frequently asked questions
electric pink is run by natalye, niko, and rocky. niko and rocky are cats, but their role in the editorial process should not be understated.
we just really like the promise ring, ok?
no. in all seriousness though, everything in the world seems to be going to shit, or it feels like that anyway. but poetry makes the world a better place. plus, we want to hype up your work!
yes! we accept submissions on a rolling basis.
we publish on a monday/wednesday/friday cadence, with one poem on each of those days.
we are definitely thinking about a couple issues a year, in addition to our regular publishing cadence.
we're drawn to poetry that tackles themes like religious trauma, queerness, the body, visceral imagery (not gore), and grief. we want work that approaches difficult topics in thoughtful, inventive ways. if your writing engages with canon — whether religious, mythological, or classical — and upends it, we want to read it. give us poems grounded in place. give us real emotion: if you're angry, we want to feel caustic; if you're heartbroken, we want to ache; if you're in love, convince us. give us a final line that lands like a gut punch.
we don't publish work that contains sexism, racism, ableism, or any other form of discrimination. violence is a hard no. we also pass on work that tokenizes or "others" marginalized identities.
beyond that, we tend to pass on poems that:
- rely on clichéd metaphors or familiar language without reinventing them
- tell rather than show through inventive description
- explain their metaphors rather than inhabiting them
- use straightforward, workshop-polished language without taking linguistic risks
- use dense theoretical language that's difficult to parse, or use words for the sake of words
- aim for quiet profundity over electric spark
- rely heavily on rhyming schemes
- are competent but don't make us see the world differently
we're not looking for generic inspirational poetry, heavy-handed extended metaphors, or work that plays it safe. if your language doesn't surprise you while you're writing it, it probably won't surprise us either.
this includes poems published anywhere (online or in print), including on personal blogs, social media, or other online platforms.
that's the dream, right? we don't yet. we might in the future.
when you agree to have your work published in electric pink, we ask for first electronic rights. rights revert to you upon publication. we ask that future reprints credit electric pink as the original publisher.
electric pink runs on astro, a modern static site generator that makes everything fast and lightweight. we use vercel for hosting, which means the site loads quickly no matter where you are. our poems live in markdown files, and the code lives on github. we built it this way to avoid being locked into a proprietary cms — our content and code belong to us, and we can move or rebuild whenever we want.