Submission Guides

Failed Haiku has ceased publication.

NOTE CHANGES IN THE SUBMISSION GUIDES AND EMAILS FOR SUBMISSIONS! Also, we happily ACCEPT PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED WORK. And to be clear we will NOT be changing that policy!

Haibun Submission Guides Video
Haiga Submission Guides Video

Submission Schedule:

Jan 10-25 – Target publication date: the first day of March

March 10-25 – Target publication date: the first day of May

May 10-25 – Target publication date: the first day of July

July 10-25 – Target publication date: the first day of September

September 10-25 – Target publication date: the fifth day of November

November 10-25 – Target publication date: the first day of January

What the Poet needs to do:

  1. Include your name in the body of the email as you wish it to appear.
  2. Please send up to 10 senryu-style poems per submission period.
  3. Only TWO haiga or TWO haibun for each submission period.
  4. Your submitted work may have been previously published. We do NOT nominate for Best of the Net, Pushcart, and Touchstone contests. If you really feel that is a big deal then you may want to consider submitting elsewhere. You need not identify where they were published, either since we do not do attributions.
  5. Submit your work in the body of an email with NO attachments except haiga. GIF, JPEG, or PNG formats for images are allowed. We do not accept Word Docs here since Word contains code that can play with our formatting.
  6. Give us work you have judged to be a senryu. We promise to be open-minded and look at experimental approaches to all areas of the genre.
  7. Accept that if your poem is not selected, it is no big deal and does NOT mean that your work is not good. No single editor is the final arbiter of what is good or bad. 
  8. Proofread your own work. If we spot something that seems ‘off’, we will contact you for permission before changing your poem.
  9. Give us your best work, and feel free to be creative and experiment. We are NOT your grandpa’s senryu journal!

What Failed Haiku will do:

  1. Read and respond to your work. If we don’t get back to you in ten days, please feel free to contact us. An email can go astray, and mistakes get made. We don’t want to miss seeing your work.
  2. We will reproduce your work as written, BUT we cannot guarantee a particular typeface or perfect formatting due to the limitations of the editing tools and software used. If you ever have a concern, please contact us immediately.
  3. Your submission to Failed Haiku is considered to be your permission for us to promote it on social media and in any publications we may produce at a future date.
  4. You are free to republish your work in other journals without any attribution to FailedHaiku since it is YOUR WORK but if you do mention FH we will be HAPPY.

Okay, that should do it.

Kelly Moyer Editor