Submissions

Established in 2017, ignitionpress is an award-winning poetry pamphlet press with an international outlook which publishes original, arresting poetry from emerging poets.

Pamphlets published by the press have so far received six Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice selections and five pamphlets have been shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Award. The press won the Michael Marks Publishers' Award in 2021.You can find out more about the press and how we work in this interview on the Friday Poem website with our former Managing Editor, Les Robinson, or watch this short video that we produced for the Michael Marks Awards, 2021.

Learn more about the 30 pamphlets we have published and their authors on our Pamphlets page. We encourage you to read our pamphlets before submitting to get an idea about the kind of work we tend to publish and how our pamphlets look and feel.

How to submit

We welcome submissions from emerging poets aged 18 and over anywhere in the world. We consider an emerging poet to be a writer who has had some poems published online or in magazines, but who has not yet published a chapbook, pamphlet, or book-length collection. We expect that you will have – or be working towards – a pamphlet-length manuscript of around 18-20 poems. Our pamphlets are normally 36 pages in total. Please see our note below about the editing process at ignitionpress.

Please submit to ignitionpress@brookes.ac.uk the following:

6 poems that give us a sense of your proposed pamphlet. One or more of these poems can have been previously published. For the purposes of your submission, individual poems should be no more than fifty lines long.
75 words that summarise your manuscript as it stands and tells us about you as a poet. Feel free to include any notable poetry projects, successes in competitions, and publications in magazines or anthologies. Please add this to the same document as the poems and ensure that your name and e-mail address are included.

Our current submission window is open from Tuesday 7 April 2026 (at 00.00) to Tuesday 5 May 2026 (at 23.59).

Please don’t send your work outside these times as it will not be considered. There is no fee to submit your work, and simultaneous submissions are acceptable. However, if your manuscript is accepted by another publisher whilst it is still under consideration by ignitionpress, we would be grateful if you might inform us asap.

If you have questions that are not answered by our frequently asked questions section below, please get in touch with Niall Munro: ignitionpress@brookes.ac.uk

We look forward to reading your work!

Selection and publication

We will contact successful poets in June 2026. We are aiming to publish two pamphlets during this round.
Our indicative timeline includes acceptance in June, editing from June-August, publication in September/October, and a launch in October.
We pay poets £125 upon acceptance of the final manuscript and an additional payment of at least £50 in travel expenses for launches. We also give poets 15 free copies of their pamphlet. Poets can buy subsequent copies of any ignitionpress pamphlet (including their own) at a 40% discount (i.e. for £4.20 instead of the RRP of £7).
Our initial print run for a pamphlet is normally 200 copies.
ignitionpress guarantees our poets at least one online launch and, depending on where they live, one in-person launch.
We normally ask that poets do not have another pamphlet or book coming out within a year of their ignitionpress pamphlet being published.
In tandem with the poet, the press promotes the pamphlets extensively via social media, through the Poetry Centre’s marketing channels, at events, and on our website.
We sell the pamphlets via the Oxford Brookes Shop, distribute them to various bookshops and festivals around the UK, attend fairs like Free Verse and the Oxford Indie Book Fair to showcase our pamphlets, and enter them for competitions such as the Poetry Book Society’s Pamphlet Choice and the Michael Marks Awards.
ignitionpress aims to actively support our poets beyond publication, and many of our writers have taken part in events, workshops, and other opportunities organized by the Poetry Centre or the press.

Our guest editor

We are delighted that Isabelle Baafi is returning to the ignitionpress team as a Guest Editor for this round of pamphlet selections. The press published Isabelle's pamphlet in 2020 and since then she has developed an impressive reputation as poet and editor and in the last group of our pamphlets she worked with AV Bridgwood on their collection Snack. We are so pleased that the press will be benefiting from Isabelle's editorial expertise once again!

Isabelle Baafi

Isabelle Baafi is a poet, writer and editor of Jamaican and South African heritage, born and raised in London. She is the author of Chaotic Good (Faber & Faber / Wesleyan University Press, 2025), which won the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection 2025 and was a Guardian Book of the Year for 2025. The collection was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Summer 2025 and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2025. Isabelle's pamphlet Ripe (ignitionpress, 2020) won a Somerset Maugham Award and was a PBS Pamphlet Choice. Her writing has been published in Granta, the TLS, The Poetry Review, Callaloo, The London Magazine, and elsewhere. Isabelle is the Reviews Editor of Poetry London and has edited issues of Magma (83: Solitude and 93: Liberation), Poetry Wales, Skin Deep and Tentacular. She is also a Ledbury Poetry Critic, an Obsidian Foundation Fellow and a board member at Magma.

In this round we are aiming to publish two pamphlets. Isabelle will edit one and Niall Munro, the director of the press, will edit the other.

A note about editing

ignitionpress operates a hands-on editing process. Our aim is to work with our poets to produce the best possible pamphlet. If you are seeking a publisher to release your manuscript as it is and don’t want any editorial input, we are not the publisher for you. Our editorial process typically lasts 3-4 months and involves a dialogue between editor and writer, with the final decisions always left to the poet. Our current editors are Isabelle Baafi and Niall Munro, and you can find out more about us on our Editorial Board page.

Frequently asked questions

Q. What do you mean when you say that the press has ‘an international outlook’?

A. ignitionpress is an outward-looking press that was set up to publish a broad range of voices from many different places and backgrounds. We have so far published writers from a range of countries and heritages, including Zimbabwe, the US, Canada, Jordan, Hong Kong, Greece, the UK, and India.

Q. Will you publish book-length collections?

A. No. ignitionpress remains a pamphlet-only publisher.

Q. I've already published a chapbook, pamphlet, or book-length collection elsewhere - can I still submit?

A. No. ignitionpress looks for poets who have not previously published a collection of poetry. If you're trying to find a publisher for your work, you might consult the useful lists available on the National Poetry Library site.

Q. Do you require the poems or summary to be presented in a certain font or format for submission?

A. No. Poems need only be typed and legible. However, we request that you don’t send us individual poems of more than 50 lines in length at this stage.

Q. Can I submit more than 6 poems?

A. No. Please only send us one submission of 6 poems.

Q. Should I submit my work anonymously?

A. No, please include your name and e-mail address on your submission.

Q. If I submitted poetry to ignitionpress in the past but wasn’t published by the press, can I submit again now?

A. Yes, certainly - so long as you have not previously published a chapbook, pamphlet, or book-length collection. We also recommend that you do not submit exactly the same poems that you shared with us before.

Q. I’m planning to publish a book-length collection soon after the date of publication mentioned above. Is that OK?

A. Not really! Having a publication appearing so soon after a pamphlet makes it very difficult to sell the pamphlet, particularly if many of the same poems appear in the both the pamphlet and the collection. The editors of your book-length collection are also likely to want to know where and when previous versions of your poems have been published. We normally expect poets not to have another publication until at least 12 months after their pamphlet has been published.

Q. Would I have any say in the cover design?

A. No. ignitionpress has a recognisable cover design which we will be retaining for the foreseeable future.

Q. Will I have to sign a contract?

A. Yes, we do ask poets to sign a simple contract. Contact us at ignitionpress@brookes.ac.uk if you would like more information about this.

Q. Do you operate a royalty scheme for poets?

A. No. As per the information above, we pay poets a one-off fee of £125 when they submit their manuscript and at least £50 in travel expenses.

About our pamphlets

Our most recent pamphlets by AV Bridgwood and Meredith MacLeod Davidson are available to buy! You can find out more about them on the Pamphlets page.

You can watch the online launch of these pamphlets and previous launches on our YouTube channel.

Our most recent five pamphlets cost £7, with the older ones priced at £4. You can also buy three of the older pamphlets for £10 and three of the newest for £14. Find out more about the poets and the pamphlets on the dedicated pages. You can also follow the Poetry Centre on Instagram.

Please be aware that, owing to new tax rules, we, like other small presses, are still unable to ship to EU countries, unless you are happy for us to send the pamphlets 'delivered duty unpaid', which may make you liable for import costs. If so, please let us know when ordering. We are very sorry about this and hope to be able to resume regular postage to the EU soon.

The ignitionpress list

All of the pamphlets published by ignitionpress that are currently in print are available from our online Shop: When the Flies Come by Fahad Al-Amoudi; Sometimes Real Love Comes Quick & Easy by Janine Bradbury; Snack by AV Bridgwood; Radical Pairings by Clementine E Burnley; He Said I Was a Peach by Katie Byford; Finishing School by Michaela Coplen; Spit Valve by Eve Ellis; Glean by Patrick James Errington; Burntisland by Ian Farnes; Lung Iron by Daniel Fraser; Naming Bones by Joanna Ingham; Trimming the Wick by Laboni Islam; City Poems by Mia Kang; Hush by Majella Kelly; Transpiration by Meredith MacLeod Davidson; Whetstone by Eira Murphy; Hinge by Alycia Pirmohamed; Kitchen Boombox by Jacob Anthony Ramírez; Glass Knot Sun by Patrick Romero McCafferty; Staircase by Zein Sa'dedin; The Bullshit Cosmos by Sarah Shapiro; Ephebos by Kostya Tsolakis; Shadow Dogs by Natalie Whittaker; Exposure by Eric Yip; Sargam / Swargam by Fathima Zahra; and Small Inheritances by Belinda Zhawi.

Four pamphlets: A Hurry of English by Mary Jean Chan, There's No Such Thing by Lily Blacksell, Kismet by Jennifer Lee Tsai, and Ripe by Isabelle Baafi have sold out.

The website has specific pages about our poets and their pamphlets.