Send us your short, uplifting poems
We showcase new poetry, as well as help the public to rediscover established favourites.
Please rest assured that you will always hear from us if your work is selected for publication. However, we do not send rejection letters or email.
Sadly, we can not offer payment for your poems. However, we do reach thousands of people across the UK, which can help grow your reputation as a poet.
Submissions Guidelines
1) Poems must be suitable for patients: The nature of the reader of our cards constrains the type of poetry we publish. Poems in the Waiting Room is not a conventional poetry publication, but one to be read by patients, who find themselves possibly bored and irritated; or worried and even deeply concerned by their condition. They are therefore already likely to be in a heightened state, anxious and troubled, and possibly even emotionally disturbed. A poem is acceptable for PitWR only when it is sensitive to these feelings in ways that alleviates the pressure and avoids new emotional challenge.
2) Poems must be acceptable to health professionals: The PitWR scheme has become acceptable to health service staff only through its recognition that the poems need to support, and not to challenge the patient, and so help to form a healing environment. Each issue is monitored by a psychotherapist with extensive professional experience of NHS General Practice.
3) Poems should be about appropriate topics and variety is welcome The poems we publish are often about home and acceptance, safe journey and arrival, friends and companionship, care and security, harvest and abundance, work and reward, books and learning, beauty and transcendence, spring and renaissance, together with all the joys of love and loving. Explicit medical and health issues are best avoided, although poems which centre on lived experience, such as senses of sight, taste, smell, touch or hearing, work well. Poems about waiting often work well and patience.
4) Length: Short poems (up to around thirty lines) are preferred.
How to submit your poem
Submissions should be made by email to pitwrsubmissions@hotmail.com .
Please include in your email the following:-
- Your year of birth: this generally sets the order in which the poems appear in our cards.
- Your postal address: we will send copies of our card to the poets whose poems we publish.
- Please also state that you accept these terms:
1) You give Poems in the Waiting Room a non-exclusive license to print your poem in one issue of our poetry card, and in one Collected Edition. Non exclusive means you retain copyright in your poem.
2) You give us permission to hold your poem, and your name, address and year of birth details indefinitely. This is so we can review your poem and contact you should we choose to publish it.
The Founding Editor, Michael Lee, originally wrote "I would not expect a poet to write particularly to these stipulations. Any poem written to specification I usually find quite lifeless. It may well be however that if you look over the body of your work you could find two or three that, even with some tweaking might suit".
Read comments from poets
Please rest assured that you will always hear from us if your work is selected for publication. However, we do not send rejection letters or email.
Sadly, we can not offer payment for your poems. However, we do reach thousands of people across the UK, which can help grow your reputation as a poet.
Submissions Guidelines
1) Poems must be suitable for patients: The nature of the reader of our cards constrains the type of poetry we publish. Poems in the Waiting Room is not a conventional poetry publication, but one to be read by patients, who find themselves possibly bored and irritated; or worried and even deeply concerned by their condition. They are therefore already likely to be in a heightened state, anxious and troubled, and possibly even emotionally disturbed. A poem is acceptable for PitWR only when it is sensitive to these feelings in ways that alleviates the pressure and avoids new emotional challenge.
2) Poems must be acceptable to health professionals: The PitWR scheme has become acceptable to health service staff only through its recognition that the poems need to support, and not to challenge the patient, and so help to form a healing environment. Each issue is monitored by a psychotherapist with extensive professional experience of NHS General Practice.
3) Poems should be about appropriate topics and variety is welcome The poems we publish are often about home and acceptance, safe journey and arrival, friends and companionship, care and security, harvest and abundance, work and reward, books and learning, beauty and transcendence, spring and renaissance, together with all the joys of love and loving. Explicit medical and health issues are best avoided, although poems which centre on lived experience, such as senses of sight, taste, smell, touch or hearing, work well. Poems about waiting often work well and patience.
4) Length: Short poems (up to around thirty lines) are preferred.
How to submit your poem
Submissions should be made by email to pitwrsubmissions@hotmail.com .
Please include in your email the following:-
- Your year of birth: this generally sets the order in which the poems appear in our cards.
- Your postal address: we will send copies of our card to the poets whose poems we publish.
- Please also state that you accept these terms:
1) You give Poems in the Waiting Room a non-exclusive license to print your poem in one issue of our poetry card, and in one Collected Edition. Non exclusive means you retain copyright in your poem.
2) You give us permission to hold your poem, and your name, address and year of birth details indefinitely. This is so we can review your poem and contact you should we choose to publish it.
The Founding Editor, Michael Lee, originally wrote "I would not expect a poet to write particularly to these stipulations. Any poem written to specification I usually find quite lifeless. It may well be however that if you look over the body of your work you could find two or three that, even with some tweaking might suit".
Read comments from poets
