Eratosphere and Competitions
 

So many competitions say that if a poem has appeared on a website you can't enter it. I suppose that must include Eratosphere. Sorry if this has been thrashed out before

Technically that should only include the sphere if a sendout is made before the workshop thread is pruned, or before the individual poster cleans it off the thread her/himself once the poem's sunk beyond feedback interest. Since mods are so overloaded anyhow, I do this to all my own threads - [add-in] ie, I remove the poem itself tho leave all comments as-is, and insert a note that it's been subbed, just so no one thinks it's a variation on the gut-theme. Problem solved. On only a couple of rare occasions, a friend sent notice of some themed journal or comp'n and it was the very thing on the board that seemed suitable - so I just asked the mod to do the removing.

Well, we know it doesn't apply to The Spectator or The Oldie competitions, fortunately. We post our entries on D & A with carefree abandon -- and still win!

Now that we have the Deep Drills board, originated primarily for the New Statesman comp, we can always use it for entries to other competitions if there's any doubt regarding this matter.

Jayne

It depends. "The View From Here" says on their site Online publication includes your personal website or blog, or anyone else's website or blog, whether or not it represents itself as a publication. In other words, if it can be found with a search engine, it's published. Workshops and similar forums are, of course, exempt - we use them and love them, too which sounds a bit vague. Other places are stricter - if they can find it, it's been published.

Aside from comps ... given the recent rash of incidents in the UK (most recently Eamonn Griffin's "On being plagiarised") I've become more wary of presenting my work in situations where mere trust is involved.

A word of caution to Sistah Seree. A mod will always delete if the time is ripe and the member asks. Deleting own thread content without permission falls under the "gutting out your thread" sticky which appears at the top of each workshopping forum.

Not that I suspect you, Seree, of ignoring these rules, but it is, I think, a good idea to remind old and new readers that the thread doesn't belong to the person who initiated it, but to all those who take part, which includes not only replying, but also those following along and reading.

Remember too that there is the no follow tag which prevents googling. I use that and a fake thread heading. (When I remember in time. It doesn't help, if a bot has already registered the thread before the no indexing tag is applied.

Yeah, I recently wrote what I consider to be a very strong sonnet, and I debated whether or not to toss it in the bakeoff ring. Given that only 15% of what was submitted will make it to the adjudication stage, it would probably a faint hope anyhow, but if it did make it to the final ten, then it would limit my publication options fairly dramatically.

Generally speaking, when it comes to the workshop forums, I'm careful to only workshop stuff I'm truly not sure about. Stuff that I think might be good, but not stuff that I immediately think "Oh, this is ready for publication." Different people use the workshops in different ways, of course. Some folks post nearly perfect material (occasionally even posting while the poem in question is in consideration for publication), while others post material that is the proverbial chunk of marble that hides a great work of art. But when it comes to material that is closer to the former, it's worth considering that more and more publications are becoming vigilant about their "first look" requirements. Hopefully not enough to detract from Eratosphere's immense value, but certainly enough to give one pause before workshopping.


P.S.: John, this has been discussed before, but I think it's very worthwhile to revisit from time to time.

Thanks for clarifying in your earlier post, Seree. That explains it well, I think. Good luck with your submissions.

Note to everyone. Remember that Alex has provided the noindex alternative to protect from bots and your thread will not then show up when you are googled.

I thought the way bakeoff finalists were printed - to ensure they could not be seen outside the Sphere - would leave them eligible for competitions & publications, unless one of Us was the judge. Am I wrong?

No, in theory you're correct. But in practice, the poems are still out there in the open, and can't even be explained away as being "workshop" offerings. And related discussions of the poems (using their titles etc.) can easily take place in unprotected places.

I recognize that this all sounds paranoid, and I truly don't care a great deal personally, but it's still a consideration, given how many pubs seem to be cracking down on this sort of thing.

A couple of considerations:

Some formal-friendly editors lurk here, and may see something firsthand even if it's not "googleable".

A poem workshopped here may actually have more eyeballs pass over it than a poem published in a small-circulation poetry journal.

The gender gap in poetry publishing has many causes, not all of which have anything to do with editors or their policies; but it's been noted on many occasions that female poets (as a group) tend to be much more hesitant than men (as a group) to ignore rules such as "no simultaneous submissions", "no poems previously posted anywhere online, however briefly", etc.

I understand that publishers want to surprise their readership with new and unique content; but it would be nice if they could balance the desire to print a "scoop" with the desire to print high-quality work. And workshopping, when done right, tends to increase quality. As a reader, I'd rather have another chance to appreciate a really fine poem, even if I've seen a previous draft of it, than read a merely good poem that I've never seen before.

have there been any cases where web publication has caused
anyone real problems? am quite interested to hear if it has.

has any competition winner ever been de-prized because of it?

p.s.

i agree with Julie.

editors are a capricious bunch.

has anyone been barred for simultaneous publication? i mean,
its not like the worst thing that could happen. in the game of
cat and mouse, speaking as a mouse, the cats maybe deserve
the runaround sometimes.

I'm a proofreader for a journal that delayed publication of a recent issue that had already been typeset (and proofed), because the editor felt the need to pull two poems that had been previously published elsewhere. [Edited to say: The offending poems had previously appeared in other journals--it wasn't a case of simply having been workshopped at a site like Eratosphere, with which the editor in question has no problem.] Not sure if this was discovered by googling or not. The editor was unhappy enough that I believe the person was barred from future publication in that venue, de facto if not officially.

ah, ok. upsetting people is not good i guess.

though is it an integrity thing, protecting the reputation of the journal?
or the whole scoop thing as mentioned.

if it's a good poem, a really good poem, i'm not sure what difference it really makes.
chances are the readers/buyers of the first journal are not the same as the second
or third.

Conny, I did once have a poem pulled from First Things by an alert proofreader who discovered its previous appearance in a Canadian journal that you needed a password to read -- I couldn't even google it myself.

Like you, I am in favor of more relaxed rules about these things. (And even though I am a timid female, I do sometimes try to circumvent the rules -- and so far, was only caught once, as noted above).

I've always respected "no simultaneous submissions" guidelines, but until this thread, I never really thought about why. I haven't been in the publishing cycle for a few years, but next time I am, I think I'm going to ignore sim-sub requirements. It makes sense for editors, and that has to be respected, but in a bottom-heavy hierarchy like the po-biz, I suppose you have to cut whatever corners you can.

Having once waited over eighteen months for a (negative) response from a "no sim-sub" venue, I really appreciate sensible sim-sub policies like Rattle's. Theirs is essentially "We're all adults here, and can respect each other's needs. Just do us the courtesy of telling us--when we notify you of our acceptance--if someone else has already taken it." Can't beat that.

Yeah. Tim Green makes me wish there was an "editor of the year" award for small-to-medium presses. Besides printing some great poetry, Rattle is easy to deal with, and Tim isn't afraid to engage in a bit of back-and-forth conversation. And they pay now, which is a nice little bonus. There's a reason why it's currently the only po-mag I subscribe to.

I've just thought of the answer to this and related questions. All you do is to change the title of your poem. Change it completely. Then it will not appear on any search anyone cares to make. And presto! Back to selling your good stuff serially.

Incidentally, I once pulled a poem that had been accepted by the Times Literary Supplement because it had appeared somewhere else. I needn't have bothered. He told me later that he couldn't have cared less where it had appeared.

John, I hate to break this to you, but smart searchers will search on a line from the poem. They're on to the dodge of title-switching, alas.

The real cure would be pruning the crit boards more often. We should also prune the DG board rather soon after competitions. We've never done that; I think we might think seriously about it.

The no-follow tags are also a potent weapon, especially if you remember to use them immediately, along with the first posting of the work.

That's probably true, Roger. But a common problem in the past has been that the host who does the posting forgets to insert the code, or knows that it should be inserted but forgets exactly what it looks like, and that creates a delay.

Maybe our talking about it here, a day in advance, will give people a heads-up.

Maryann is correct. When I search for possible misuse, I google a line or sometimes key words, and more than once and more than one combination.

I back her on this comment as well, (though I thought the DG threads were always left intact for historical purposes. I may be mistaken.)

That said, I have to ask, why break the rules? Editors are a poet's best friend and why try to boonswoggle them? Even if discovered after the fact of publication you will have tarnished your good relationship with the editor(s) in question. And if it is a competition, you might be asked to return the money. And be publicly embarrassed.

Is it worth that? Is that ONE poem the only one you have confidence in? Sit down and write another. And another. And another.

My rule is to not sim sub, but if I do I always say so. Just as I always insert my standard disclaimer.

If they have been, I say so. If the editorial guidelines state (as some do) "not on personal blog, or workshops open to public reading," or whatever, just abide by the rules.

There are gazillions of journals, there are many, many competitions. For these you just have to write many, many poems and look for a good match--and sometimes have a little luck to be chosen from among your peers who write just as well as you do.

I do use the "no index" option though because the version that appears on the workshop is seldom the final one that I want to publish. Most of my poems never appear on the Sphere or elsewhere before publication in a journal. I bring my problem children here though, and am grateful for all the helpful comments I get.

Those who "publish" a poem a week on the Sphere are looking for an audience, not for help. That's NOT the purpose of Eratosphere.

Thanks, Janice. To clarify: yes, the DG boards have in the past been left unpruned for historical purposes. That's the practice we would have to think about changing to ensure that poems there aren't public.

With respect, not everybody is prolific enough to do as you recommend. The sacrifice of one poem is a big one for some. But it wasn't my intention to belabor that point.

I don't think it's boonswaggling at all. Editors' concern isn't to make sure no one else has ever seen a poem before, or that it has never been workshopped, but to make sure that they are, at least for a while, the only public source of that poem. If I email the poem to a dozen friends and show it to another dozen friends in a workshop in my living room, there's no problem, is there? It seems to me that the no-follow tag isn't an attempt to fool the editors but a method of giving the editors what they want, which is to make sure the poem is not publicly available elsewhere.

Roger, with respect, I'm not following your argument. My reference to boonswoggling concerns the poet's intention to circumvent editorial rules.

Is boonswoggling the same as hornswoggling?

Ann, I think it's the love child of a boondoggle and a hornswoggle.

I think I meant to say "hornswoggle". But I found out that boonswoogle actually is a term in some places.

http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/20...gle-legit.html

But I like the idea of a love child so I'm willing to go with that.

Roger,

but can you explain why they can't publish recently published
material? why not do so if its a really good poem? i'm still not sure
i get it. why be focused on being the only source of a poem ?

copyright..i get, but i suggest the obvious reason: they wish to control the
supply, or more importantly wish to be seen to control the supply, like
De beers in the diamond market. all gatekeepers are neurotic about the
raw material.

i am not sure editors are our best friends. sometimes (often) it feels
like they are the enemy. they are the cats and we are the mice.

eek..

As I understand it, the no index tag inserted when posting a new poem only works on that first page of the thread. If someone quotes the poem, or parts of it, on another page after that, a search can reveal it, unless the first post on that page, or the post with the quote, also has the no index tag. Can anyone confirm this?

I can confirm that quoted bits will allow the poem to appear in search results. I tried a search yesterday for one of my own poems, searching for a line. The poem at the top of the thread did not appear, but a post farther down in the thread, quoting the line, did.

I can't confirm that "noindex" coding in the quoting post would hide things, but it seems it should.

That's news to me. I was under the impression, apparently mistaken, that the no-index tag worked on all subsequent posts in the same thread.

At any rate, I'm quite sure that I have seen many, many poems that were workshopped here at Eratosphere appear in many, many journals whose policy is not to take previously published poems.

I would not suggest trying to deceive an editor whose guidelines make clear that they regard posting to a workshop as "publication," but most guidelines that prohibit prior publication do not make clear that they hold this less-than-obvious view, and indeed, many journals do not regard posting to a workshop as prior publication. So it seems to me that in those cases it's fair to resolve the ambiguity in your own favor, but also take steps (like using no-follow tags) to minimize the chance that anyone who is not a regular at Eratosphere might stumble upon your poem here instead of reading it first in the magazine in question.

Some editors are lovely people. Others are POWER-CRAZED MADMEN. Others are much like you and me.

Eratosphere
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eratosphere is the largest online workshop for formal poetry …..founded in 1999 by Alexander Pepple as a workshop complement to Able Muse. Eratosphere moderators have included some of the best known formal poets, including Marilyn Taylor -- The Poet Laureate of Wisconsin, A. M. Juster, A. E. Stallings, R. S. Gwynn, and several others. The Distinguished Guest forum has hosted and continues to host presentations, and discussions with renowned writers and poets such as Richard Wilbur -- a former US Poet Laureate and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the late Anthony Hecht, Timothy Steele, Charles Martin, X. J. Kennedy and others, and these discussions are permanently archived and accessible online. Thus, Eratosphere has become a useful research medium in academic and other circles to interactively gauge modern poetic trends and beliefs, being quoted as a reference for instance in Professor Susan Santovasi of Yale University on political poetry [1], besides being included in the listing of writing resources of several universities.

I'm sure many will know this but it was surpise to me, I recently got strange responses from ezines I submitted to, saying, 'no but send us more' or giving a glowing, detailed response but then saying 'no thanks'. Never before had a reject that wasn't just a form letter. Now if I decide to submit I'll stick to poems I havn't posted here.
ah, the price of fame..
cheers
Ross

I found this in our FAQ:
* [%noindex][/noindex%] without the percentage marks, which I added here, in order to make the code visible in this post. If it is written correctly, it cannot be seen.

I think this is a big fuss over nothing. I've published in about fifty different venues - print and internet combines - almost everything I've published has been workshopped on the Sphere - and nobody has ever come back to me and complained about the Sphere. And I generally use the same title (unless I decide to change it as part of the usual rewrite process) for workshop and publication. The only people who seem to bend themselves in pretzels over this are some of our Spherians. And I haven't heard anybody - except for the New Statesman Competition, and I'm not even sure if that's in effect or just talked about by somebody who doesn't understand the Sphere - cite any actual instances of having work turned down because it was workshopped here. Relax!

I've been on the verge of trying to reply to this because I'd never really understood these code-things and was intrigued, though not unduly concerned. I believed that Alex had taken care of it in the workshop forums, from the bottoms of which, in the fullness of time, the workshopped work drips like juice from an over-ripe plum onto the fertile soil of forgettery.

Now, since we are not allowed to post any of our own work in the "other" forums, surely there can be no problem, and the giving of funny titles to work-in-progress to confound the wicked Beelzebots just troubles the cheerful innocents among us for no good reason. Innit?

The only reason to protect anything in these forums might be when quoting the work of someone else which is effectively in copyright, but that's a different issue.

Michael, the New Statesman issue was very real, brought up by the journal and solved by the combined efforts of the member with whom they raised it and Alex who fixed it.

And John, remember - some Editors are Sphere members! Be Very Afraid!

the Wiki article I quoted is recent.
All codes can be overidden by a better code, all poems can be searched by a search engine, they'd be apps available.
If you were a ezine publisher you would want your poems to be unpublished in any medium, it's your show, you'd want it all original. Wouldn't good ezine editors put all poems through an indexing/ keyword app to screen out poems previously published on the net, it's simple to do, changing the title makes no difference. A search engine searches all keywords and finds a probability match.
on the other hand ezine editors might like poems already popular on a forum if they were unsure of their own abilities…I like forums, don't read ezines, I like the friendship here.

I'm with Michael on this one. It's a teapot tempest, and has no meaning in the real world. Full disclosure: every prize I've ever won has been from a poem originally workshopped here. Every poem I've workshopped here has been published. Not a single editor or judge has ever complained. Quite the contrary. Same goes for my fiction, although that's on another site. The rules people put up on their sites are meaningless, and not just in this case. I wish I had enough fingers and toes to count the number of sites that say "we like free verse, we never publish metered and rhymed poetry," sites on which we find our work with surprising regularity...

As for editors being our friends? Well, sometimes that's true. But for anyone who thinks that's a good general rule, I've got a bridge to sell you in Arizona... ;)

Best,

Bill