For over 40 years, Arc has been pub­lish­ing the best in con­tem­po­rary poetry. Arc invites sub­mis­sions from poets at all stages of their writing careers. Submit here.

• Arc has two reading periods:
  • submissions received from April 1 to July 31 will be read for the Winter issue
  • submissions received from September 1 to December 31 November 30 will be read for the Summer issue
• Arc does not accept general submissions from January 1 to March 31 and from August 1 to August 31.
• Arc does not accept paper submissions. Submissions received by mail will not be read and will not receive a response.
• Arc only accepts sub­mis­sions using the online sub­mis­sion man­ager as seen below.
• Poets who are living with a disability and/or poets for whom English is not their first language are welcome to reach out to seek assistance with the submission process if necessary. This assistance can pertain to: clarifying the submission guidelines, adding notes to and/or withdrawing your submission on Submittable, and formatting your submission to fit our submission guidelines. Please contact Managing Editor, Chris Johnson, at arc@arcpoetry.ca with a subject line “Arc Poetry Submission Assistance.”

Poetry Submissions

Arc accepts unso­licited sub­mis­sions of pre­vi­ously unpub­lished poetry in English, or translations of poetry into English, on any sub­ject and in any form.

• Submissions must not exceed 3 poems or 360 lines.
• Submissions must be typed and sin­gle spaced (dou­ble spaces will be inter­preted as blank lines).
• Submissions of visual poetry or concrete poetry should be submitted in PDF format.
• Submissions must include the poet’s name, email address, and mailing address on each page.
• Submissions must include the poet’s biog­ra­phy. Biographical statements should be two to three sentences or approximately 50 words.
• Multiple poems must be submitted separately. On Submittable, each poem must be in a sep­a­rate submission along with the poet’s biog­ra­phy. This allows us to respond to poems individually and update a submission’s status more promptly.
• Poets may only submit once each calendar year.
• Poets may submit poems that are simultaneously submitted elsewhere. Poems that have been accepted by another publication should be withdrawn from Arc immediately.

Arc will respond to unso­licited sub­mis­sions of poetry within four to six months. Arc can’t promise to respond to inquiries regard­ing the sta­tus of sub­mis­sions before the com­ple­tion of a reading period.

Arc pays for poetry at the rate of $50 per page. Payment is issued upon pub­li­ca­tion along with one free copy of the issue in which the work appears. With acceptance, Arc secures First Cana­dian Serial Rights, meaning the poems should not appear in any print or digital publication before the release of the issue in which the work appears. All rights will revert to the author upon publication.