2026 Summer Open Period

Summer Open Reading Period Guidelines The current reading period will run from July 1 through July 31 (midnight, Eastern time zone). Note about open reading periods: We can receive 800 fee-free submissions per month. Once we've received 800 in the month of the open reading period, submissions will close.

• We seek unpublished poems or translations of poems not already available in English. (If you submit translations, please also include the poems in their original language.)
• We are willing to consider simultaneous submissions, but we ask that you notify us immediately (by leaving us a message (not a note) in Submittable) if a poem is accepted elsewhere.
• In keeping with our mission statement, we do not consider or publish material generated using AI or LLMs. All submissions must be the poet’s or translator’s own work.  We ask that writers be transparent in their cover letters or notes regarding any element of their submission that borrows from an external source, is created in collaboration with others or has been developed using technologies. 
• Limit your submission to five poems OR a single long poem. (Yes, we enjoy long poems!) 
• Submit no more than one manuscript during any submission period. 
• We seek to emphasize the poems themselves, so we use no contributors' notes, but feel free to send us a note if you want to tell us something about yourself. 
• Please wait to query us until eight months have passed.
• Before you send work, please familiarize yourself with the BPJ by buying an issue or browsing our website archive.

If you're not already a BPJ subscriber, please consider subscribing today, which you can do via an add-on payment (and at significant savings over regular prices) along with your fee-free submission. Subscriptions help support the magazine financially, but they also let us know that the work we're doing—and the work you're doing!—is important to readers. Thanks in advance for your support!