It’s 2020 … and this seems like a good year to start another chapter of the Good Dadhood story. The submission period will run from 4 March to 14 June 2020, with a big fanfare on social media on Father’s Day, 21 June.

So, please do start writing or polishing up your poems celebrating fatherhood, and email them to gooddadhood@gmail.com

I’ll be reading all the poems submitted, and will upload those chosen onto this website once or twice a week between now and the middle of June.

Please submit one, two or a maximum of three poems in a Word attachment to your email, using Times Roman 12 point font, single-line spaced.  Poems should be less than 40 lines in length, including title and line breaks.  If your poem is in a non-standard format, please include a jpeg version, as an attachment to your email.

Let’s go for quality over quantity. Positive is finest. Humour is fine. Overly sentimental poems are probably going to be less fine … and might not get past the gatekeeper (me!)  Negativity almost definitely won’t get through the gate.

Already-published poems are fine as long as you still own the copyright. On submitting, please mention where they first appeared, so we can acknowledge that on the site.

If you are wondering whether to submit a poem to a magazine or competition, you might think twice about entering it as a candidate poem for the Good Dadhood ezine.  Poems appearing here must be considered ‘published’.  However, if you do need subsequently to withdraw a poem from the Good Dadhood, for whatever reason, please email to let me know and I’ll remove it from the site as quickly as possible.

Please include a short bio (100 words or less) which might include a few words about the father in your poem(s).

I can’t wait to read more poems in honour of Good Dads!

Sharon