How to Submit

We publish twice a year--a February issue and an August issue. 

We accept submissions: 

• Nov 1 - Dec 15 for our February issue
• May 1 - Jun 15 for our August issue.

Send up to four poems or six pieces of visual work in one document. Submit once per reading period.

Double-check to make sure you cite your source text. Work that has no source text cited will not be considered. Your citation of sources should make it possible for us to find the original online or by visiting some place and looking it up. We'd also like to know your method for crafting your found writing. We consider your method a part of your work, so drop us a note about that, as well. This will be published along with your work.

Please include a brief, third person bio of no more than 50 words that will accompany your work. Please do not include live links in your bio.

What We Want

We’re looking for found writing that first of all adheres to The Center for Media and Social Impact’s Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry. This means you’ve found something within a source text that is a new work, not just borrowed the existing copyrighted material. Think of it like this: remember how when you were a kid you would look up at the sky and pick animals and characters and objects out of the clouds? You didn’t just see the cloud, you saw something new, something no one else had ever seen. That’s what we want. Your found writing should not look like its source text. Beyond that, we want work that shocks us, surprises us, moves us, makes us sigh. We also like it when your work comes from interesting or intriguing sources. And we’re not really into poems that rhyme. We also love visual art pieces. If you can incorporate found writing and art, we would love to see it.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet wields his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn. ~ T. S. Eliot

We do not publish writing that is not found writing. We prefer previously unpublished work, but will consider reprints. Be sure to mention when you submit if your work is previously published. We do accept simultaneous submissions, just please let us know ASAP if the work is accepted elsewhere.

How to Submit

Cut and paste the content of your submission (up to 4 pieces) in the box provided. Or send up to four pieces in one document, with the author name in the document, as well as a title above each piece. Double-check to make sure you cite your source text.  (We would want to be able to FIND the source. But you don't have to do a line by line citations.) We’d also like to know your method for crafting your piece. 

For art subs, you'll attach files. JPG, GIF, PNG. Do not submit art in PDF form or embedded in Word documents. Please include a brief (35 words or so), third person bio that will accompany your work. Please do not include live links in your bio.

We cannot accept erasures or black-out poems submitted as text files (.doc, .docx, .rtf, .txt) with the erased or black-out text in the file. Please submit this kind of work as a good quality scan or a really good photograph.

More on visual projects. Which we welcome! When you submit, keep in mind there can be substantial problems presenting a scan or a photograph of physically-assembled pieces such as paper collages on computer screens, laptop screens, and particularly smartphones. As much as wish it weren't true, frankly, readers often view our issues on their phones. Be particularly attentive to text size. If it is small relative to the overall dimensions of your physical piece, we may reject it because we find it too difficult to read. Try to send scanned images rather than taking photos of your work.

Payment and Rights

We cannot offer payment to our poets at this time, but we will do our best to promote your work. Unlost acquires worldwide First Serial Electronic Rights and Nonexclusive Archival Electronic Rights, so that we may continue to archive your work. All submissions remain foremost the intellectual property of the author and rights revert to the author upon publication in Unlost. Any future publishers of works that first appear in this venue must credit Unlost for first publication.

Response Time

We aim to respond to submissions by 2 weeks after the close of a reading period. If it has been longer than two months, shoot us an email with “Query” in the subject line.