Fragments: When Poetry Is All That’s Left – The 9th Thematic Slimline Anthology from The Broken Spine
Submissions Open Throughout January 2026 | Publication Later That Year

‘I want people to have free drink all night.
Sean Hughes
I want people to patch together, half truths.
I want people to contradict each other’
The Broken Spine invites submissions for Fragments: When Poetry Is All That’s Left: a collection of poetry rooted in memory, mourning, personal history, and the quiet violences of forgetting.
This anthology seeks out the raw remnants of what we carry: the smell of a dead parent’s coat, the fragment of a letter never finished, the look someone gave you before they forgot your name. It’s about remembering in pieces, and what happens when the pieces don’t fit anymore.
In January 2026, I will be reading submissions for Fragments: When Poetry Is All That’s Left, the ninth instalment in The Broken Spine’s slimline anthology series.
This collection will explore what we remember, what we misplace, and what we lose for good. It’s about the personal and the painful: the fading grip of a grandparent’s memory, the fragments of someone who once meant everything and is now just a blur.
This may be the most human and kind-hearted anthology I’ve ever put together, but I’m not asking for comfort. I’m asking for truth. And truth, most of the time, hurts.
This is not a soft call
In Fragments, I’ll be looking for poems that:
- Sit with memory and its failures, not just its comforts
- Explore death, grief, and absence without turning them into sentimental tropes
- Document the realities of watching someone forget who you are
- Honour lost loves, missed moments, and personal reckonings
- Ask what happens to the old when the world insists on being new
- Show what’s left when nothing else remains
This is a space for honesty, not nostalgia. A space for the unresolved, the uncomfortable, and the deeply personal.
Editorial note
I’ll edit this collection alone, as I have with the previous volumes. No committees, no consensus, just a clear, uncompromising editorial voice.
I’m interested in poems that take emotional risk without losing control. I want work that understands the weight of memory and the violence of forgetting. I’m not here for tidy endings or eulogies in verseI , want the kind of truth that lingers long in the gut.
If your poem feels like something someone might find years from now and mistake for a piece of themselves, send it.
Themes & motifs
Some of the ideas I’ll be drawn to include:
- Memory loss: dementia, disassociation, selective forgetting
- Personal histories: family stories, private mythologies, broken inheritances
- Grief and dedication: poems that eulogise without flattery
- Lost loves and unsent letters: intimacy that never made it to the finish line
- The old vs. the new: how the world erases what matters and replaces it with noise
- Ghosts of memory: what lingers, what haunts, what slips away
What I want
- Work that is emotionally honest, not emotionally manipulative
- Thoughtful, carefully edited writing that resists easy answers
- Poems that unsettle, question, and stay with the reader
- Precision in language and boldness in theme
- A wide range of voices and life experiences; this is a call for everyone
Submission guidelines
Please follow these guidelines carefully:
- Submissions open on 1 January and close on 31 January 2026
- Submit up to 2 poems
- A5 page size only
- Times New Roman, 10pt, single-spaced
- Titles must be bolded and italicised
- Left-aligned text only; no justification
- White space is encouraged where intentional
- No shape poems
- No identifying details in the file; blind submissions only
- Work previously posted on social media is fine; work published elsewhere is not
Submission fee and what it supports
A £3 submission fee will be required. This small contribution helps keep the press running.
I take no personal payment from this fee. Instead, it goes toward:
- Professional cover design
- Tools like Canva, Zoom, and file storage
- Social media support and marketing
- Contributor copies for poets experiencing hardship
All selected contributors will also be offered copies at 50% off the cover price.
If your work is selected
You will receive:
- A digital PDF of the anthology
- Custom promotional artwork for social sharing
- Access to The Broken Spine’s Past Contributor Directory
- 50% discount on contributor copies
Timeline
- Submissions open: 1 January 2026
- Submissions close: 31 January 2026
- Contributors will be contacted shortly after
- Publication is expected later in 2026
- Further updates, including cover and launch details, will follow
How to submit
- Submissions will open here on 1 January 2026
- Pay your £3 submission fee via Ko-Fi
- Submit your poems according to the formatting guidelines
- Submissions that ignore the formatting guidelines may go unread
Final note
Fragments is not an anthology of comfort, it’s an anthology of what we carry, often alone. It’s about the things we remember despite ourselves. And it’s about the poetry that survives when everything else has gone.