speculative poets and other fans who read many speculative poetry webzines; webzines like Goblin Fruit, or Strange Horizons, or Kaleidotrope. It makes sense to see Ideomancer not just as a standalone magazine, but as part of the speculative poetry community.
This raises questions. For example: should I attempt to recruit literary and experimental poets who have not previously published in speculative poetry venues to Ideomancer in order to broaden the range of styles readers see in speculative poetry zines? Or is it more beneficial to give voice to those already in the community, who may not find many outside venues willing to publish their work? Should I solicit submissions in order to increase the demographic diversity of the poets in Ideomancer? Or should I not solicit writing, leaving as many opportunities as possible to unpublished writers whose only chance at publication is through the slushpile? Should I favour a poem by an unknown and unpublished writer over publishing yet another speculative poem by a master of the genre? Or should I try, as if it’s even possible, to focus always and only on the quality of submitted poems?
The other questions I face are about balance in terms of genres and poetic forms. While, at least from what I’ve had the opportunity to see, there is an abundance of good speculative poetry now being written that is free-verse lyric poetry on fantasy or mythic themes (the excellent poem Sweet Mercy, Her Body an Ark of Wild Beasts, by Kelly Rose Pflug-Back, follows this pattern) However, I’m fairly committed to publishing a range of genres and styles. I receive a paucity of horror poems, short poems, formal poems like sonnets, and, especially, poems in experimental forms or based in avant-garde traditions such as visual poetry, yet I try to publish some of each.
Print vs. online; genre vs. literary
Like I wrote before, I am also the poetry editor for filling Station, a Canadian magazine of experimental writing. There are a few things that differ about how Ideomancer and filling Station are run; for one thing, at filling Station, I do not decide on acceptances and rejections myself, but rather am the administrator of a system where 3-5 volunteers vote on each poem submitted.
The main difference between the two magazines, though, is that filling Station is a print magazine.
For me, that means that I get tons of wholly unsuitable submissions from poets who have never read the magazine; I weed these out before the other volunteers see them. For the magazine, there are massive implications for funding and workload.
Ideomancer is funded almost entirely out of the publisher’s pocket, which costs her a few hundred dollars a year; we also accept donations and have a t-shirt shop.
filling Station, a print magazine that costs thousands, is grant-funded; we’re always at the mercy of government cutbacks and we’re subject to yearly evaluations by the federal, provincial and municipal arts councils who administer the grants. We make additional money from selling subscriptions – and by putting on events, which requires volunteer labour, but has the added bonus of enhancing the local literary scene. And of being fun!
One last thing I’ve noticed is that the much-discussed “professionalization of poetry” has struck filling Station in a way that it has not yet struck genre magazines. Over half of the contributors to filling Station are involved in the world of academic creative writing programs, having been a student or professor in one, and in one case having been commissioned to write poetry for textbooks; by contrast, any academic involvement in poetry is still rare among Ideomancer contributors.
Advice for prospective poetry editors and submitters
I don’t have much advice for submitters except for this: please always follow the guidelines! But you know I only say that out of self-interest.
If you have a strong interest in contemporary poetry, whether speculative, literary or experimental, becoming a poetry editor or a literary magazine volunteer is something I really recommend. You get to see all kinds of work by new poets, and the workload for you is usually moderate to negligible. Joining an online magazine’s editorial team is occasionally difficult (I had to audition for Ideomancer!) but worth it; joining a print magazine’s editorial team can be surprisingly easy. If there’s an independent literary magazine in your area, chances are they would appreciate any volunteers who would be willing to help out!
poetree, and thanks for the invite to write about my experience as the poetry editor of Ideomancer!Ideomancer is a speculative fiction webzine that debuted in 1999 and began to publish poetry in 2005. In the world of speculative fiction webzines, where new zines tend to pop up and...go pop?...on a monthly basis, I suppose it is unusually persistent.
I joined the staff of Ideomancer as a fiction editor (one of many – I’m guessing one of the secrets to Ideomancer’s longevity is that we really like to spread the work around) in 2007, and became the poetry editor last year after
stillnotbored left to work on her forthcoming fantasy trilogy. At the time she left, I was the Ideomancer volunteer with the greatest interest in poetry; I was already the poetry editor of filling Station, a Canadian magazine of experimental writing (but more on that later).Life as a webzine’s poetry editor is simple; I receive poems, read them, and decide whether or not to publish them. Then I send rejection notices or contracts as applicable. I do this all by email, as the volume of submissions I receive is really too low to bother with any kind of submissions management software.
I also work with the authors of accepted poems to make any needed edits to their work, and I have a small role in publicizing new issues of Ideomancer through social media.
Deep, deep thoughts
The main questions I deal with in editing poetry for Ideomancer are about community. Let’s face it; literary magazines, except for perhaps the most prestigious ones, are read primarily by writers, and speculative poetry webzines are read by speculative poets and other fans who read many speculative poetry webzines; webzines like Goblin Fruit, or Strange Horizons, or Kaleidotrope. It makes sense to see Ideomancer not just as a standalone magazine, but as part of the speculative poetry community.
This raises questions. For example: should I attempt to recruit literary and experimental poets who have not previously published in speculative poetry venues to Ideomancer in order to broaden the range of styles readers see in speculative poetry zines? Or is it more beneficial to give voice to those already in the community, who may not find many outside venues willing to publish their work? Should I solicit submissions in order to increase the demographic diversity of the poets in Ideomancer? Or should I not solicit writing, leaving as many opportunities as possible to unpublished writers whose only chance at publication is through the slushpile? Should I favour a poem by an unknown and unpublished writer over publishing yet another speculative poem by a master of the genre? Or should I try, as if it’s even possible, to focus always and only on the quality of submitted poems?
The other questions I face are about balance in terms of genres and poetic forms. While, at least from what I’ve had the opportunity to see, there is an abundance of good speculative poetry now being written that is free-verse lyric poetry on fantasy or mythic themes (the excellent poem Sweet Mercy, Her Body an Ark of Wild Beasts, by Kelly Rose Pflug-Back, follows this pattern) However, I’m fairly committed to publishing a range of genres and styles. I receive a paucity of horror poems, short poems, formal poems like sonnets, and, especially, poems in experimental forms or based in avant-garde traditions such as visual poetry, yet I try to publish some of each.
Print vs. online; genre vs. literary
Like I wrote before, I am also the poetry editor for filling Station, a Canadian magazine of experimental writing. There are a few things that differ about how Ideomancer and filling Station are run; for one thing, at filling Station, I do not decide on acceptances and rejections myself, but rather am the administrator of a system where 3-5 volunteers vote on each poem submitted.
The main difference between the two magazines, though, is that filling Station is a print magazine.
For me, that means that I get tons of wholly unsuitable submissions from poets who have never read the magazine; I weed these out before the other volunteers see them. For the magazine, there are massive implications for funding and workload.
Ideomancer is funded almost entirely out of the publisher’s pocket, which costs her a few hundred dollars a year; we also accept donations and have a t-shirt shop.
filling Station, a print magazine that costs thousands, is grant-funded; we’re always at the mercy of government cutbacks and we’re subject to yearly evaluations by the federal, provincial and municipal arts councils who administer the grants. We make additional money from selling subscriptions – and by putting on events, which requires volunteer labour, but has the added bonus of enhancing the local literary scene. And of being fun!
One last thing I’ve noticed is that the much-discussed “professionalization of poetry” has struck filling Station in a way that it has not yet struck genre magazines. Over half of the contributors to filling Station are involved in the world of academic creative writing programs, having been a student or professor in one, and in one case having been commissioned to write poetry for textbooks; by contrast, any academic involvement in poetry is still rare among Ideomancer contributors.
Advice for prospective poetry editors and submitters
I don’t have much advice for submitters except for this: please always follow the guidelines! But you know I only say that out of self-interest.
If you have a strong interest in contemporary poetry, whether speculative, literary or experimental, becoming a poetry editor or a literary magazine volunteer is something I really recommend. You get to see all kinds of work by new poets, and the workload for you is usually moderate to negligible. Joining an online magazine’s editorial team is occasionally difficult (I had to audition for Ideomancer!) but worth it; joining a print magazine’s editorial team can be surprisingly easy. If there’s an independent literary magazine in your area, chances are they would appreciate any volunteers who would be willing to help out!
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 01:06 am (UTC)I'm struck by the stark difference in funding requirements you sketch out between the online versus the print magazine -- do you feel like there are strings attached to the latter's grant money that affect the type of material you can print?
I'm also curious about what the quality of community around Ideomancer with its online LJ base of socializing (from what I can see from outside, anyway) is like versus the show-up-and-volunteer-to-fundraise community of filling Station. Do you feel like it's easier to get to know people through one medium as opposed to the other? And is there crossover, i.e. do Ideomancer people meet up offline and do filling Station people socialize online?
Thank you again for the lovely post; I'm sure I'll have more questions once I have a chance to sleep on my thoughts.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 02:15 am (UTC)You mention seeing Ideomancer's poetry section as part of the larger speculative poetry community. What is it like working within such a community? Do you have any thoughts or advice on building and sustaining online communities?
You must read a lot of poetry in your capacity as editor for two different publications. Do you still read poetry for fun outside of your editing duties? Do you have particular publications (digital or print) that you go to for pleasure reading? Do you have publications that you rely on as an editor?
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 05:07 am (UTC)Grant committees are made up of artists (and writers, and musicians, and choreographers, etc.), so I generally trust them to evaluate content based upon literary merit rather than whether it's proper/patriotic/etc.We once lost a bunch of money because one of our issues was unfortunately struck with poor print quality, for example, and there are rules about how many magazines we are supposed to sell (at least 50% of our print run)to keep our funding.
It's much easier to get to know people personally in an in-person community! filling Station has in-person editorial meetings, and the people who volunteer for the magazine are regulars at local poetry readings.
It takes a lot of work to run an online community (as you know...). There is a SFPA mailing list but outside of that, online discussion of speculative poetry is intermittent and takes someone's (often substantial) efforts to iniatiate it.
I don't go to cons. People who do may have a different experience.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 05:37 am (UTC)I mostly rely on my personal biases? I feel obligated to publish poems that fall into each of the main speculative genres (fantasy, sf and horror). I also prioritize publishing a balance of different poetic forms and styles. But that's up to my personal judgment. I know some editors try to gender-balance issues (I don't) or otherwise put a high priority on the diversity of contributors. And of course, some editors are choosing poems based entirely on quality (i.e., the editor's aesthetic biases).
There's some history of speculative poetry on the SFPA site and scattered around the web. Mostly community seems to depend on a few very hard-working and committed people and a bunch of other people with a sustained interest in the community. I'm more a part of the latter group than the former, so can't offer much advice beyond that.
Yes, I tend to take trips to the library and randomly browse the poetry shelves for new titles. Nice living in a city, I suppose.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-17 04:50 pm (UTC)Living near a library is wonderful. I love getting a chance to browse through new titles.