Poetry Forums
 

Hello,
I am aware that one should message a mod before posting a poem in the critique sub-forums, but I do not know if that applies to General Talk. If so I apologise in advance for my ignorance.

I am a member of poetry free-for-all and obviously a new member of Eratosphere, and I was wondering (because I just love workshops that much!) if there are any other poetry forums of a similar quality still active on the web.
It saddens me that I am a few years too late to join poets.org or Gazebo, and now they are both inactive. M.A. Griffiths and other great internet poets have either died or wandered away and I am ashamed that I never got to meet such poets online, but we're moving away from the point.
So, I was just wondering if there were any workshops with a similar quality of critique to pffa and Eratosphere still online. There doesn't seem to be, but please tell me if you know of any!
Regards,
Cameron Clark

No, there aren't any poetry workshops as good as Eratosphere, Cameron. But I would say that, wouldn't I? ;) :D

But seriously, I know of plenty of other crappy sites that I wouldn't go near! How much time do you have on your hands, I'm wondering, if you want to join other sites. (Quality, not quantity?) It's good to build up a relationship with the lovely people here - honestly, I have made a lot of really great friends on both sides of The Pond, through being a member here.

But others may know of places you could try... forgive my light-hearted treatment of your question.

Jayne

Jayne,
Thank you. A fluctuating amount of time. It's less that I want to jump on 7 forums all at the same time and more out of curiosity at the state of Internet forums. I hear there were four back in the day, and now there's only about two.

Eratosphere is really cool, I'm enjoying it here!

Jaimes Alsop
 

Deleted August 1st.

Why/when did Gazebo stop/fail? Why are there only two (erato and pffa) when there once was four? Where has everyone gone: Griffiths (sadly dead), Alsop (sadly dead) peter J. ross, kristalo, others who I am not aware of? It still confuses me.

Time passes.
Everything changes.

Nemo

The indomitable truth, Nemo.
But still, I wonder at the specific reasons for the closure of poets.org and The Gazebo forums.

"I am aware that one should message a mod before posting a poem in the critique sub-forums"

Huh? Where did you get that idea?

Deleted July 11

Roger
I believe I got the idea that a new member is expected to message a moderator before posting their first poem in a workshop forum from the rules/guidence for new members.
Please inform me if that has changed.

Cameron, that is correct—before your first poem you need a mod/admin to verify that you've done 15 substantive critiques. I think Roger misread you as suggesting that everyone always needs to do so, which is of course not true.

Re: the topic at hand, my sense (having had my adolescence during the golden years of online discussion forums) is that the internet has simply moved away from discussion forums in general. They see less activity across the board. All the forums of my youth are shells of their former selves if they exist at all, and even the Sphere is less active than it was even four years ago when I joined, let alone in its heyday.

That's the case, Cameron. It used to be that those posting rights were switched on automatically when you reached 15 posts, but now it's done manually. I'm guessing that's because 15 posts didn't always translate to the requisite 15 substantial crits.

Matt and Aaron,
Thanks for the confirmation!

Aaron,
Yes, I've heard about the movement away from forums. But it seems strange to me. The Internet is growing more widely used by the year so one would expect that there would be more members joining more forums, as the numbers of poets continue to increase (if not their readership).

Eratosphere seems reasonably busy though, in that I'm not contradicting you, just wondering how busy it was back in the day. Pffa is much more quieter. For instance, it's very rare for me to be the only active member on the sphere, while on pffa not so much. Still, I'm very happy both are running!

The sphere is not inactive now, but if you browse older threads in GT, you'll see a wider range of discussion, from a wider range of voices, than you see now.

Yes, the internet is becoming more and more central to our lives, but it is also becoming more centralized around websites like Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Forums are not the dominant online social outlet now, the way they were when I was first starting to socialize online (2004 or so). Young poets looking for online poetry communities, for instance, are probably plugging in to poetry twitter, not seeking out places like the Sphere or PFFA.

Aaron, Yes you are probably right. I must be the anomaly then.

Approx 4.57 billion people use the internet, so obviously there must be at least hundreds of sites like this out there.

Eratosphere, PFFA....

Some of them might be hard to find.

You may be right. Do tell me if you find any!

So you're saying you want to date other people? :confused:

We all must learn to share. :)

Cameron,

"Open relationships" can be very dodgy. Better to stay faithful to the one you love! :D

Jayne

The activity on poetry forums has decreased considerably over the last decade. The Sphere was once much more active and I understand it was even more active in the years before I joined in 2007. The early part of the century seems to be considered its golden years. The Gazebo ran out of gas. Participation dropped when Facebook and Twitter and other time consuming black holes of creativity became more popular. It is easier to start a FB group than it is to build and maintain a website. The moderator at Gazebo, who most of us know, moved on to other things. It was never the same after that.

I wonder about poetry boards. When you read a work and think about it and take it seriously and offer your best efforts and then someone swoops in and says you've "workchopped" it and the poem is wonderful and don't change a thing and then everyone loves each other, except the jerk who can't see the poem was perfect from the get-go and made the mistake of offering a critque. When that becomes prevalent a poetry board is useless.

Best

Deleted August 1st

Hello Jayne,
But what if I love more than one?

Hello John,
Yes, that seems to be a concise summing up of my replies. I agree with your final paragraph. I've definitely been that "jerk".

Hello Jack,
Thanks for more links. Always very helpful! Alsop left Gazebo but Gazebo went on, even had some good poets. But now it's obviously extinct.

I came back to poetry at the turn of the century. It was a thrilling time for internet poets. My main boards were Sonnet Central, Erato, the Gazebo and PFFA.
I eventually concluded that critique was a zero-sum game, and more or less gave up. But I still read poems posted.
The world has changed now.

Deleted August 1st

Hello David Anthony,
Interesting points. A mod on the Sonnet Board too if I'm not mistaken? Though when I looked at it it seemed a little inactive. I read a poem of yours on pffa that seemed to positively praise workshopping.

Hello Jack,
Another interesting link/article, thank you! When Alsop died did the Alsop Review die too?

I know of some attempts to create poetry workshops at facebook, but don't know of any that have managed to establish and maintain constructive participation, and not end up turning into showcases of poetry and clicking "like" instead. It seems almost impossible to create a workshop-enviroment there.

As long as fora like this are still better at creating such an enviroment, for focusing on specific things and giving constructive feedback, I think they will definitely continue to have some relevancy. There will always be people who want meaningful, constructive feedback on their work.

.

.
.
The internet is a bar, a pub, a watering hole. The Eratosphere is not the internet. You get there through the internet. It's a web of staying. Ha!
.
.

Actually, John, I think at least partly what happened to the Gaz might have to do with how the site was designed. If a poem gets commented on, it should be bumped up. Even the most stubborn of us might be more inclined to read a poem that appears over and over again at the head of the thread. For better or worse, maybe the poem should get some attention.

I really don't see the sphere in dire straits. If anything I've seen a lot of good new blood in the past handful of years. The most important thing I think is to honestly and fairly critique.

Christine Klocek-Lim has just launched a critique forum on her Autumn Sky Poetry DAILY site.

Announcement: https://autumnskypoetrydaily.com/202...ons-new-forum/

Forum: https://autumnskypoetrydaily.com/community/

I noticed that advertised on Facebook. It will be interesting to see how it goes.

I notice their rules currently don't specify how often you can post a poem how or many poems should critique per poem posted, or. I wonder if that will change. Though I guess a laissez faire approach to that could work.

Also interesting to see they have this rule, which we don't have:

"Critique the poem, not the poet"

although the Guidelines here do say, "critique should focus on the work posted".

though nothing as yet in their rules about defensiveness on the part of the poet.

I expect that those kinds of rules may be put in place as the forum grows and issues come up. Right now I think everyone is just waiting for someone else to post first...!