We are now at the end of our first year of offering a print edition of Gyroscope Review and we thought, hey, let’s look at those numbers hanging out in our Submittable account. Just how many submissions did we get in 2017?
The answer: 1,854 submissions from 559 poets arrived on our virtual doorstep during the 2017 calendar year. No wonder our eyeballs need a holiday break. If we look at the percentage of what we accepted, an important bit of information for those of you considering where to send your work, our acceptance rate hovers slightly over 10%.
What about what we published during 2017? Those of you who ordered a copy of Wrap This Up: The 2017 Issues may already know the answer. We published 196 poems from 116 poets, 61 of whom were women. Poets published in our pages came mostly from the United States, but also represented Australia, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Nigeria, Sweden, Turkey, and the UK. One more fun little fact: our youngest published poet, as far as we know, was an 18-year-old high school senior. We have no idea who our oldest poet was; we thought it might be a tad rude to ask. We don’t collect personal statistics when poets send us work, so these results are gleaned from bios and mailing addresses in our submissions system.
What’s on tap for 2018? We are still working that out. Here’s what we do know: we will continue to offer the best possible work in digital and print formats. We will add a new staff member in January. We will encourage the sharing of poetry far and wide as a reflection of and refuge from this world of ours. And we will keep the dialogue going with everyone who works with us to keep our poetry community strong and welcoming.
Our next issue will be available January 15, 2018. Submissions for the Spring 2018 issue will also open the same day. As always, please review our guidelines before submitting.
Happy New Year from Gyroscope Review.
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