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How To Get 100 Poetry Journal Rejections

Read, write, and submit, submit, submit

Trapper Markelz
11 min readDec 29, 2021

At the beginning of 2021, I decided to participate in the #100Rejections challenge. I don’t remember where I originally heard about it, but the challenge is to submit your work over 100 times to ensure that you get rejected by 100 journals. It sounded like a great way to learn the process of submission and give me a writing goal I could actually control!

Quick History

At the time of writing this article, I’m very new to poetry. Over the years, I’ve flirted with poetry through various podcasts and a healthy dose of NPR listening on long commutes. In 2019, I began reading poetry more deliberately, mainly focused on Jim Harrison. In late 2019, I began writing my own poetry, took some classes online, and started publishing in 2020. I submitted to my first journals in October of 2020, received my first acceptance, and spent 2021 submitting to over 120 literary publications.

I’ve since been published in places like Baltimore Review, Stillwater Review, Passengers Journal, Greensboro Review, Prometheus Dreaming, Hole in the Head Review, Dillydoun Review, and others.

I also publish weekly on Medium, and some older work before I started submitting is up at Allpoetry.com

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Trapper Markelz
Trapper Markelz

Written by Trapper Markelz

Trapper Markelz (he/him) is a poet who writes from Boston, MA. His work has appeared in numerous journals and publications. Check out http://trappermarkelz.com

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