WHY THIS INDEX EXISTS.

Poetry publishing runs on information that goes stale in weeks and spreads wrong for years. Somebody had to keep the ledger.

Every poet I know keeps the same ramshackle apparatus: a spreadsheet of journals, a folder of bookmarked contest pages, a group chat where somebody swears the deadline moved. Half of it is wrong at any given moment. The journal folded last spring; the fee went up; the “no simultaneous submissions” rule was quietly dropped in 2023 and the spreadsheet never heard.

Hard Return is that apparatus, kept properly. One index of the whole working field — journals, presses, prizes, fellowships, residencies, jobs, programs, and tools — where every listing carries the date a human last confirmed it against the venue’s own pages, and every change is logged where you can see it.

The break in the name is the oldest move in poetry: the line ends, and something turns. Around here it also means the obvious thing — this is where poetry publishing gets a fresh line.

THE RULES OF THE HOUSE

Nothing is listed sight unseen. Nothing stays listed on momentum — dormant venues get marked dormant, and dead ones stay in the index with their dates, because a record that forgets its dead is just advertising. Venues that charge poets while paying nothing are listed with that arithmetic in bold. And when we’re wrong, the correction goes in the changelog with a reason, not down a memory hole.

WHO’S BEHIND IT

I’m a poet and editor, and I build publishing tools for verse under Odd Jar — including Lineate, a WordPress plugin that keeps line breaks intact on the web, which is also why this site grades journals on exactly that. The index is edited by me, watched by software, and corrected by both.