Like all good Francophiles, when August arrives we down tools and head for the beach (metaphorically, if not literally, in this year of Covid). So we have closed submissions for the month. We shall carry on putting up Friday Poems, features and reviews as usual, so do please keep on dropping by.
Since we launched The Friday Poem we’ve received so many really good poems that it’s been hard to choose which to publish, and we are already booking slots into November. A brief hiatus will allow us to catch up with ourselves a bit and, hey, it’s August! So you might say we’ve taken the foot off the gas pedal and are freewheelin’ for a month.
Submissions will open again on the first Friday in September so, poets, get honing that poem for us. But if you are thinking of submitting, there are a couple of things we want to mention. Please only submit one poem. Please be sure that it’s not been published elsewhere. And if you submit one and are not successful please leave it a few months before you submit again.
Also … and this is a new thing for us … please consider your layout. We are still learning about what works for all readers, and it’s becoming clear to us that justified text and text with variable sized spaces between words do not give a good reading experience for people with dyslexia.
We are committed to making The Friday Poem equally accessible to everyone. So if it seems to us that the layout of a poem discriminates against dyslexic readers then we probably won’t publish it. We’re going to write an article about web accessibility in the next few weeks to explain the issue. If you are a screen reader user or have dyslexia we’d love to hear about your experiences with our site, and with others. Send us a message via our contact form. Thanks.
Meanwhile, happy holidays!
