The Poetry Marathon 2024 – Print Anthology
The Poetry Marathon is an annual online writing event which has been running since its founding year in 2011. Run by Caitlin and Jacob Jans this event brings together hundreds of poets every year who write together, though apart and the community has grown each year to include poets from every continent in the world (except Antartica). Each hour, for 24 hours, a prompt goes live on the marathon website which writers may choose interpret in any way they wish. The aim of the event is to write 24 poems, within 24 hours without writing ahead of the prompts. It is a long and challenging event. Our Editor in Chief DS Coremans has participated in, and completed the full 24 hour marathon event every year since 2019. This year, DS will be editing an anthology collection of the writing created during the 2024 marathon event. Submission will only be considered from those who completed either the 12-hour half marathon, or the full 24 hour event during 2024.
This anthology will aim to include one poem from every poet who submits, due to the number of poets who completed this year’s marathon this may make the collection quite substantial. The intention then is to publish the collection using KDP (Amazon) allowing for both a digital and print edition to be made available to all contributors. A free digital version of the collection will be made available on the poetry marathon social media channels to all poets who took part in this year’s event.
Submissions Are Open From:
July 15th 2024 – September 15th 2024
As always the anthology is only possible if people follow the guidelines, so please read them through carefully and make sure your submissions follow all of the guidelines.
All poems submitted must be written during the 2024 Marathon, and the writer must have completed the full marathon or half marathon in 2024. Poems sent by writers who did not participate in this year’s event will not be considered.
All poems should be completely edited and as much as possible contain no major grammatical errors. Revisions are allowed and encouraged before submitting. Please check your punctuation. All poems should be single spaced. Any extra space will likely be interpreted as a stanza break. The first word of every line should not have a capitalisation unless it is intentional.
When you submit you must include in the email the following:
- The subject line with the exact text: “2024 Marathon Submissions”.
- The body text should contain all five pieces of information.
- Wether you are a half, or full marathoner
- Your location (e.g. Stirling, Scotland).
- The hour of the marathon the poem was written in.
- As well as a link to your poetry marathon page. (e.g. https://community.thepoetrymarathon.com/u/6fefc98c)
- If your poetry marathon name is different than your name, include both and make it clear which name you want to appear in the anthology.
- Two poems pasted into the body of the email. All submissions must include two poems, no more, no less.
Please follow all these guidelines. Use the above list as a checklist for your email submission and only press send once you’ve reviewed it at least twice.
All marathon submissions must be made via this email address: submissions@fodibyli.com
DO NOT email any of the official The Poetry Marathon addresses. This anthology is being run entirely separate from the event organisers, and as such Caitlin and Jacob will not be directly overseeing any of this process or answering questions pertaining to this collection. Any and all queries about this, or any other aspects of the submission process should be addressed directly to: dsc@fodibyli.com
Due to issues that happened in the past, no one is allowed to announce that their poem has been accepted for publication until all email confirmations have been sent out. Announcements made on the marathon social media pages prior to this will be deleted. Please do not query about the status of your submission via email until after November 15th 2024.
Thank you for following the guidelines! I know they might seem strict but they make it possible for a small team to put together this anthology together in as short a time-frame as possible.
After the poems are published in the anthology all rights return to you.
The submissions window for poetry will close on September 15th 2024. Submissions received after this time will not be considered.
Submissions for the Print Anthology are now closed. No further submissions will be accepted for this anthology collection. Thank you to all of those who submitted their work to be included.
You can still submit work for the Cover Art for this anthology, or if submit a recording of your spoken word work from the marathon until November 15th 2024.
The Poetry Marathon 2024 – Cover Art
We are also open to artwork submissions from anyone, previous marathoner or otherwise. If your art has been on the cover of a Poetry Marathon Anthology before, do not submit again. FoDiByLi would like to honour the tradition of featuring a new artist’s work each year.
Work must belong to you and you must be comfortable with us turning it into a book cover (digitally of course).
When you submit you must include in the email the following:
- The subject line must read “2024 Marathon Artwork Submissions”.
- Include a maximum of 5 pieces of artwork or link to your previous art work examples and offer something new.
- Any medium is allowed, as long as it can be turned into a print book cover.
- High quality resolution images are a must, though your initial submissions can be lower resolution.
Please send work to submissions@fodibyli.com
We are more likely to choose images that already has space for the title and editor’s name built into the image or an image that can be easily modified and interrupted to include the title and editor’s name. Images featuring winter holidays, or overtly religious themes will likely not be considered, but other that we are open to most images. Have a look at the imagery on FoDiByli posts to get an idea of the types of images which our editor prefers using.
We will respond to applicants that we are not interested in by the end of January 2025, but we may shortlist a few of our favourites until closer to the publication date which will be confirmed after all submissions have been received.
As with the poetry submitted to the anthology all rights to these images return to the artist after the collection is published. Full credit to the artwork and guidance to linked social media platforms will be included for the artwork selected.
The submissions window for artwork will close on November 15th 2024. Submissions received after this time will not be considered.
The Poetry Marathon 2024 – Spoken Word Musical Collaboration
At FoDiByLi we try to celebrate creativity in all forms. To make this year’s Poetry Marathon event feel extra special, FoDiByLi is proud to once again be collaborating with the inordinately talented musician Paul James who created all twelve hours of the ambient music tracks which accompanied our last event run in January 2024.
These tracks were an outstanding addition to our last event and FoDiByLi are really excited to work with Paul again so soon on this project to commemorate the 2024 Poetry Marathon.
(See more of Paul’s work here: https://linktr.ee/paul.jame.s)
For this project Paul will be creating a bespoke track/tracks which will be a hybrid blend of ambient generative music and spoken word performances of the poets work from the marathon. If you would like your work to be considered for use in this project it is recommended that guidelines are followed carefully to ensure the quality of the recordings we are asking for are usable. Recordings do not have to be fancy, just clear and with a quiet background. Our recommendation would be that those who want to contribute use their phones to record audio or a short video of themselves (only audio will be used) performing one of their poems and send the file, or a link to the file via dropbox etc. by November 15th 2024.
- Subject line must read: ‘2024 Marathon Audio Submission’.
- Poets must include only one recorded submission.
- A written transcript of the poem you choose to perform must be included in the body of the email.
- Poems must be no more than 20 lines total.
- Short forms are preferred to allow more poets a chance to feature.
- Recordings smust be made in a quiet environment with as little background noise as possible.
- Noisy recordings may make your submissions unusable.
- Poems can be read in any language, we encourage those who do not speak English as a first language to send us their work in their first language or any language you feel comfortable performing your work in, but if the written transcript could include a rough translation of your work this would be useful.
Examples:
Bad Example
Good Example
Both of these examples were created using the ‘Voice Memos’ app on an iPhone. In the first there was music playing in the background, this would make the recording unusable for this project (even though it is very quiet). In the second recording this was recorded in a kitchen, if you listen very closely there is still a little bit of electrical hum from the appliances, but this is perfectly fine for the purposes of this recording.
If you really struggle with tech, but would like to take part, get in touch with DS Coremans at dsc@fodibyli.com as he can arrange to do your recording via video call if this is something that would make contributing a little easier.
Not all poets who submit work for this project will be featured in the finished track/tracks. But we will make as much effort as possible to ensure the finished tracks showcase the wide range of talent that The Poetry Marathon community bring to the event each year.
As with all work submitted full rights to the poetry used in the tracks will revert back to the writer after the tracks are released, although the finished tracks will belong to Paul James once they have been produced.
The submissions window for audio recording will close on November 15th 2024. Submissions received after this time will not be considered.
