uHlanga is excited to announce a submissions period in February 2025 for original collections of poetry from South African poets, or poets living in South Africa.
We have held open submissions periods before, in 2017 and 2019, which have resulted in the publication of a number of our award-winning titles, including the Ingrid Jonker Prize-winning books Zikr by Saaleha Idrees Bamjee and An Illuminated Darkness by Jacques Coetzee.
Submissions are open from 1 February 2025 to 28 February 2025.
We accept submissions from writers of any experience, whether they have previously published a collection of poetry or not.
Every submission will be read by at least one member of our team of readers. Our readers are highly skilled poetry practitioners.
Submissions must be predominantly written in English or isiXhosa. Poems in other languages may be included in your manuscript, but the majority of the poems should be in either of those languages.
There is no prescribed length for submissions. Most books published by uHlanga contain 20-40 poems, but there are exceptions.
Likewise, there is no formula for success. uHlanga publishes collections of poetry that have substance and structure. Be ambitious about what you write about, but also please remember to keep your submission coherent. Do not simply include every poem you have ever written.
You may find it helpful to read the open letters (one in 2017, one in 2019) that I wrote after our first two open submissions periods. They are a little outdated by now, but may give you more insight into the process and uHlanga's editorial thinking.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Writers must be either a citizen, national, or permanent resident of South Africa. (Refugees and asylum seekers currently in South Africa are also eligible.)
Submissions will only be accepted through our email address – submissions@uhlangapress.co.za.
Your submission should take the form of two attachments: 1) your poems, all compiled in a single .doc or .pdf attachment; and 2) a cover letter, which includes your name and contact information. (We will add your email address to our mailing list. Please let us know if you would not like to be added to our mailing list. You can unsubscribe at any time.)
Please set all text in Times New Roman or a similar typeface, unless your poems require special formatting. (This applies to works of concrete poetry, image poetry, etc.)
Collaborative submissions are accepted, but please note that anthologies or retrospective collections – i.e. collections composed solely of poems published previously in other single-author collections – will not be accepted.
Manuscripts containing poems previously published in magazines, anthologies, journals, or online will be accepted, as long as each previously published poem is acknowledged in the manuscript. Submissions that have already been published – including self-published books – will not be accepted.
We strongly discourage the use of generative AI to compose your poems. Please notify us in your cover letter if you have used AI in your work.
Please note that due to the amount of submissions we receive, we generally cannot give feedback on individual unsuccessful submissions.
Successful writers will be offered our standard contract.
Please note that this is not a competition: we reserve the right to publish none of the manuscripts received during this submissions period. In order to ensure that every submission is treated appropriately, we also reserve the right to respond to submissions in our own time. Most submissions will be evaluated within six months.
There is no reading fee.
Do not submit your manuscript before 1 February 2025 or after 28 February 2025 – it will be discarded without being read.
Any other questions? Mail us!
