The Deronda Review is primarily a poetry magazine, but we are also open to short fiction, essay, and memoir. For the magazine itself, prose submissions should be a maximum of 500 words. However, longer prose works may be published on our homepage. Poetry submissions should consist of up to five poems, either in ONE Word document or in the body of the email. Only works with special graphic requirements should be sent in a .pdf. We are open to reprints and simultaneous submissions; if your submission is simultaneous, please tell us so. We recommend that you read an issue (see current issue and "Archives" section), and consider our statement on the aims and character of the magazine, here.

We publish one issue annually.  According to present plans, our next reading period will be May 15-June 30, 2026.  Send to Esther Cameron, derondareview at g mail, or to Mindy Aber Barad, maber4kids at yahoo period com.  Between issue, we occasionally publish work on the homepage.

For the 2026 issue, we will continue the theme of Will (see our most recent call for submissions, below) and ad the theme of Birth.  Poems on other themes, especially nature and the seasons and any of our past themes (see the Archives), will also be considered. 

B”H

Dear friends and fellow poets,
                                                        Once again
the time has come to call for contributions
to The Deronda Review’s twenty-first issue.
A year has passed, another year of war,
lit by flares that either blind or show
cruelty and betrayal, bravery and endurance,
death and the birthpangs of “a terrible beauty,”
and faith, indelibly for what they are.
(This past week, in the news, another bright
angelic face, light from a star extinguished...)
We have kept track of this, to some extent,
in poems posted here, for which we thank
all those who sent them.
                                         For the coming issue,
as in our previous issues, we are open
to poems on the seasons, on the earth,
on any of our previous themes – remember –
we’d asked for Trust, Utopia, Building, Soul,
Poems Inspired by Poems, Flight…. that last
might well appeal to some here at this hour
when the ground burns beneath our feet, in more
senses than one. 
                            But this time we are focused
on WILL. 
                 We think of Rudyard Kipling’s stanza –
“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will that says to them ‘Hold on’…”
But if you know a bit of Kabbala,
there’s more to it.  “Will” is the first of ten
stages (they’re called Sfirot) by which the Infinite
articulates itself into Creation
(I’m simplifying drastically, of course). 
In Kipling, Will’s the last thing left; in Kabbala
the start of everything.  They say a black
hole may flare out another universe,
that every seeming end is a beginning.
In any case, to cling to that in us
that would envision, trust, and build, or even
remember what for now seems lost, requires
a strain of Will.
                           Again in Kabbala,
after Will comes Wisdom, which contains
all that’s to be, implicit; after that
Understanding, which anticipates
the forms of things. 
                                  Well, we shall now leave off
expounding that of which we know but little,
but hope these rumors of the hidden things
may summon to your minds some old or new
words of yours, which you will send to us
from now until the middle of July.

A further note: this most unnatural year
has also brought, like all years, natural losses:
Ruth Fogelman, so long a luminous voice,
has gone into the world of light.  We’ve gathered
her poems we were privileged to share
into a retrospect you will find here.
To read these poems is to share her life
in the Old City of Jerusalem,
close to the point where the supernal light
breaks forth into this dark and turbulent world.
What this past year has borne, is yet unknown;
but may the years bring back her inspiration
in new-fledged voices of delight and hope.

Listening for your voices, we remain
                                                            Esther Cameron
                                                            Mindy Aber Barad
                                                            Editors, The Deronda Review