Thyrsus

Online literary magazine

Our vision

This space gathers work that does not behave.

We are not interested in the well-trained sentence or the neatly resolved arc. We are drawn to the piece that resists instruction, exceeds its brief, slips its leash. Work that unsettles its own premises. Work that risks difficulty in order to remain alive.

We seek the imaginal as force as an active field that rearranges perception. The oblique gaze is our method: slantwise, peripheral, destabilising. We value what is glimpsed from the corner of the eye, what interrupts the expected line, what refuses the comfort of a single vantage point. The sideways look can reveal what direct scrutiny flattens.

Authors and Artists Guidelines

We invite poems, stories, visual work, hybrid forms – anything that opens a fissure in the familiar. We are interested in writing that bends genre until it shows its seams; in images that trouble the surface they inhabit; in forms that feel discovered rather than engineered. Send us work that experiments with structure, voice and silence. Send us pieces that fracture and reassemble. Send us the text that could not exist in any other shape.

We welcome pieces that risk disorientation, that court the unknown, that feel like the beginning of an initiation rather than its explanation. We are less concerned with answers than with thresholds. Less with clarity than with charge. What matters is the encounter – the moment when language shifts temperature and something unnamed enters the room.

If the work leaves a mark, alters the air, or refuses to close neatly, it belongs here. If it lingers after reading, unsettles its own conclusions, opens a door rather than sealing it – this is its place.

We are building an archive of edges.
Send us what resists the centre.

Submission Windows

We publish three issues per year:

  • Issue I (Winter) – submissions open: 1 October – 31 October
  • Issue II (Spring) – submissions open: 1 February – 28 February
  • Issue III (Autumn) – submissions open: 1 June – 30 June
What We’re Looking For
  • Poetry – up to 3 poems in any form or style.
  • Interdisciplinary Essays – up to 2,500 words. These may blend the literary, psychological, philosophical, or personal.
  • Short Fiction – up to 3,000 words. 
  • Visual Arts – up to 3 visual works. Please include high-resolution images (JPEG or PNG), along with a brief artist statement (up to 300 words) and relevant details such as title, medium, dimensions and year.
How to Submit
  • Submissions are evaluated blind. Please remove your name and any identifying information from the file.
  • Submit as a PDF or Word document, in a readable 12pt font.
  • Include a brief cover letter with your name, email, and a short third-person bio.
  • Only one submission per issue (one category per submission window).
  • Submit via our online form. We do not accept submissions via email or outside our submission windows.
Fees and Response Time

Fees 

  • A £6 submission fee helps support production costs.

    Response Time

    We aim to respond within 4–8 weeks after the submission window closes. All work is carefully considered; however, we cannot offer editorial or artistic feedback on individual pieces.