Submission Call for Haze: Counterculture Poetry

The Broken Spine invites submissions for Haze: Counterculture Poetry, the sixth instalment in our critically acclaimed slimline anthology series, following After Hours: Beat Culture Made New, Last Light: Apocalypse Poetry, High-Rise: Brutalist Poetry, Glow: City at Night Poetry, and the forthcoming Rites & Trials: Coming-of-Age Poetry.

Before counterculture became the establishment, before rebellion was commodified, there was a moment, a feverish, untamed, incandescent moment, when it meant something. Haze is an attempt to capture that spirit, to reconnect with the electrifying pulse of a time when the world was shifting beneath people’s feet.

This is a call for poetry infused with the era’s most exhilarating artistic, musical, political, cinematic, and social upheavals. The space race. The birth of the teenager. Free love. Civil rights. The rejection of authority. The rise of feminism. The thrill of artistic and chemical experimentation. The words of Malcolm X and Lenny Bruce, the sounds of Frank Zappa and Bob Dylan, the vision of Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock.

We don’t want a love letter. The world has moved on, and so has rebellion. Haze asks you to look back through a contemporary lens, to interrogate counterculture’s victories and failures, its myths and its realities. Where did it fall? Where did it hold firm? What does it mean to be radical now?

‘Wednesday I watched the riot…
I seen the cops out on the street
Watched ’em throwin’ rocks and stuff
And chokin’ in the heat
Listened to reports
About the whisky passin’ ’round
Seen the smoke & fire
And the market burnin’ down
Watched while everybody
On his street would take a turn
To stomp and smash and bash and crash
And slash and bust and burn’

– Frank Zappa, Trouble Every Day

Open Call: Haze: Counterculture Poetry – Submit Throughout May 2025

For one month, The Broken Spine opens its doors to poetry that embodies the defiance, restlessness, and contradictions of the mid-20th-century countercultural movement. Whether you lived through it, mythologised it, or questioned its impact, we want your voice.

What We Seek:

• Poetry that crackles with the rebellion, urgency, and creative anarchy of the era.
• Work that explores not just the ecstasy of counterculture but its aftermath—what changed, what remained, what was lost.
• Pieces that engage with the movement’s defining figures and ideas—its prophets and its provocateurs, its artists and its agitators.
• Explorations of civil rights, feminism, sexual liberation, radical politics, underground art, and the conservative backlash.
• Poetry that doesn’t simply celebrate the 20th century’s cultural revolution but interrogates it—through nostalgia, critique, or reinvention.

Submission Guidelines:

• 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 a beat-driven howl, a fragmented manifesto, or a sprawling trip of consciousness—but it must feel alive.
• This call is open to poets of all backgrounds—we are looking for work that ignites, unsettles, and refuses complacency.

Submission Fee & Poetry Award Contribution

A £3 submission fee applies. This fee sustains The Broken Spine and ensures we can continue publishing risk-taking poetry. 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 Haze, you join a legacy of poets who write at the edges—who challenge, who disrupt, who push poetry into dangerous and exhilarating new spaces. The Broken Spine is committed to amplifying voices that refuse to be contained.

Submission Details:

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

Be Part of Haze: Counterculture Poetry

We are building a collection that doesn’t just relive the past—it wrestles with it. If your poetry carries the spirit of protest, of revolution, of art as disruption, we want to read it.

“What if the counterculture was only a stumbling beginning, rather than the best that could be hoped for?” – Mark Fisher

Submit your work and help shape a collection that speaks to the rebels, the dreamers, and the disillusioned alike.