Forest Publications is non-profit independent literary and arts publisher based in Scotland.

Forest Publications is back with a fresh call for submissions. This year, we’re throwing the doors wide open to any and all mediums to interpret ‘The Forest’.

What does ‘The Forest’ mean to you? 

• This can be anything you associate with the forest, from a walk with friends, to a charcoal pressing of bark, to an emotional wilderness, to a soundscape made of recordings in the woods, to reflections on the concrete jungle.
• Whatever you associate with ‘The Forest’, you have poetic license to take this prompt in any direction!

What does ‘any and all mediums’ mean?

• We’ll be hosting an exhibition evening, with the intention of turning the collected work into a magazine.
• That means we’re open to anything and everything, from music, to dance, to paintings, drawings, poems, prose, photography, and things we haven’t even thought of!

What we’re creating:

• We’ll be hosting an exhibition evening of the best submissions at Whitespace Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland.
• There will be space for sculptures, wall-hangings, and performances.
• Following the exhibition evening, we’ll be turning the collected work into a magazine.
• We are a fully collaborative space, and are eager to hear your ideas as to how your work will be presented in either format.

Why we’re doing this:

• Inspired by Il Postino (1994), wherein an illiterate postman writes poems about the sea by recording the sound of waves, and poems about the moon being black circles on white paper, we want to tear down established notions of what can count as poetry.
• We’re an arts collective that believes in freedom of creative expression, that means we want to empower artists and writers, providing a space for their work to be celebrated.

Submissions:

• For large format pictures or videos, please email them via WeTransfer to: submissions@forestpublications.co.uk 
• For everything else, please submit to Charlie Hilton here
• Please submit as PDF, MP3, or MP4
• Submission deadline: February 28, 2026
• Any queries? Please reach out to head poetry editors Charlie Hilton (charlie@forestpublications.co.uk) or Alice Eaves (alice@forestpublications.co.uk)