Once upon a time, long long ago in the early 1980s the Melbourne Branch of the Poets Union of Australia began an initiative soon followed by all the other branches. In an era where editors of literary magazines sometimes took months or even years to respond to a submission, which we regarded as contemptuous and improper, Australian poets began accompanying submissions with a note: I reserve the right to submit this elsewhere without further notice if there is no response within three months. When editors started receiving a lot of these, they took notice! This was revolutionary at the time.
I was one of a few friends who had a private discussion to arrive at this idea, which we then put to the Melbourne Branch, which took it up forthwith and enrolled the other branches. (If recollection serves, others were Lyndon Walker, Kristin Henry, Stephen J Williams, and possibly Cliff Smyth.)
Well, that’s old history now. The Poets Union of Australia couldn’t continue as a union for poets; it lacked the right criteria to legally exist. Those State branches which continued did so as societies instead.
Fast forward to today, and I read something on Substack (by an English poet, I think) about deciding to leave a poem with a magazine ‘beyond the standard three months’ as an experiment to see how long it took them. (Answer: a year.)
Well that was all very interesting, but what made me chortle with glee was the discovery that it is now STANDARD, and apparently unremarkable, for poets – and not only poets within Australia – to withdraw submissions that receive no response in three months.
I have not lived in vain.
