Black Orchid Designs: A Broadside Series

Submissions are OPEN 12/10-12/15.

All Poems MUST Be Returned by 1/1/17.

Why Black Orchid?

The color black relates to the hidden, the secretive and the unknown, and as a result it creates an air of mystery. It keeps things bottled up inside, hidden from the world. Black is the end, but the end always implies a new beginning. When the light appears, black becomes white, the color of new beginnings.

The orchid is admired for its subtle beauty. Its fragrance is intimately enticing but never overpowering. It usually chooses its hermitage in the most spiritual places in nature, where the mountain is embraced by mists or rocks by the roaring streams. To sit with the orchid is a scholarly pursuit with a long tradition. It inspires purity and simplicity.

Put them together and you have hidden beauty.

ELJ Editions seeks poetry that is evocative, riveting, and experimental to create beautiful glossy broadsides for distribution with its print titles and other marketing events.

We’re looking for poems no longer than 25 lines long, but we don’t want your work up front. We want to inspire you.

Submit to us via our Submittable category with two Bios (one very, very brief and one typical length) in the submission itself and ask us to send you a photo. We’ll send you a photo from the public domain and ask that you submit 1-3 poems no longer than 25 lines inspired by the photo. Should we accept your work, it will be paired with the photo for the finished broadside design. Competition for this series is very, very high.

We are a paying market. All Black Orchid Design contributors will receive $10 and 25 copies of the broadside with an opportunity to purchase more copies. ELJ Editions’ Black Orchid Designs takes First North American Serial Rights only. Rights revert to the author upon publications. Should your accepted work subsequently appear in either print or online, you agree to give credit to ELJ Editions for first publishing it.

Accepted Broadsides are eligible for nomination for the Pushcart poetry prize and other prizes.

Please submit here.