Best Haiku Journals to Read and Submit To
More good haiku journals are publishing right now than most poets realize. Here are seven worth your reading time, and what each one looks for.
A short poem deserves a careful home, and the English-language haiku world has built several. The journals below are the ones we would point a new haiku poet toward first. One of them is ours, and we say so when we get to it. The others are, frankly, our competitors. They are on this list because they are good, and because a poet who reads them will write better haiku.
Modern Haiku
Founded in 1969, Modern Haiku is the longest-running haiku journal outside Japan. It appears in print three times a year and publishes haiku, senryu, haibun, and haiga alongside essays and book reviews, which makes it as much a journal of record as a poetry magazine. Submissions are free and read year-round, with editorial cut-off dates in mid-March, mid-July, and mid-November, one submission per reading period. Decisions can take six to eight weeks. If you read only one journal on this list besides ours, read this one.
Frogpond
Frogpond is the journal of the Haiku Society of America, founded in 1978 and among the widest-circulating haiku periodicals in print. Three issues a year, with a month-long submission window for each: all of March, all of July, all of November. Submitting is free, and you do not have to be an HSA member. Beyond individual poems it publishes linked forms, sequences, haibun, essays, and reviews. It does not accept AI-generated or AI-assisted writing.
The Heron's Nest
The Heron's Nest has published online since 1999, with new issues in the first week of March, June, September, and December, all free to read. Submissions go by email, five to fifteen unpublished poems pasted into the body of the message, once per submission period. Each issue names Editors' Choice haiku, and one of those receives the Heron's Nest Award. Because the archive is open, it is one of the easiest places to study what contemporary editors actually pick.
Acorn
Acorn is a biannual print journal built around the individual poem: no essays, no reviews, just haiku given room on the page. It reads submissions in January and February and again in July and August, by email, ten to fifteen poems at a time. No simultaneous submissions, and no AI-assisted work. A good match for poets whose haiku find the extraordinary inside ordinary days, which is the quality its editors say they want.
Mayfly
Randy and Shirley Brooks have edited Mayfly since 1986, and they keep it deliberately small: each issue holds only fourteen or fifteen haiku, one to a page. You may send up to five per issue, and accepted poems are paid at $10 each, which is rare in this field. The odds are long. They are worth taking, because a Mayfly acceptance means your poem beat out nearly everything else the editors read that season.
Presence
Presence, founded in 1996, is Britain's leading independent haiku journal. It prints three issues a year carrying haiku, senryu, tanka, haibun, essays, and reviews, and since 2025 it has been edited by a collective drawn from the Edinburgh Haiku Circle. There are three submission windows annually, by email or post, and the editors ask that you look at an issue before sending work. For poets outside the UK it is also the simplest way to follow the British haiku scene.
Haiku Journal
This is us, so weigh what follows accordingly. Haiku Journal has published online since 2008, and all of our issues are free to read. We publish English-language haiku in the strict 5-7-5 form only; our submission form counts the syllables for you. Submitting is free, you may send up to three haiku per issue, and we pay a token amount to every contributor. Small money, but in a field where most journals pay nothing, we think the gesture matters. Full details are on our guidelines page, and when you are ready you can submit here.
Before you submit anywhere
Read at least one issue of a journal before sending it work. Every editor on this list says some version of this, and they mean it: most rejections happen because the poem was sent to the wrong room.
Know what "unpublished" means. For nearly all of these journals it covers your blog, your social media accounts, and online workshops, as well as print. Most also refuse simultaneous submissions, so pick one journal per batch and wait for the answer.
Finally, match the form to the venue. Several journals above publish free-form haiku of fewer than seventeen syllables; we hold to 5-7-5. Neither camp is wrong, but sending the one to the other wastes everybody's time. If you are still working out where your own haiku sit, start with what is haiku and our guide to writing one.