Tab Journal
The Special Call: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness for the next volume year is open July 4 - September 1, 2025. If you don’t see submission forms here, Tab Journal is temporarily closed to new submissions.
If you experience problems with this form or require assistance, please contact the staff using the Contact form on the website; if you don't get response within two weeks, you are welcome to contact the Editor at her Chapman University email. We are happy to assist.
We revise our policies and practices with each new volume/year. You can peruse the Archives to see how Tab Journal has changed over the years. You can also use the Contact form to let us know what we're doing particularly well or might improve in the future.
Special Call: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
Important Dates
Submissions Open: US Independence Day on July 4, 2025
Submission Deadline: US Labor Day on September 1, 2025
Editorial Decisions: December 20, 2025 or sooner
Publication/Exhibition: National Poetry Month, April 2026
What We’re Looking For (please read carefully)
The 14th volume of Tab Journal coincides with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the United States based on equal and universal inalienable rights that include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Through this special call, Tab Journal encourages poets to reconsider Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration and Thomas Paine’s preceding Common Sense that had popularized these concepts. Tab Journal is interested in work that recasts these documents’ words and principles in light of our mutual pledge to each other, past and current threats to our inalienable rights, and the anniversary of this nation’s founding.
Tab Journal invites submission of text selected directly from these founding source documents that can be rendered as a poem. This special call builds on Tracy K. Smith’s poem “Declaration.” As such, the composition process should not reduce the document to merely an abstract of itself. Rather, as Smith said of her own process, the new poem should use “fragments of this founding document to say this other thing that [the words] seem very intent upon saying to me now.” Surprise us!
Source Texts
To compose a submission, the poet must use either Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, or both. Each is available online (or as a printed booklet through a bookseller or the National Archives). No other text should be used.
Declaration of Independence
https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/guides/M-654.pdf
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/GO/GO00/20220929/115171/HHRG-117-GO00-20220929-SD010.pdf
Common Sense
https://www.sjsu.edu/people/ruma.chopra/courses/H174_MW_F12/s1/Wk7_A.pdf
https://loveman.sdsu.edu/docs/1776ThomasPaine.pdf
How to Respond to This Special Call
Composing the Poem
Selection of the poem’s text can be done by redaction, erasure, covering, lifting, or other methods. For this project, we are interested in submissions that draw from the source text itself, not with the method of text selection or the visual format the submission takes. One can work digitally to redact, leaving the evidence of the pre-existing text. Or words and phrases can be physically covered with correction tape or marker or can be cut out with scissors and taped onto a page—then scanned or photographed. Or one can type selected text into a new file, without regard to the spacing and sequence of the source.
While the poet selects and sequences the poem’s text, Tab Journal will (re)design the accepted contributions as a reading experience. Building on Tab Journal’s long-standing exploration of relationships between language, reading, and design, this project depends on collaboration, trust, and innovation across founding father, poet, editor, and designer. The poem may look very different in its published form than in the submission. To see past issues of our issues, visit the Archives.
Submitting the Poem
To reduce barriers for potential contributors and with the support of Chapman University, Tab Journal never charges a submission fee.
Because this special issue is intended to thoughtfully put poems into conversation with each other and will be individually designed by the Creative Director, we request that you refrain from simultaneous submissions. All editorial decisions will be made by the end of 2025.
Submit 1-3 poems. A variety of file types are acceptable for this call.
Tab Journal uses Submittable. The portal starts with a short eligibility form to ensure that Tab Journal does not consider previously published work, individuals with a current or recent affiliation with Chapman University, or work by individuals under the age of 18. In addition, the main submission form includes three demographic questions to help us understand how our policies shape the submissions pool; “I prefer not to answer” is an option for each question. The form also invites submitters to share their social media handles.
A short cover letter with a biographical note of no more than 75 words is required. A brief explanation of the composition method can be included in the cover letter.
Tab Journal allows for a variety of file types, including .docx, .pdf, and .jpeg. Don’t forget to upload the file! In addition, in the file itself, please 1) include attribution of the specific version of the source text(s), and, unless it’s straightforward redaction, 2) indicate which words were where in the source text(s), particularly if the word order has been altered. We want to encourage various selection methods but also want to understand the poem text’s relationship to the source text. That will allow the Creative Director to check source phrasing or clustering as she considers design options.
If you are experiencing challenges with the submission form or require assistance, please contact the staff using the Contact form on the website; if you don't get response within two weeks, you are welcome to contact the Editor at her Chapman University email.
Acceptance of Work
From the submitted work, approximately ten pieces will be chosen for publication. Smith said of her process, “it seemed less like I was making these really deliberate choices and more like I was hearing a logic that was gathering force.” And that’s what we’ll look for: 1) a new logic emerging out of the old language, 2) “another line of reasoning beneath the surface,” and 3) the poetry of the language. We’re looking for innovation in individual pieces, variety of meaning across pieces, and poetic effect of the words in the individual pieces and across the issue.
Poems will not be selected based on their visual representation, as Tab Journal will design how the words are ultimately rendered. Each poem will be rendered with a distinct design determined by the Creative Director.
The author of accepted work will grant permission to Tab Journal design and publish the work. Tab Journal will hold First North American Serial Rights, after which copyright for the text (but not the design) reverts to the author. In any subsequent publications of the poem’s text, the author will acknowledge first publication by Tab Journal. Tab Journal will retain the right to republish and exhibit the works we design using various formats and to submit to additional outlets, such as Best of the Net. Any subsequent publication will include attribution of the poet.
As part of removing barriers for readers, contributors whose poem is selected will submit an audio file of the poem read aloud by the poet, or Tab Journal will create an audio version. Do not include audio in the submission.
Pending budget approval, each contributor will be paid $75 after completing the forms required by Chapman University. We are confident that we will be able to pay contributors, and we understand that a contributor may decline publication if we don’t offer payment.
Issue Publication
All poems accepted for publication will appear online in Tab Journal in early 2026. The Creative Director and Editor will redesign each accepted poem specifically for this issue.
We also plan to design and exhibit the poems in an