For the second time, the New Mills Festival will host a poetry trail filled with verse ranging from the silly to profound. Accepted poems will be displayed in shop windows around New Mills for the duration of the festival (13 – 29 September 2019). The theme of the festival is “The Elements – Earth, Air, Water and Fire.“ Poems reflecting the theme are encouraged, but poems on other themes are also welcome. We are accepting work from poets from anywhere in the world. Previously published material is acceptable with us so long as it is acceptable to your previous publisher. Copyright remains with the author.

We will collect accepted poems in a small self-published pamphlet. In order to be considered for the pamphlet, you must submit a £5 submission fee, payable upon acceptance.

Submission guidelines:

1. Submit up to four poems.
2. Poems may be submitted in the body of an email or in a Word/text document. (Note: editors will read and format the poems, but we will not type them for you. Submissions of PDFs or images will be ignored.)
3. Poems may be a maximum of 25 lines. We are formatting with a standard size and font. Longer poems will not fit the template and will be rejected.
4. Poems must be family friendly. While the editors support free expression, most businesses wish to avoid offending their customers, so do keep that in mind.
5. The deadline is 15 July 2019. Notifications of acceptance will go out 1 August 2019.
6. Please submit poems to Randall.Horton@yahoo.com.
7. Editors decisions are final and will not become the source of ongoing discussion.
8. Upon acceptance, please submit £5.00 submission fee in order to be considered for the collection.