Deadline for pitches: MARCH 1
First draft deadline: MAY 1
editors@chicagoreview.org
Chicago Review seeks pitches of critical reviews, commentary essays, notes and reflections on contemporary British experimental poetry. Pitches should be between 200 and 300 words and outline the proposed subject and argument regarding the piece’s treated object(s). Proposed pieces should ideally be between 1500 and 3000 words for reviews, between 3000 and 6000 words for commentary essays, and between 500 and 2500 words for notes and reflections.
Suggested topics of pitched pieces may include but are not limited to the following:
– Commentary essays on specific poets, groups of poets, or reviews of their recent works.
– Articulations of major threads and formal preoccupations of and in recent British poetry.
– Press economies in UK poetry.
– Prize cultures and the financial life of poetry in the UK.
– Creative writing and literary education in the UK.
– UK poetry in relation to other national formations.
– Race, racialisation, and nationality in British poetry (its works and its communities).
– Gender and transness in British poetry.
– Genealogies, schools, and collectives of experimental British poetry.
– Interactions between avant-garde and mainstream poetry in the UK.
– Poetry and protest, activism, and politics in British poetry.
– Geographies of poetic activity and influence.
In Spring 2007, Chicago Review published the British Poetry Issue: 53:1. It featured two main sections: FOUR POETS, featuring criticism on and new work from Andrea Brady, Peter Manson, Chris Goode, and Keston Sutherland, and was edited by Sam Ladkin and Robin Purves; and FIFTEEN REVIEWS, which is more-or-less self-explanatory. It also featured a web map, “Styles of British Poetry 1945–2000,” by Andrew Duncan. This issue served to introduce many of Chicago Review’s American readers to the diversity of intensive experimental writing coming out of the United Kingdom since the turn of the century.
If it seems strange that American readers might have needed to be reintroduced to British poetry, then it shouldn’t. The mid-century cleaving of the two national experimental traditions has been long-remarked and debated. Indeed, Keith Tuma’s book on this very subject, Fishing by Obstinate Isles: Modern and Postmodern British Poetry and American Readers (1998), begins its first part with a 1979 quote from American poet Donald Hall in American journal Parnassus who intones that “the poetries of England and America have become discontinuous.”
Before and after 2007, Chicago Review has maintained consistent relationships with many poets both based in the United Kingdom and in deep conversation and interlocution with its experimental traditions. This special feature, slated for publication in late Summer 2026, is an attempt to renew and update that commitment, to take some stock of the two decades since 53:1 (Spring 2007) and the various features between, to strengthen and articulate Chicago Review’s transatlantic communication. The special feature will be accompanied by a folio of new poetry selected and solicited by the Editor in collaboration with the editorial staff of Chicago Review. Pitches need not be related to these specific poets or traditions, but a non-comprehensive list of poets published and critically treated by Chicago Review follows below. We hope that it may serve as a useful pointer, without wishing to be exclusive. They are presented in no particular order.
Nat Raha
Kat Addis
Joseph Minden
Keston Sutherland
Andrea Brady
Kat Sinclair
Verity Spott
Joe Luna
Holly Pester
Peter Manson
J.H. Prynne
Jay Gao
Robert Kiely
Laurel Uziell
Tom Raworth
Tom Pickard
W.S. Graham
Lotte L.S.
John Wilkinson
Connie Scozzaro
Denise Riley
Nisha Ramayya
Lucy Benyon (and Lisa Jeschke)
Jeff Hilson
Colin Lee Marshall
Ian Heames
David Grundy
Callie Gardner
Sean Bonney
Andrew Spragg
Sophie Seita
Luke Roberts
Christopher Middleton
Veronica Forrest-Thomson
Drew Milne
D.S. Marriott
editors@chicagoreview.org