Share your experiences, folks. Have you ever submitted your poems to a magazine? What was your experience, and what was the outcome, if there was any? Does it help with boosting your creative career, or gaining exposure, or are you just throwing your poems into the abyss before they experience their 15 minutes of fame?
I was hoping your responses would assist a few people here. :)
Great responses, guys! Thank you for your input.
I say if you're really keen on getting your work out there then publish to as many journals and magazines as you can. It doesn't hurt to send something to even the most prominently known magazines too because "what if."
Poets & Writers has a wonderful "search engine" for publishing poetry here in the US. Not quite sure if it extends outside of the US territories though.
https://www.pw.org/literary_magazines
I'm sure there are some out there for other countries as well. Although, if I am to be quite frank, the UK and India are probably the best places globally to submit to because poetry is so prominent as a literary device in those countries, and much more appreciated. That I am aware of anyways.
Depending on what you want out of your poetry and where you want to take things there are definitely pros.
1) If you really want to push on in poetry, and do so away from just internet likes and online validation, then being published in a journal/magazine is going to standout in your covering letters if submitting poems/manuscripts to bigger “real world” players.
2) Being selected can be a huge morale boost when feeling low. Knowing that someone out there sees something in your work worth publishing is a great feeling. Of course the flip side to this is the inevitable pile of rejections that come from submitting work, which has the opposite effect 😢