[Golias]

Not to fully reopen this topic, but I have written to several reputable journals whose published submission guidelines are unclear or silent as to whether they regard appearance in an online workshop as prior publication. I just had a response from Lee Sharkey of the Beloit Poetry Journal in which she writes:

What an interesting problem—we’ve never encountered it before, though now that I’ve investigated Eratosphere and The Gazebo I’m sure it will come up again.
After some conversation among the editors, we’ve agreed that posting on an online poetry workshop does not constitute publication. Thanks for respecting our guidelines enough to ask

So maybe some of us will now send some of our best workshopped poems to the BPJ. I certainly think I shall.

G/W

[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.

[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).

[Tim Murphy]

Folks, I put balls on the anvil and stick my neck out all the time. Just got Chris Wiman's response:

"We do strongly prefer that our poems have no previous publication, and we do count the Internet as publication.

That said, to my memory (an important proviso!) we've never turned down a poem we would have accepted because it had been workshopped on Eratosphere or somewhere else. We'd probably never even know.

So I guess I'd say this: if we love a poem, we're going to find a way to
publish it, even if our rules have been violated slightly. But if a poem is
on the margin for us, then any sort of previous publication will likely tip
the balance toward a reject."

This is a prompt response, and I made a serious argument, that Jan at his cattle station in the Outback and I in North Dakota must make use of the net even to write for Chris' desired standards. I'm grateful, and I am going to send him a couple poems workshopped at Whup-Ass.

[Laura Heidy-Halberstein]

Originally Posted by Tim Murphy

Chris Wiman's response:

"We do strongly prefer that our poems have no previous publication, and we do count the Internet as publication.

That said, to my memory (an important proviso!) we've never turned down a poem we would have accepted because it had been workshopped on Eratosphere or somewhere else. We'd probably never even know.

So I guess I'd say this: if we love a poem, we're going to find a way to
publish it, even if our rules have been violated slightly. But if a poem is
on the margin for us, then any sort of previous publication will likely tip
the balance toward a reject."

Well, that must certainly come as a surprise to his assistant editor, Fred Sasaki, who not all that long ago wrote
If the workshop is closed--that is if one has
to enter a password to read it, or the website is an education tool
restricted to enrolled members--then we can still consider the work.
If I can find the poem through Google, then we cannot consider it.
Maybe a more apt rule is a Google rule of some kind in response to a question from Poets.Org about Poetry's policy towards accepting poems workshopped on The Internet.

http://poets.org/forum/viewtopic.php...oetry+magazine

The whole thing really begins to sound distasteful.

Much like politicians who seemed so clean until it turns out they didn't always pay their taxes like the rest of us did the world of poetry appears to be getting pretty darn murky, too.

That whole icky quote from Wiman makes it sound very much like rules are only rules some of the time and for some of the people in poetry as well as in politics.

More's the pity for those who honestly try to follow them, though.





,