Editorial Feedback: Poetry Packets
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Editorial Feedback: Poetry Packets
Rawhead’s Editorial Feedback offers you thoughtful, craft-focused engagement with your work from a member of our editorial team. Instead of broad, generalized feedback or workshop clichés, our goal is to provide sincere editorial attention that meaningfully engages with your work’s language, structure, movement, and artistic intentions.
This option is intended for writers seeking a deeper editorial perspective while also helping to support the growth of Rawhead and the labor of editors working within independent literary publishing.
PRICING
$50 — Poetry Feedback
$75 — Poetry Feedback + Handwritten Notes
$100 — Poetry Feedback + Handwritten Notes + Your purchase fully sponsors a standard 5-poem critique for a poet experiencing financial hardship.
What You Receive
• A written editorial response approximately 400–800 words in length
• Line level editing and revision suggestions
• Thoughtful, craft-focused commentary addressing strengths, opportunities for revision, and overall artistic impact
• Feedback that may discuss structure, imagery, pacing, voice, clarity, cohesion, sequencing, thematic movement, and publication readiness where relevant
• Honest editorial engagement rather than generalized workshop commentary
• Those who choose our 'Handwritten Notes' option get to see the visceral reaction of your assigned editor, right on the page. This shows you exactly where a line lands perfectly, where a reader might get tripped up, and what it takes to bridge the gap between your draft and your vision.
• Those who choose our "Sponsor a Writer" option will receive feedback, handwritten notes, and their purchase will fully fund a standard 5-poem review for a writer experiencing financial hardship.
TURNAROUND TIME
Estimated 3–5 weeks
GUIDELINES
- Poetry submissions: Up to 5 poems or 10 pages total
- Simultaneous submissions permitted
- Previously published work is 100% eligible for editorial response submissions
- Work should be submitted as a single DOCX or PDF file
PLEASE NOTE
• Editorial responses are developmental and craft-focused rather than exhaustive copyediting or proofreading. That said, we will do our best to help you perfect your pieces. Let us know what kind of assistance/advice will be of most value and we'll deliver.
• Purchasing feedback does not increase the likelihood of publication or acceptance
• Editorial responses reflect the perspective of the assigned editor and are inherently subjective
• Due to staff capacity, extensive follow-up correspondence after delivery may not be possible, but we will try to answer any questions you have.
• Please note: This is a brand new service. For now, all submissions will be personally reviewed and critiqued by Rawhead’s Editor-in-Chief, John T. Leonard.
John T. Leonard is the editor-in-chief of Rawhead and managing editor of 42 Miles Press and The Glacier. He holds an M.A. in English from Indiana University and has provided professional poetry manuscript editing services for nearly a decade. John’s poems have been published in Chiron Review, December Magazine, North Dakota Review, Ethel Zine, Anti-Heroin Chic, Louisiana Literature, South Florida Poetry Journal, Jelly Bucket, Painted Bride Quarterly, Tipton Poetry Journal, Sheila-Na-Gig, Hole in The Head Review, Nimrod International Journal, The Indianapolis Review, and The Emerson Review, among many others. He is the author of the chapbook, You Are Alive When They Start to Eat You, from Bottlecap Press. His first full length poetry collection, Hunting Season, is forthcoming from Wolfson Press. He lives in Elkhart, Indiana, with his wife and son. You can connect with him on Instagram @jotyleon.