What to submit and how
Submissions are open from March 1, 2025 until November 15, 2025.
The Under the Bashō journal will consider submissions of poetry that come under the following category types. Guidelines on what the respective editors are looking for may be viewed by following the category links.
- Haiku (up to 10 haiku - 1 to 4 line are acceptable)
- Haiga and Visual Haiku (up to 10 pieces)
- Haibun (up to 3 haibun)
- PostKu (up to 10 poems)
- Linked Forms, Sequences and Contrapuntal Poetry (up to 5 pieces)
- Personal Best (single submission of 1 poem only)
Please include the date, your name and country of residence in all submissions.
Under the Bashō editors volunteer their time and service to make this journal a reality. Submissions will be handled by the respective editors as they are received. Please allow for a period from 4-6 weeks for editors to email their response to submissions. Accepted poems will be published on the Under the Bashō website as soon as possible after acceptance notices have been sent to the submitting poet.
From time to time an editor may reject a haiku because, while meeting the theoretical needs of haiku, it does not resonate with our editorial team. When this occurs, the haiku will be rejected. If your haiku is rejected, please do not ask why. This is not a topic that our editors will engage in.
Once an author's work has been accepted and published in any particular category, subsequent submissions to that same category will not be considered for the remainder of the submission year. However, if they are rejected in any category, they may make a submission to that category again. Once they are rejected twice in a category during the current submission year, no further submissions to that category will be considered for the remainder of the submission year.
Authors may make separate submissions to other categories following the specific guidelines for those other categories.
Conditions
- Please submit works that have not been published in any journal, ezine, magazine, book, personal website, or Youtube. Poems posted to Facebook groups and workshops are not considered published.
- There is currently no payment for accepted content.
- Under the Bashō requires exclusive rights to publication of all work accepted into the journal, including first electronic rights, for a period of 30 days after the work first appears on Under the Bashō's website. After this period has elapsed, all rights return to the authors/artists who are then free to have their work republished or to republish the work themselves on their own blogs, sharing websites and on social media. Wherever a work is republished, Under the Bashō must be cited as the place of first publication.
- Work submitted to us must be the original work of the submitting poet and must not be under consideration by any other publication or any contest. Following on-line publication with us, all rights revert to the author.
- Under the Bashō reserves the right to publish any work accepted for publication for any future print or electronic anthologies and/or retrospectives of the journal or its associated sites viz. The Living Haiku Anthology and The Living Senryu Anthology. Under the Bashō does not have the right to authorize publication of your work elsewhere.
- Submission to Under the Bashō is deemed to be an acceptance of these conditions.
The role of the staff of Under the Bashō is to identify and showcase each poet's best work in the journal. Please send us the best fruits of your practice, your studies, your talent, and your self so that we may present it to an informed and wider readership!
Thank you!