Haiku Journal — Submission Guidelines

three lines · one breath

Background

Haiku Journal features both new and established poets. We publish haiku in the strict 5 / 7 / 5 form — three lines with five, seven, and five syllables. Issues are free to read online, and selected work is considered for our annual paperback collection.

It's Still Free to Submit

Many excellent journals charge fees for online or offline submissions (or both). We all understand those funds are needed to send contributors copies or otherwise generate income — more than 70% of journals today do not pay anything. These practices are understandable, but frustrating to writers. Fortunately, Haiku Journal submissions are still free.

Payments

All journals have some financial strategy to stay afloat, and those decisions are often difficult trade-offs. What are ours?

Pros

  • We don't require writers to pay anything to submit.
  • We are in the minority of journals that do actually pay cash (via PayPal, because it's easy and popular).
  • Issues are free to read online.

Cons

  • We cannot afford to send free paperback issues to contributors.
  • Token payments are small.

Submission Guidelines

By submitting, you are acknowledging each of the following:

  1. Original and unpublished. By submitting, you assert that your work is available to print and has not been previously printed elsewhere — not in print, not online, not on social media, not on your personal blog. You may exploit your haiku in any way you wish after publication, without contacting us.*
  2. Your own creation. You affirm the haiku is your own writing. No part of your submission is in the public domain. We do not accept AI-generated or AI-assisted work. Haiku Journal publishes human writers.
  3. You must be 18 or older. Poets must be at least eighteen years of age at the time of submission. By submitting, you confirm that you meet this age requirement.
  4. Strict 5 / 7 / 5 syllables. Haiku must follow the classical syllabic pattern: five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, five in the third. Our submission form counts syllables for you and rejects anything outside the form.
  5. Up to 3 haiku per issue. Please submit each haiku as a separate entry. One token payment is allowed per issue.
  6. Lines cannot exceed 40 characters. Our books are printed in short lines, so please check each line's length before submitting.
  7. The form accepts only your haiku. The submission form accepts only the three lines of your haiku, in plain text. There is no field for a cover letter, a bio, an explanation, an attachment, or a note to the editor. We read only the poem itself.
  8. Free online; paperbacks optional. Every issue is free to read online. Paperback copies are an optional purchase through Prolific Press. We are not a university press and cannot afford to send contributors free copies — we support you by publishing your work and paying a small cash token.
  9. We pay, modestly. Published contributors receive a token cash payment shortly after paperback publication. Token payments are currently $1.50 for standard submissions and $10.00 for pieces marked Editor's Choice.

    Token payments are made by PayPal only, and only to the email address listed in your poet profile. Please make sure the email on your profile matches the email on your PayPal account — that is the single address where your token payment will be sent.
  10. Withdraw any time before acceptance. Simultaneous submissions are fine. You may withdraw any haiku automatically, at any time before acceptance, by logging into the submission manager.

    Once a haiku is accepted, it is immediately published here. There is no staging window — the moment the editor marks it accepted, it appears in the current online issue.

Quick Notes

  • Submissions are free. No reading fee, ever.
  • Please limit yourself to 3 haiku per issue.
  • Send each haiku as a separate entry.
  • Simultaneous submissions are fine — withdraw promptly if a haiku is accepted elsewhere.
  • One token payment per issue.
  • International poets welcome — all are welcome.
  • We no longer accept submissions by mail.
  • Our editor reads every poem thoughtfully — no AI selections, no amateur readers.
  • Token payments are made by PayPal only, and only to the email address listed in your poet profile — please register with the email attached to your PayPal account.

Submit by Mail

We no longer accept submissions by mail. Please use the online submission manager above.

* Haiku Journal is an online journal using dynamic content pages. Every website visitor to our online issues is essentially spawning a fresh view of the haiku in that issue. This kind of modern technology complicates the publishing language found in contracts and guidelines that date back over a hundred years. What, today, constitutes "publishing"? For this reason, we simply share (with the poets) the rights to the haiku published here. If you submit a haiku and it is accepted for publication, you still retain the right to exploit your haiku in any way you wish, including reprinting it or self-publishing it. You may also sell the non-exclusive right to publish your haiku to someone else — another publisher, another journal — without asking us in advance.