Mookychick call for Assistant Poetry Editor

If you’d like to join Mookychick’s expanding team as a volunteer Assistant Poetry Editor, we would love to hear from you! Application guidelines below.

A little about Mookychick…

Mookychick is a passion project founded in 2005 which has continued to evolve ever since. This alternative feminist site and community is more than the sum of its parts, thanks to its incredible community and the many hundreds of contributors who have made it what it is today.

Our patron saints include but are not limited to Kate Bush, Frida Kahlo, Marie Laveau, Greta Thunberg, Ada Lovelace, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gina Torres, Helena Bonham Carter, Jeanne d’Arc, Marie Curie, Leonora Carrington, Doctor Who and St. Hildegard of Bingen. Mookychick is like water – babbling, tranquil, charged, unquiet, delicate, ferocious, restorative and deep.

If you join our team as an Assistant Poetry Editor, we will aim to make it a rewarding experience by raising your own visibility in the community, giving you space to rest and bloom. Want to take time out for personal reasons, or deep-dive into the role and spearhead a campaign? Simply let us know. We will accommodate your needs and listen.

About Poetry at Mookychick

The poetry community at Mookychick is a magical inclusive space that seeks to:

• Publish poetry on themes relevant to Mookychick readers
• Provide a platform for diverse voices
• Create a safe and encouraging space for poets seeking publication
• Support independent authors and small presses through book reviews and interviews
• Encourage self care as part of the creative community

The poetry published at Mookychick is not restrictive in style. We are equally intrigued by formalised verse and experimental form. Community is a pivotal part of our mission at Mookychick and the poetry community is active, vibrant and inclusive. We are committed to lifting up writers and publishers in a nurturing environment.

Assistant Poetry Editor Job Description

We want to foster more diverse voices on Mookychick. We want to raise up the words of women, non-binary creators, writers of colour, neurodiverse writers, and disabled writers, among others. Your role will be to help our readership explore personal truths and authentic perspectives with integrity at their heart. As the Assitant Poetry Editor, you will aim to provide a haven for contributors to flourish and be heard. You will support them and be there for them when it comes to approaching their creative endeavours with sensitivity and care.

As an Assistant Poetry Editor you will report directly to the Mookychick Poetry Editor, Juliette van der Molen. Responsibilities include:

• Supporting the poetry community through boosting calls for submission & published poetry pieces on whichever social media channels you frequent.
• Participating in the submission acceptance process by gathering information to create author profiles and uploading accepted work, along with images, into WordPress for the Poetry Editor to review.
• Assist in creating themed calls for poetry submissions

Does this sound like you? If so, please read on and we look forward to your application.

• Volunteer position
• Flexible hours
• Remote working (e.g. from home)
• Help create a space for beautifully published poetry for diverse voices
• Assist with creating themes for calls for poetry submissions
• Support writers and readers in the Mookychick community
• Receive space for your skills, passions and ambitions to flourish
• Receive whatever training and support you need from our friendly editorial team. We are very much here for you, and no question or idea is too large or small.
• Develop your role over time with the potential to write your own poems and thought pieces, review poetic works, and review submissions with an eye to publication.

Example activities:

Create and publish your own work, with support from our team. You may be an Editor, but YES, you are absolutely allowed to create your own pieces. You are a creative soul! We welcome you to craft and publish your own works as well as providing care and attention to the words of others. There is no conflict of interest. Our editors can support you in editing your work, and you can explore your own passions and write whenever you choose. Our team often shares work with each other and our subject matter experts in personal essay, creative non-fiction, magical subjects and poetry are all available to you.

Please see our contributor submission guidelines for inspiration.

Gather information from our Mookychick authors for profile pages. At Mookychick, each author receives their own personal profile page with an optional picture and a third person bio with social media links, if available. We believe this space is important as it gives our readers a deeper look into our contributors and can point them to the author’s website or find additional ways to connect with them. New authors will require a page set up in WordPress and we always check with our existing authors to make sure their information is up to date upon acceptance of a new piece.

Upload work from contributors on a rolling basis as they are accepted. In addition to any content you personally write or source, you will be responsible for creating the beautiful space where we feature the poems of our contributors. This includes creating a post in WordPress, sourcing a copyright free image (through a source such as Unsplash) and submitting it for review to the Poetry Editor.

You will work remotely from home, and are always welcome to collaborate with editors Magda Knight and Juliette van der Molen, using them as a sounding board or just having a chat whenever you wish.

What we’re looking for:

• Previous editorial/writing experience is preferred.
• Previous WordPress CMS experience is preferred.
• Photo and image editing skills would be an advantage.
• An online social presence is preferred, particularly on Twitter. However, we appreciate that you can still be a fantastic editor if, for any reason, you needed to take a break from social media.
• Diverse applications are warmly welcomed.

How to apply:

Would you like to play an important part in Mookychick’s journey? To apply for this role, please email a covering letter to Juliette van der Molen at [email protected]. Say a little about yourself, your skills and experience, and why you’d like to join our editorial team, with links to examples of your work. If you’re from a marginalised community, we would particularly love to see your application in our inbox.

In your cover letter, it would be very helpful if you could tell us why you’d specifically like to apply for the role of Assistant Poetry Editor and think you would be a good fit. What draws you to this genre of writing? What kind of past experience have you had of this field? In what way do you think you’d be able to inspire and contribute to our poetry community?

We would also like to hear why, specifically, you would like to join Mookychick. Honestly, we just want to know what you think of us, and your feedback would be a real insight so we’d be honoured and grateful to hear your thoughts on this.

Finally, you are warmly invited to say one way in which you’d like to improve Mookychick. It’s not essential, but we want you to know that as a prospective Editor we value your ideas and personal, fresh perspective. Your creativity and unique energy is welcomed.

We look forward to hearing from you.