The guest editor for this volume is Ella Skilbeck-Porter
Visual poetry merges and blurs the processes of reading and viewing, existing and playing in the in-between spaces of image and word, reminding us that language itself is a material and the written word an image. We read-view a visual poem, eyes moving around the page as in a painting. What does a visual poem capture and embody, through visuality and the space of the page, that a linear poem cannot? How can a visual poem open up new expressions of language and experience? How can visual poetry invite us to look at letters, words, language, and the world, anew? This issue of APJ seeks your intermedial experiments and inventions, your interrogations and syntheses of language and the image. Certain modes, methods and genres that could be explored include: concrete poetry, calligrammes, shaped verse (abstract or mimetic), erasure poems, chance operations, drawing and painting poems, glitch poetry, asemic writing, collage, typographical experiments, digital poems, video poems or other interart explorations. APJ 15.1 seeks to capture a portrait of visual poetry being made today. We invite submissions that fit within, or defy, these definitions. Surprise us with your visual poems.
Ella Skilbeck-Porter, guest editor APJ Vol. 15.1 ‘visual poem’
Published by Australian Poetry with the support of Creative Australia.
Submissions Open: Friday 24 April 2026
Submissions Close: Friday 22 May 2026, 11:59PM (AEST).
Submission Form: Wufoo Form
or through the link here: https://apsubs.wufoo.com/forms/submit-to-apj-151-visual-poem/
Information and enquiries
For submission/wufoo enquiries:
Jennifer, Editorial Associate at associate@australianpoetry.org
For general/editorial enquiries:
Melinda, CEO/Publisher at ceo@australianpoetry.org
Formal Guidelines
- Submissions must be sent via an online Wufoo form found >> here << (or via link: https://apsubs.wufoo.com/forms/submit-to-apj-151-visual-poem/
- Poets, both Australian-born or international, are invited to submit up to three poems.
- All poems submitted must be previously unpublished and not currently submitted elsewhere. We do not accept simultaneous submissions.
- All poems should appear in a single document, which should be uploaded in both Word and PDF format. The word and PDF should be titled ‘first name_last nameAPJ15.1’
- For any visual, digital or video poems please include web links in the word document. There is also a section at the end of the form to upload any digital videos
- Selected digital works will be published with a QR code linking to online content. All images submitted must be high resolution and suitable for print (300 DPI)
- Poets must also include a bio (third person, 50–100 words) and contact details (email, phone, mailing address) in their submission.
- Successful submissions will be notified in June/July 2026.
- Each poem selected for publication will be paid $80, in accordance with current ASA rates.
- APJ requires that the use of any other work by another author in a submitted poem is clearly acknowledged and cited. The responsibility for this remains with the poet.
- Guest editor/s of APJ may approach a number of poets directly for submission to each volume.
- Please specify for statistical purposes, if you are a subscriber to Australian Poetry. Poems are chosen by the editor/s based on merit and there is no advantage given to subscribers. Subscription however is strongly encouraged as it makes our publications viable and vital. If you are not yet a subscriber, please subscribe here (link: https://www.australianpoetry.org/subscribe/)
Ella Skilbeck-Porter is a poet, visual poet and PhD candidate in French Studies at the University of Melbourne where she is conducting a comparative literature study of visual poetry in France and Australia. Her debut poetry collection These are Different Waters (Vagabond Press 2023) was shortlisted for the Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest and the Mary Gilmore Award and was highly commended in the Anne Elder Award. Her work has been widely published in journals and anthologies including Best of Australian Poems 2024, Living Systems: Poetry from Asia Pacific, HEAT, Otoliths, Rabbit and Cordite Poetry Review. Her second collection Crescentcrescent is forthcoming with Vagabond. She lives in Naarm on unceded Wurundjeri land.
