Submissions - 'Coal Mining' Special Issue

Closing date: April 30th 2025

The Fig Tree is an online poetry publication, edited by Tim Fellows, that is open for submissions by email all year round. We publish the regular issue about six times a year, with an annual Special Themed Issue. For 2025, this theme is Coal Mining.

  • Submit up to 5 original poems in a single Word or PDF document called FigTreeSubmission.docx (or .doc or .pdf) attached to your email. The poems may have been published before.

  • Do not include your name inside the Word/PDF document.

  • Each poem should start on a new page and have its title on the first line. Any standard font and font size is fine. Note that Substack has limited capability for formatting so centred and fully justified text may be difficult to reproduce.

  • The email should be sent to thefigtree<at>mail.com with the words Fig Tree Coal Mining Submission as the Subject of the email.
    Note: Replace <at> with the ‘@’ symbol, which we’ve altered to avoid being found by spam robots. Also it is mail.com, not gmail.com!

  • Maximum length for each poem is recommended at 40 lines - if you have a longer one and you’re really confident about it, feel free to send it anyway.

  • Simultaneous submissions are allowed, but let us know immediately if you wish to withdraw a poem, although pre-published poems will be accepted.

  • No subjects related to coal mining are off limits, but any poems with discriminatory messaging will be rejected. Form is not important - rhymed or non-rhymed, strict meter or unmetered, fixed formats or free verse are all acceptable.

  • If a poem has been published before, please let us know where it was published so we can attribute it.

  • Translations are not permitted for this issue. Poems not in English are allowed, provided that a verifiable (even if basic) English translation is included (but may not necessarily be published)

  • Work submitted to and published by The Fig Tree should not be AI generated or AI edited.

  • We may consider creating an annual anthology, including from this special issue, if the interest is there. Authors retain full copyright.

  • Please also include a short third person biography (50 words approx.) including any link you personally have to mining. Put this in the body of the email along with the titles of your poems.

  • If you have a personal web site then you can also include a link to your site. We will aim to respond to all submissions within two to three weeks. If after that time you haven't heard from us let me know via email. We will let you know if you haven’t been selected, but we are unlikely to provide editorial/critical feedback.

If we haven’t chosen one of your poems, it’s definitely not personal and we would encourage everyone to keep trying.

Also, please subscribe to the site using the button below to get notifications of new issues.