The Road to Publishing Your Debut Poetry Manuscript and Beyond

Tolu had written poetry for 20 years before his first collection was published. For much of that time, he was stumbling in the dark, because information about how he might get a full-length collection published was very hard to come by. He would like to share his lessons from the 2 decades before his debut was published, and from the two years after it was. His bias will be toward traditional publishing. He will cover approaches to the composition of sequences of poetry, chapbooks, research, attributions, constructing a coherent collection, finding an editor / publisher, competitions and prizes, negotiating a contract, negotiating book cover design, promotion and events, and the preservation of much of one’s mental health through it all.