Poetry manuscript appraisal

I offer help and advice to prepare, develop, and possibly edit your poetry manuscript, with a view to making it as strong and coherent as possible, bringing it to such a level that it can be submitted to poetry publishers.

These manuscript consultations may help if any of the following apply:

—You have drafted a manuscript (a full collection or a pamphlet / chapbook) and would like overall feedback and suggestions for improvement.

—You are only at an early stage of your manuscript, and perhaps need advice on its development and what direction it may take.

—You would like more detailed feedback and guidance on poems already written, for example if you wish to submit some of them to poetry magazines.

—You feel ready to publish your work and would like advice on how best to pitch it to a publisher.

I propose to achieve this in the following way:

1. Reading assessment, feedback and report

After receiving your manuscript or work-in-progress by email, I give it a close reading and gain for myself an initial overview of its strengths and weaknesses. Then I focus on how best to help you make the manuscript, in both theme, structure, and direction, the most coherent it can be, i.e. giving advice on its inner architecture, on how best to organise poems within the collection. Likewise, advice on what poems to include, exclude, improve, etc., all of which will help make your manuscript the strongest it can be for any potential publisher or if you wish to submit some poems to magazines.

All of this advice will be included in a written report of the overall manuscript appraisal.

2. Optional one-to-one sessions

Subsequently, it is possible to enter a dialogue (either by email or, if preferred, during one-to-one Zoom sessions) to reply to more specific questions, to review your work further and ascertain a) what might be improved upon or b) what is already successful about it, to discuss more practical details regarding presentation, publishing, etc.

I propose a variety of reasonable fees depending on the duration of our exchanges and the length of the manuscript – for instance from £80 for the manuscript appraisal of a poetry pamphlet/chapbook, from £180 for a general overview of a longer manuscript. The editing of individual poems is possible for an extra fee.

Please email me at paulrodneystubbs(at)icloud.com

My credentials

As co-publisher of the Anglo-French publishing house Black Herald Press since 2010, I possess an extensive skill set in critical reading and editing manuscripts, from advising to proof-reading, to writing blurbs, presentations, and working on a one-to-one basis with many poets – be they in the early stages of their career of more experienced with multiple collections behind them.

As a poet with seven published collections (two of which have been translated into French), I have a deep personal understanding of just what it takes to persistently work on, revise, edit, organise, and complete a manuscript. Besides, I have also co-edited a literary magazine (The Black Herald), written two books of critical, poetical and philosophical essays: The Return to Silence (including essays on Friedrich Hölderlin, Baruch Spinoza, Simone Weil, Yves Bonnefoy, Cioran) and The Carbonized Earth, dedicated to the work of the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, books I could not have written without an extensive knowledge of British, European, and world literature and poetry. I have also published an essay on Jack Kerouac, written essays about Alice Oswald, David Gascoyne, Bei Dao, T. S. Eliot, among others, and introductions/afterwords to books by various poets such as W. S. Graham and Gregory Corso.

My own writing has received awards from the Arts Council East and grants from The Society of Authors, while I have also read my own work at a variety of venues, including Oxford University, the Seamus Heaney Centre, the National Poetry Library , London, as well as in New York and Paris.

“Paul Stubbs is an expert in modern and contemporary poetry and poetics, vastly well read in literatures from across the world, and a deeply impressive poet in his own right. Anyone who wishes to further understand poetic form would benefit via his decades-long deepened sense of philosophic and linguistic ability, which he is able to pass on with compassion and empathy regarding individual aesthetics and poetic development. Paul is someone distinctly able to understand the vitality of poetic diction and has the utmost care for poetry. He is also a long-term publisher of poetry and other forms, via Black Herald Press, so his experience extends to first-hand knowledge of the publishing industry itself. If you are working on a manuscript or need further tuition, seek him out.”

—Dr James Byrne, poet and editor, Cornell University, English Association Fellow, author of Nightsongs for Gaia (Arc Publications).

“Paul Stubbs is a fantastic reader of other poets’ work”

—Caroline Clark, poet and translator, author of Saying Yes in Russian (Agenda Editions), and Sovetica (CB editions).

“With his unerring sense of what is essential to a poem, Paul Stubbs is not only able to pluck the heart out of a work in progress but, with a deeply honest and original insight, add dimensions to the possibility of a collection.”

—Michael Lee Rattigan, poet and translator of Fernando Pessoa’s Alberto Caeiro Poems (Rufus Books) and César Vallejo’s poetry and essays (Wesleyan University Press).