Retail Poetry: Blue Mountain Arts

I discovered an interesting new market for poetry, the greeting card company Blue Mountain Arts.  The company is constantly on the lookout for poems (sadly, not rhyming poems--my specialty) to use in its greeting cards.  BMA publishes holiday cards as well as cards on the usual themes seen where such cards are sold (missing you, birthdays, love, friendship, get well soon &c).

The market for poetry is at best difficult, and payment for poetry is typically low, often as low as a few dollars for a poem that might have taken hours to write.  To add insult to injury, most poetry markets do not allow simultaneous submissions to competing markets and take weeks to months to let the poet know yea or nay.  In contrast, BMA pays $300.00 for poems it chooses for greeting cards and $50.00 for poems it chooses for one of its books of poetry.

My goal is to write a poem for BMA every day.  If I have only a five percent success rate, I'll make enough to make it worth my while financially and, at the end of a year, I'll have enough for a nice collection.  An ambitious goal for sure, but I'm going to do my best to realize it.