Yesterday & today I spent time putting together a portfolio of all the poems I've ever written and today I was looking on the internet to find magazines which allow submissions. I was looking in my Writers & Artists Yearbook and looking at publishers, but I read in the notes of the book that publishers probably won't consider you until you have been published by magazines, so I've been trying to find some.
There are none for sale in my local shop so I found a gallery which stocks and sales 'specialist' magazines and they are going to send me a copy of a couple so I can see what kind of poems they publish before deciding whether or not mine are suitable to submit.
I am a bit confused about somethings though, with regards to legal rights when you send to magazines and they pay you when they publish it. On one of the websites I saw that if you send a poem which gets published and you accept payment, you can't publish it anywhere else in the next year. But I'm confused about whether or not they 'own' the poem for that year and can publish it wherever they want and don't have to acknowledge me, or if I don't 'sell' them the copyright I can send it to another magazine or publication after the year.
I've been looking up copyright law, but to be honest I don't understand any of it because it's all 'legal jargon'. My mum said she would look over if for me as she studied law at college and understands it better than me, but it's kind of put me off sending anything to anyone, which is annoying because if I never send anything anywhere I'll never get recognised.
If anyone knows anything about it and can help me, I'd be very grateful :-)
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