Tips: Features

These are whimsical, meandering thoughts about the kind of features we might like to publish. For practical advice on how to actually submit features, see Submissions.

Features & Essays

There is no minimum length for features – in some rare cases, a single sentence might be enough – but we particularly enjoy essay-length pieces (2,000-4,000 words) on anything relating to poetry. We are keen to read features based on multiple interviews, or based on archival research that casts well-known poets in a fresh light. We welcome critical surveys identifying new trends or movements in poetry, and essays on the life and work of neglected poets. We also like odd bits’n’bobs.

‘Insolence & Triviality’

In the middle section of the magazine, Insolence & Triviality, we publish short features, comment pieces and other things that defy categorisation.

Regular features in this section may include:

Mailbox: Letters from readers, news, gossip.

Mutterings, Splatterings: Essays with no obvious subject, aphorisms, whimsy.

Anarchically Correct: Manifestos, radical re-evaluations of canonical writers, diatribes about the state of publishing, screams into the void.

The Little Interview: Short Q&A-format interviews. We welcome imagined or ersatz interviews with dead poets, and with fictional characters from famous poems. We will accept authentic interviews with living poets if you have asked them a series of very impertinent questions. We will not accept any piece of writing in which you pretend to interview yourself,* or ersatz interviews with living poets.**

* Unless you are Aaron Kent.

** Unless they are Aaron Kent. For inspiration, see his book The Working Classic (2023).

Mini-Features: Undisciplined and Interdisciplinary

The Little Review frequently publishes very short mini-features on moments of collision between poetry and other art forms. (There are no fixed word-counts, but if in doubt please aim for 500 words.)

These mini-features are split into titled strands, each covering a different art form. We are very eager to read submissions for these strands. If you have a piece you think might work for one of them, please mention the title of the strand in your submission.

Those titles – and examples of the kinds of pieces we would like to receive for each – are as follows:

Insidious Fire: on cinema
e.g. 500 words on Ken Russell’s portrayal of the Romantic poets in Gothic (1986); 500 words on the use of Philip Larkin’s poetry in Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (2021).

With Weary Eyes: on TV
e.g. 500 words on Dickinson (2019-2021); 500 words on Def Poetry Jam (2002-2007); 500 words marking the 40th anniversary of Tony Harrison’s V (1985); 500 words on JH Prynne’s stint as a judge on the Chinese TV talent show Star of Outlook (2014).

Obvious as an Ear: on musicals & opera
e.g. 500 words on Peter Grimes (1945) and George Crabbe; 500 words on Cats (1981) and TS Eliot.

These Phenomena Are Important: on social media, video games and tech
e.g. 500 words on a recent piece of AI-generated poetry; 500 words on an interactive poem made using Twine (or another open-source tool).

In Quest of Something to Drink: on food & booze
e.g. 500 words on Emily Dickinson’s recipes; 500 words on what the poets who drank in the Mermaid Tavern might have been drinking.

All This Fiddle: on music
e.g. 500 words comparing PJ Harvey’s poetry collection Orlam (2022) and the related album I Inside the Old Year Dying (2023); 500 words on John Betjeman’s funk-influenced LP Betjeman’s Banana Blush (1974).

Credibly Agile: on dance
Surprise us. We know absolutely nothing about dance.

Some Untidy Spot: on art
e.g. 500 words comparing the treatment of Agnes Martin’s paintings in Jane Duran’s the clarity of distant things (2021) and Victoria Chang’s With My Back to the World (2024); 500 words arguing that Auden’s Musée des Beaux Arts (1939) is not the best poem about Breugel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (c.1560).

In All That Air: on radio, podcasts and spoken word
e.g. 500 words on Bedtime Stories for the End of the World (2018-2021); 500 words on the 2025 Roundhouse Poetry Slam Final.

It is not necessary to approach us about features before writing them; feel free to just send us the finished piece (via email to editor@thelittlereview.co.uk with FEATURES in the subject line).

If you have any specific questions about anything on this page, email them to editor@thelittlereview.co.uk with QUERY in the subject line.

We are willing to consider publishing poems, reviews and features anonymously.

More Tips

For advice about the kind of poems and reviews we like to receive, see Tips: Poetry and Tips: Reviews.