The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, published annually, has been a respected journal in the world of poetry for forty years. It is one of the longest continuously-run poetry journals in the United States and one of only about a dozen established literary journals nationwide devoted solely to poetry. The magazine has published new work by a long list of poets including

  • Pulitzer prize winners W.D. Snodgrass, Kenneth Rexroth, Claudia Emerson, Louis Simpson, Charles Simic, and Henry Taylor
  • National Book Award winners Robert Bly, A. R. Ammons, and William Stafford, and Terrance Hayes
  • Forward Prize and T.S. Eliot Prize Winner John Burnside
  • recent contributors including Carl Phillips, John Kinsella, Lisa Jarnot, A.E. Stallings, Natalie Shapero, Nikki Wallschlaeger.

Prose and Poetry from the Review have been featured in in recent years on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily and The Best American Poetry.

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Nearly forty years on, the review is still finding new ways to spice things up under its covers.

Guidelines

We read all year!

Please submit via Submittable following this link:

Online Submissions

Guidelines:

The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review seeks submissions of original poetry and poetry in translation year round.  Our chief criterion is quality.  While we have published the work of many well-known and well-published authors, we are as open to the new writer as to the established one. We are most certainly open to verse in both traditional meters and form, as well as to poems written in free-verse.  Such poems, however, we hope will not forget that they are written, indeed, in verse.  For all writers wishing to submit, please use our online submission system.  As has become common in the world of literary journals, we charge a small fee ($3.00), which is roughly equivalent to the cost of a returned postal submission in time and materials.  Simple instructions for payment can be found on our submissions page.  Current subscribers may submit at no charge.  A submitter may also subscibe at any level in lieu of paying the reading fee.  

We aim for a 3-4 month response time for submissions, but ours is a small staff, and we may sometimes take a bit longer. Please do not query until 5 months have passed. We will accept simultaneous submissions but appreciate being informed as soon as possible should a poem or poems become unavailable.

Poets whose work appears in the review will be compensated with two copies of the issue in which the work is published.  We do believe, however, that writers should be paid for the use of their work, and we hope to be able to offer such payment to our authors sometime in the future.

For editorial queries or withdrawal of submissions, please contact us at: poetryreview@hsc.edu

Though we strongly prefer online submissions,  we will still read mailed submissions (with SASE), though our response time may be considerably longer. If you need to contact us via mail, for reasons editorial or otherwise, our address is:

Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review
Box 66
Hampden-Sydney, VA  23943

Online Submissions

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The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review is published annually in late fall/early winter. Our current subscription rates are:

Single Issue: $7
Two years: $12
Three years: $17To subscribe, please

Visit our Poetry Review StoreFront, or you may send a check in the appropriate amount to:

Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review
Box 66 | Hampden-Sydney, VA 23943

If you have any further questions about subscribing, please contact us at poetryreview@hsc.edu.

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History

  • 20th Edition1973:    Two poets in a barn-the magazine's humble beginnings:  Poets Michael Egan and Tom O'Grady find fonts of lead type and printing blocks in an old horse barn in rural Maryland and buy them for a few dollars from the owner. They decide to set poems themselves, letter by letter- and perhaps even make their own paper-to publish limited edition chapbooks of poetry.
  • 1975: First edition
  • ~1977: grants from the VA arts commission
    • wins the NEA Editors' Prize
  • 1978: publishes poems by Miklos Radnoti, an Eastern European poet murdered by the Nazis 
  • Publishes translations of Czech poet Jaroslav Seifert -the first time in an American magazine
  • 1980-82: interviews and essays on poetry by James Dickey, William Styron, Willie Morris, David Ignatow, Mark Strand and Louis Simpson are included in the magazine
  • 1984: Seifert wins Nobel Prize for Literature
  • 2007 Edition1985: Seifert and Louis Simpson awarded honorary degrees from H-SC
  • 1985: College establishes a printing budget and poetry residency position
  • 1990: 15th Anniversary Issue
  • 2000: 25th Anniversary Issue and Celebration
  • 2007: Board approves tenure-track position for new editor/poet-in-residence
  • 2007: New Library Celebration Issue
  • 2007: On October 31st, 2007, renowned poets Molly Peacock and X.J. Kennedy read from their works.
  • 2008: Tom O'Grady edits his last issue
  • 2008: Nathaniel Perry takes over as editor.

Acknowledgement:  Thank you to Sarah Hardy and Tom O'Grady for compiling this information about The Review


Molly PeacockX.J. Kennedy 

Molly Peacock and X.J. Kennedy