Rail Switch Poetry is an online journal for poetry videos. Past issues have included videos from Ross Gay, the Allen Ginsberg foundation, and Joshua Gottlieb-Miller, the latter in collaboration with Wesleyan University Press.

While this submission page is nominally for issue 3, it's essentially an open call for submission and the relevant dates are subject to change. Accepted submissions will be published online, to the publication website and possibly to a publication youtube or vimeo channel.
A poetry video is a poem set to video, or vice versa, but the possibilities therein are broad. A poetry video need not be long (though it can be) and it need not be shot on expensive equipment (though it can be). If you are reading this and thinking that you only have a phone to film with, we would love to see your work. If you are an experienced filmmaker with access to sophisticated equipment and would like to try something different, we would love to see your work. If you've made many poetry videos before, we'll be surprised, but we would love to see your work.

Rules & Terms

We cannot promise any financial compensation at this time. We hope you will submit anyway.

Please include a bio and the text/transcript of the poem, as well as any stills from the video that we may use for promotional purposes.

You must either own the rights to all elements of the video (poem, audio, imagery), or have permission to use them.

You may interpret the concept of "poetry videos" as you wish. All submission lengths are accepted and all submissions are free. Multiple submissions are allowed.

All relevant dates, including notification date, submission deadline, and event date are subject to change.