Don't Just Change the Title and Submit

Advice for writing poetry for competitions, prizes, anthologies and group projects that have a theme or topic.

In recognition of my role as the Martha Richardson Poetry Prize judge in 2024, I'm going to be sharing a range of quick tips and tricks on my Instagram page. The aim is to help poets get their work closer to submission faster, and remove some of the confusion and fear around submitting poetry.  I’m including these videos with further descriptions here for anybody who may miss them on social media.
 

Ahhhh, Titles.

Those slippery little lines are important. They're like the front fence of your property - an insight into what to expect, and they keep everything contained.

A poem titled ‘Untitled’ is fine if you’re James Baldwin or a reference via first line is fine if you’re Emily Dickinson, but for the rest of us, it can just appear lazy (unless, of course, the poem is specifically about titles, or the lack thereof). 

Your title should set a scene or a tone of what the reader can expect. It can also steer them off the beaten track a bit if you’re adding a twist. The title doesn’t need to be serious, it can be playful, but it shouldn’t feel like it’s been tacked on last minute.

If you are submitting a poem to a competition or journal that is requesting a poem written on a certain topic don’t take a previously written poem and change the title to make it appear more relevant to the submission guidelines. For example, if you’ve written a great poem about camping by a river then you see that a competition looking for poems about climate change, so you change the title to feel more ‘climate changey’. The title should relate specifically to the work, it needs to work with your poem and not be an afterthought.

TIP - If you are feeling stuck for a title (which happens to me a lot - I tend to overthink and get myself worked up about it) then have a look at some of your favourite poetry books for inspiration.

Creating titles is one of the techniques that I discuss in my free guide Increase Your Chance of Poetry Publication in 10 Critical Steps.