About
A newsletter and community space centering queer BIPOC speculative poetry. We post prompts twice a month, host quarterly craft gatherings on Patreon, and in the future aim to publish poetry inspired by aforementioned prompts at, or above, SFWA rate—after three months, that content will be available on this here website.
Our Whys
With escalations in censure and erasure, there is a critical need for supporting as well as creating independent spaces made by and for our communities. And this is why we, your coeditors Lysz Flo and Jeané D. Ridges, believe cultivating connection around queer BIPOC speculative poetry is a vital move toward meeting it:
Lysz: Imagining Queer BIPOC speculative poetry as an expanse for tangible ways of existing, placing, painting, and audaciously permeating the future regardless of time, place, or galaxy. There is a promise and manifestation of all of the in-between of possibilities written to the forefront. There is space where all that has been considered too much or too far out is declared within nuance, emotion, and zooming in with interiority. Queer BIPOC speculative poetry is a root filled with intention that reshapes the rigidity of reality. I believe in its essence to hold softness and liberation and the more that only we can write into existence.
Jeané: When I think of BIPOC, queer (can.also.be.read. centering the liminal as its own expanse and none of what is considered above) speculation that resonates in this breath on the timeline, it doesn’t just check boxes—import our being into narratives that can’t hold all of who we are except as decoration or something to be used. In emotive, wondrous, expanding ways and worlds, it genuinely explores existence and relation, beyond merely human/human orientation, and the very experience of stories—reweaving what is known and told, inventing forms and lore. Speculative poetry is no exception, rather it is a unique, felt-centered vehicle of telling toward this.
Our two support tiers:
$2 Sweetgrass Shovel = Prompts & Poems
$5 Viridian Verse = Prompts & Poems + Exclusive Workshops & Generative Sessions
Bios
Lysz Flo
is an AfroCaribbean Latine, polyglot, writer, indie author, The Estuary Collective member, Ignyte Award Winner for CNF, Creatively Exposed podcast host, Voodoonauts Summer 2020 Fellow/Educator in 2024, and Obsidian Black Listening 2022 Fellow. She released Soliloquy of an Ice Queen, March 2020. She is creative educator since 2020 with a workshop series in MOCA NOMI. Her poems can be found in FIYAH, iamb, Hellebore, Lolwe, Strange Horizons, and has done various multimedia projects with O, Miami. She is also an Online Crystal and Spiritual wellness shop owner at Astrolyszics.com.
Jeané D. Ridges
Their poetic storytelling is bound and manifested by abundant melanin, Southernness, good eatin’, breath, ill living, and care for our whole ecosystem’s thriving. They’ve had a dozen and counting short-form works published, most recently in Strange Horizons, Stone of Madness Press, SISTORIES (where they were a contributing editor as an inaugural fellow of the mag's Luminary Editorial Incubator), and khōréō (where they've been a copyeditor since 2023). How to connect: jeanedridges.carrd.co | @jdridges.
Guidelines
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Spec Colorways In Verse is seeking speculative poetry by queer Black, Indigenous, & People of Color (BIPOC)—for more deats, read our whys.2–3 poems no more than 25 lines per page (6 pages max). Must be speculative [period]—not “I glided into a portal” then the rest is unrelated and nonspeculative. We’re open to any form: traditional, free, experimental, and/or hybrid. We also encourage those living with (dis)abilities*/chronic illnesses and rooted in or of diasporas from Africa, Asia, SWANA, Central/South America, the Caribbean, the Pacific, and First Nations to submit work engaging with the cultures and stories of their communities—but it is not a requirement, we want whatever is forged from the depth of your creativity and wonder.Original content only, no reprints.Simultaneous Submissions: Allowed. Please indicate if you’re submitting simultaneously in your cover letter, and notify us as soon as possible if your submission has been accepted somewhere else—or you need to withdraw for another reason (no explanation required)—so we can remove it from consideration.Multiple Submissions: Yes, guidelines below.Payment: $50 per poem (USD). Paid on publication. We pay primarily through PayPal and Wise, but will arrange other payment methods as necessary.Rights: First Electronic Rights (online and e-book). 4 Months of exclusivity from the date of publication on our Patreon, and indefinite archiving on our website unless the author(s) request to remove the content. An exemption to the exclusivity period above is granted for reprinting of work in Year’s Best and other annuals and related volumes, author collections, and as otherwise agreed upon by both the publisher and the author.We’re Not Interested In:
x Previously declined work—editors will offer authors the opportunity to revise and resubmit at their discretion.
x Previously published work—including work previously published in another language.
x Work produced with AI—all authors or artists will have to attest whether they did or didn’t use AI when submitting, and anyone who indicates they didn’t and is discovered to have used it will be banned from submitting in the future.
x Work depicting unexamined, repressive violence and overly explicit content—if you are unsure, please email the editors before submitting.How to Submit: Please submit all poems in one .doc or .docx file titled “Poem” or “[1st]PoemTitle[+#]” via our submission form linked below. Select your genre; fill in your title (“[1st]PoemTitle[+#]”); if applicable, put what form(s) you are using or hybrid in the designated box; and, for the cover letter, it’s easiest just to address us as “Dear Editors,” or say hi, and include: your name and pronouns if used, title(s) of work submitting (any associated forms, but no summaries), any content notes for the presence of and/or allusion to graphic content (such as psychological and physical violence, blood, medical neglect, sexual imagery, etc.), and a brief bio statement noting how you self-identify for inclusion in Spec Colorways (it may include publication history, but being previously published isn’t a requirement of submitting to us).
[SUBMIT HERE—a magic hyperlink will appear when we're open]For those previously published in Spec Colorways, please wait at least 1 quarter from when we publish your work on our website (all our prompts and poems om Patreon are made available there 3 months after posting).Queries: Address your emails to [email]. If sending a general query, please use the Subject Line “Query: [Your Question]”. If querying about the status of a submission, please use the Subject line “Query: Poetry | [Your Submission Title]”. We try and keep all submission responses under eight weeks, but sometimes our responses get spammed. So if we're late sending you a response, don’t hesitate to query.* (dis)ability is used thinking with Dr. Sami Schalk about “the mutual dependency of disability and ability to define one another . . . the shifting, contentious, and contextual boundaries between [them]” (Bodyminds Reimagined p. 6).
Prompts
Intro Prompt
Dreaming of Poems
Editors' 4 Core Considerations
