Submission Call for Rites & Trials: Coming-of-Age Poetry

The Broken Spine invites submissions for Rites & Trials: Coming-of-Age Poetry, the latest addition to our acclaimed slimline anthology series. Following After Hours: Beat Culture Made New, Last Light: Apocalypse Poetry, High-Rise: Brutalist Poetry, and Glow: City at Night Poems, this collection will carve deep into the rites of passage that define us: the struggles, the awakenings, the moments that mark the shift from youth to something sharper, something more knowing.

This is a call for poetry that speaks from the bones. Pieces that some presses might consider too raw, too dangerous. We want work that wrestles with identity, sexuality, gender, queerness, and political awakening. Work that confronts familial expectation, masculinity, the weight of the past, and the future breaking open in the present moment. Rites & Trials is about friction. The friction between self and society, between who we are and who we are told to be.

We are not looking for dirge! Your poetry can be short and terse, or it may sprawl across pages. There is no single template, only truth. What matters is that it rings authentic, that it lives on the page. The struggles must be real. The triumphs must be earned.

Think Swimming in the Dark, The Virgin Suicides, This Is England, In My Skin, The Perks of Being a Wallflower—stories that capture the dissonance of coming-of-age in yesterday’s world and today’s.

Open Call: Rites & Trials: Coming-of-Age Poetry – Submit Throughout April

Throughout April 2025, we welcome submissions from poets at all stages of their careers. Whether you are a fresh voice or an established writer, we seek poetry that reframes the coming-of-age narrative with originality, depth, and craft.

What We Seek:

• Poetry that inhabits the edges: poems that refuse sentimentality but still pulse with emotion.
• Work that speaks to queerness, masculinity, gender identity, familial tensions, and political awakening.
• Pieces that navigate first experiences—love, sex, loss, rebellion—with sophistication.
• Explorations of mental health and the experience of being an outsider—without self-pity, without artifice.
• Work that references the struggles and epiphanies found in classics like The Catcher in the Rye, The Virgin Suicides, The Poet X, and Brown Girl Dreaming, connecting with the universal pangs of youth.

Guidelines for Submission:

• Format is non-negotiable. Submissions must be in Times New Roman, 10-point font, single-spaced, formatted for A5 page size. Anything else risks being dismissed unread.
• Poets may submit up to two poems for consideration.
• Work may have been published on social media but must not have appeared in any other publication.
• Form is open—your poem may be razor-sharp minimalism or a sprawling narrative—but it must feel lived-in.
• This call is open to poets of all backgrounds—we want voices that crackle with originality and precision.

Submit Here!

Submission Fee & Poetry Award Contribution

A £3 submission fee applies. This fee helps sustain The Broken Spine and ensures we can continue championing groundbreaking poetry. Additionally, 33% of all submission fees will be allocated to The Broken Spine Poetry Award, a fundraising initiative aiming to raise £5,000 for a significant cash prize for poets.

Why Submit to The Broken Spine?

By submitting to Rites & Trials, you join a legacy of poets who push boundaries. The Broken Spine is committed to amplifying voices that challenge, that redefine, that refuse to be silenced.

Review Process: Our editorial team is committed to a thoughtful review of each submission, with successful poets notified after the submission period concludes.

Submission Details:

• How to Submit: All submissions must be sent through our specified platform.
• Pay the submission fee here.
• Review Process: Every submission will receive a thoughtful review by our editorial team. Successful poets will be notified after the submission period concludes.

Be Part of the Rites & Trials Legacy

We are building a collection that does more than reflect on youth—it reclaims it. If your poetry carries the weight of experience and the urgency of truth, we want to read it.

Submit your work and help shape a collection that speaks to the rites and trials of becoming.

‘We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in…’

– Jeffrey Eugenides

Submit Here!