Submission dates for Southword

Unsolicited submissions of poetry and short fiction (for our 2025 winter issue) are open as follows:

POETRY: 1st ‒ 31st January

FICTION: 1st ‒ 28th February

Our Submittable account limit means that we can only receive 1000 submissions per month, so if we reach this limit before the end of January (for poetry) or February (for fiction), the submission link will automatically close and we will be unable to accept any further submissions.

Southword pays contributors €50 per poem and €300 per short story. We welcome submissions of up to four poems or one short story (of up to 5000 words) per submission period. If your work has been published in Southword before, we ask that you please don’t submit again for at least one year after publication. The poetry editor is Patrick Cotter. The fiction editor is Billy O’Callaghan. Subscriber competitions are judged by James O’Leary.

To buy individual issues or subscribe, go the our Southword page.

Further Guidelines are available on our submission manager during the our open submission periods.