Postcard / Poetry Express poems

Red Flag Poetry is honored to receive your submissions, so send us your best!

All submissions will be considered for Red Flag postcards and Poetry Express during our free reading periods.

The next free reading period is October 1 - December 1, 2025

To make your submission process easier, we've established some guidelines:
  • Send up to three (3) previously unpublished poems per submission window. You can submit a fresh batch each time, so pace yourself!
  • Upload your poetry submissions as .doc/.docx attachment to our Poetry Postmaster General HERE! Other file types (.pdf, .jpeg, .png, .omg??!) don't work for us and will not be considered.
  • While you're attaching those great poems, go ahead and send us a brief author bio, too. We want to know more about you!
  • ​Multiple submissions are fine, but please notify Red Flag Poetry if your work has been accepted elsewhere first.
Easy, right? Now, get writing!

After you click SEND, all that is left for you is to kick back and relax! We'll take it from here. Expect a reply 2-3 months after submission. Thank you for your work!

Chapbooks
We're looking to publish at least several chapbooks each year via contests and calls. Due to time constraints, however, we are unable to give each collection our undivided attention. When submitting your work for consideration, we ask that you send a 150-200 word proposal detailing the purpose and general scope of your project. Along with this brief proposal, please send the full MS and identify 5 poems from the larger work that best represent your submission. This will help us get a feel for your work. Please consider purchasing one of our other chapbooks to see what we're about before submitting.

Note: the submission fee for chapbook proposals goes toward supporting the project.

      Full-Length Collections
We are not currently accepting full-length manuscripts. 

We love reading your full length works. In fact, our goal is to publish at least two full length collections per year. To submit your work for consideration, we ask that you send a 250-300 word proposal detailing the purpose and general scope of your project. Along with this brief proposal, please send 5 poems from the larger work so that we can get a feel for your writing. Please consider purchasing one of our other full length collections to see what we're about before submitting. 

Note: the submission fee for submitting full-length proposals goes toward supporting the project. 

Any Time Submission

Got that poem or poems that you're dying to submit outside of our normal reading period? We hear you! Send them here for a small ($5) fee. 

To make your submission process easier, we've established some guidelines:
  • Send up to five (5) previously unpublished poems per submission window. You can submit a fresh batch each time, so pace yourself! 
  • Upload your poetry submissions as .doc/.docx attachment to our Poetry Postmaster General HERE! Other file types (.pdf, .jpeg, .png, .omg??!) don't work for us and will not be considered.
  • While you're attaching those great poems, go ahead and send us a brief author bio, too. We want to know more about you!
  • ​Multiple submissions are fine, but please notify Red Flag Poetry if your work has been accepted elsewhere first.​

What about art?!?

Do you draw, sketch, paint, or photograph? Red Flag is interested in putting your work on our postcards. All art is welcome and is selected based on fit with the given poem. Please send high quality images as a .tiff or .jpg file to us at our submission manager.

All art contributors will receive a complimentary copy of the postcard that features their art.
WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME? Poets featured on our monthly postcards will receive a complimentary printing of their poem postcard and three unaddressed post cards that can be mailed anywhere! You could mail them to your mom, use them to intimidate your enemies, or even hoard them all for yourself. We don't care what you do with them; we just like you!

Poets featured on our Poetry Express email list have the ability to share their glory with the entire world because not only are their poems sent out to our email list, they're also featured on our Poetry Express page!

All rights revert back to the original author one year after initial publication.

If republished after the first year, please acknowledge Red Flag Poetry as initial publisher.

If your chapbook or full-length MS is selected for publication, you'll get several copies of your book for free - compliments of Red Flag Poetry!

​SUBMIT AND SUBSCRIBE! Please consider subscribing to Red Flag Poetry and reading several of our postcards before submitting. We do share our postcards digitally. To truly experience Red Flag Poetry, though, you need to hold our postcards in your hands. Physical mail is kind of our thing, after all!