Poetry Critiques with Mid-American Review

Mid-American Review (MAR) Editor-in-Chief Abigail Cloud and Poetry Editor Megan Borocki shed light on the literary magazine landscape, especially for poets. Cloud and Borocki discuss what kind of work MAR publishes, their editorial approach and process, trends they see in the submission queue, submission tips, preferred fonts (spoiler: poets love Garamond), their perspective on cover letters, the realities of rejection, and more. They also critique three poems submitted to Page Count by Ohio writers.

 

Learn more about Mid-American Review online follow the journal on Twitter. Finally, Page Count extends special thanks to Sara Shearer, Carole Mertz, and a third, unnamed poet for submitting their poems for this episode.

 

Abigail Cloud is editor-in-chief of Mid-American Review and a teaching professor at Bowling Green State University, from which she holds an MFA. Her first collection, Sylph, was published by Pleaides Press in 2014.

 

Megan Borocki (they/them) has an MFA in poetry from Bowling Green State University. They are poetry editor for Mid-American Review. Their work has recently appeared in Moon City Review, Olney, and The Hunger.

 

Mentioned in this episode:

• Sylph by Abigail Cloud
• Bowling Green State University’s MFA and BFA in Creative Writing programs
• Winter Wheat: The Mid-American Review Festival of Writing
• Gordon Square Review
• The New Yorker
• The Atlantic
• Bluets by Maggie Nelson

 

Page Count is produced by Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. For full show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit the episode page. To get in touch, email ohiocenterforthebook@cpl.org (put “podcast” in the subject line) or follow us on Twitter or on Facebook.