[A. E. Stallings]

BPJ is an excellent journal and very eclectic. Do note that Lee Sharkey is a woman, though!

[Rose Kelleher]

Jim and all. I have written to Fred Sasaki and Christian Wiman, confessing that all my poems accepted by Poetry were workshopped here, and setting out my reasons for their changing their policy.

Wow. Thanks for sticking your neck out like that. I'm impressed. It'll be interesting to hear what they say.

[Michael Cantor]

Tim - What Rose said. Thanks for putting it on the line. The response will be interesting.

Golias - why ask for trouble? As far as anybody knows, only Poetry makes a fuss about workshopping. I suspect there's a "Dont ask, don't tell" attitude on the part of many. But if you go around calling it to Editors' attention - pushing it in their face - some may be as reasonable as BPJ, and others may not. Please don't create problems where none exist.

[peter richards]

Personally, I boycott them all. Ha! So now they're sorry.
Oh.

[Mark Allinson]

I think of a workshop as a modern form of the traditional coterie group, where poets would circulate manuscripts of their work for the comments of other poets.

Sure, the workshop is a very large coterie, but the principle holds, I think.

And what Poetry seems to be saying is something like: "it has come to our attention that other poets have been shown your poem, and perhaps a few stray passers-by have seen it also. This appearance of your poem to a few hundred readers means that we can no longer share your work with our 60,000 regular readers."

Would passing the poem around an office also be considered "publication"?

[Jim Hayes]

Mr Wiman's memory is indeed an important proviso, I doubt he recalls his letter to me some three years and it's possible, I suppose, from the way his response was evidently phrased, my most recent effort never reached his desk. Non-the-less, the result stands for both of us, so felicitations indeed.

It would appear also that Wiley has cause to feel somewhat unfortunate
in so far as he was the recipient of contrary advise to that received by you.

Anyway, continued good luck to you, in your Whup-ass submissions, and just as important, I'm sure you will concede, to those of us persisting with Erato submissions now that we have clarification and precedence to quote.

[Tim Murphy]

Jamie,

Few submissions reach Wiman's desk. Wendy and Alicia and I went in cold. Cold called and cold cocked an editor. Aliki's poems weren't workshopped here, Wendy's probably weren't, but Tim's were. The POINT is, it doesn't matter. This is a great institution with a lot of money behind it. Can we quit whining?

[Alex Pepple]

Originally Posted by Jim Hayes

and just as important, I'm sure you will concede, to those of us persisting with Erato submissions now that we have clarification and precedence to quote.

Jim, just remember to begin new poem posts protection code that has been confirmed to completely prevent Google indexing. That should prevent rejection in the future of Erato-workshopped poems based on Google searches.

Tim, thanks for taking the initiative to contact Poetry and getting clarification from them. Hopefully, they won't feel the need to apply their 'marginal' rule in the future as there'll be nothing to find.

Cheers,
...Alex

[Philip Quinlan]

Originally Posted by Mark Allinson

I think of a workshop as a modern form of the traditional coterie group, where poets would circulate manuscripts of their work for the comments of other poets.

Sure, the workshop is a very large coterie, but the principle holds, I think.

And what Poetry seems to be saying is something like: "it has come to our attention that other poets have been shown your poem, and perhaps a few stray passers-by have seen it also. This appearance of your poem to a few hundred readers means that we can no longer share your work with our 60,000 regular readers."

Would passing the poem around an office also be considered "publication"?

Had to quote the lot Mark.

There is a very similar (and misguided) principle in operation here to that which underlines the Data Protection Act (UK law). You can write what the hell you like on paper, and tell the most outrageous lies verbally, but woe betide you if you once commit any of that to an electronic medium.

There is always a kind of moral panic about the internet, email etc.

Philip

Or take copyright law. I could transcribe a poem by another author and send it to my 1000 friends (who meet as a fan club in a phone box every second Wednesday unless Hamilton Academicals are playing at home) and none shall say me nay.

I put the same poem on a website that only 10 people visited in the last year (6 of whom were robots programmed by the US military in their search for terrorists) and I'm busted. (Hypothetically - this has never happened to me. Except for the US military bit - very noticeable for their extraordinarily, astronomically high bandwidth).

[Susan McLean]

Alex,
I tried using the noindex code you provided on my most recent posted poem on TDE. I could still Google it. Is there something I am doing wrong?

Susan