This is a hot button question for poets and publishers: Are your poems published if they appear anywhere on a blog?
Let me say up front: There is no one answer. Every editor has a slightly different opinion on this matter.
So I pulled up Dot, well frankly this is an old picture as these bookcases are now in someone else’s house, because I wanted to see what some of her thoughts were on this issue.
If you are just writing poems for yourself, Dot says, post them on your blog all day long. If you, however, want to try and publish a given poem you do need to take it down from your blog. Some people go so far as to say that you should never post it at all in case a publisher sees it in an archives but I then suggest my method: Don’t title the blog post with the name of the poem instead call it something like poem share and post the poem in such a way that you can go back and edit it out.
Does that seem like a lot of hassle? Yes. It probably is which is why, when I do the poem share, I post a poem in this way and then take it down the next week so I can then submit the work. I have now agreed to do the same thing in comments each week so we can still critique and comment on each others poems.
Some realities.
Do editors really go and check?
Dot replies: We are busy people (don’t you remember Do’ts Poetry Corner from Animaniacs?”) who probably do not check but common courtesy says don’t post a poem on your blog and then leave it up after it has been accepted for publication by an online or print journal.
Are there places online you can post your poems and it is not published?
Some editors even say Facebook is not ok but I argue (Jessie, not Dot, Dot went to take a nap) any site where you have to enter a password is ok.
And this isn’t the best post on the topic, but I strongly encourage you to be very, very careful posting poems online if you are also going to send them out to publications. It is a whole new world with online publishing and with how easy it is to self-publish so don’t get caught having a poem accepted by Poetry and then have it withdrawn cause you forget and left it on a blog you haven’t used in a decade.
Any other thoughts, questions on this? Post below. And I’ll link to this interesting blog post I read while I was researching this some more.
What a great entry! I’ve always played by the 24-48 Hour NaPoWriMo Rule: take’em down after 24 to 48 if a journal’s pages you want to make.
I totally can see that!
Jessie, I’d like to comment to the question, “Do editors really go and check?” While Dot is right that we (editors) are busy, many of us do check suspicions and hunches — the reason being that those of us who stay current and follow as many other journals as possible, besides just our own, often stumble upon poems published elsewhere not only left on blogs, but also duplicated across 2 or more journals. Run across these incidents enough, and after awhile, the sensitive editor gets prickles up the spine when she sees certain bylines. And then these she will always check.
I totally know what you mean about this, Eve! I do have certain people I am aware of who I will go and check on but I guess I’ve been lucky (so far) to not have caught too many offenders!
It’s tricky. I do like your “edit” option. But is it possible that your original post, complete with poem, is archived somewhere? Yes. Do editors search the internet for offenders? Not often. Well, sometimes. I do google people who submit poems to the Dead Mule. But we try to be reasonable,asking only that a poet remove the poem from his/her blog before submitting.
I think Facebook is different from what you describe. Notes, where people often post poems, are pretty much open to everyone on Facebook. And who’s on Facebook? Everyone but Bill and my mom.
The Mule wants poems that haven’t had a wide audience online. Now how this differs from poems read at readings or sent in e-mail to 147 friends isn’t readily apparent.
The issue is complicated, because each editor has the right to set submission requirements for his/her publication, and a poet must follow the guidelines if he/she wants to get published.
I feel a bit different as an editor than I do as a poet.
I know archives are always possible but there is only so much we can do when we want to still have a public venue for poetry discussion.
I used to think Facebook was also different but then I heard some editors saying that they would count a poem published on Facebook as published as well. Here is my question with that: How would they know? Unless they were your friend on Facebook and went back through all of your notes? I see that as a more private place to present your work in progress.
I think most of us, as editors and poets, try to be conscientious but there are those few out there that – for some reason – send the same poem to multiple publications even after it has been online, in print, in an e-newsletter, in a youtube video etc etc. I just don’t get that. Don’t you want to have the world see more than just the same old poem from you over and over again?
Your third sentence IS the answer: Every editor is different.
For me, I have to take a multi-pronged approach to having poems on my blog. If it gets published and the editor doesn’t care that it is or was on my blog, then I’ll usually leave it posted, but provide credits, thanks, and praises to the editor who published and a link to her/his blog/journal. If the editor does care that it’s on my blog, then I remove it by making it a “private” post (WordPress feature).
In either case, I will almost always mention on my blog that the work (title only) was published elsewhere and provide a link to that site.
Nothing is more irksome, however, than when go through this self-imposed protocol and someone later tells you that they’ve clicked on the link and your poem is no longer (or the link has been changed, etc.). That, of course, is more of an issue with online publishers.
Oh Tel, I totally hate when it happens with missed links! I know as we go to archive things, sometimes, wordpress will just forget the name of the link or something *sigh* but it still is such a nice looking and easy to use service that I’m gonna stick with it.
Now I’m itching to start organizing my blog and Referential better
Great job, Jessie! I haven’t gone way back to the beginning of your blog, but did you start out just posting poems? Or have you always talked poetry ? It puts poets/writers in an unusual place as they try to get a readership going . . .which they are suppose to do, right? And publishers should like that a poet is bringing readers along with them when their work gets published. I think you and everyone commenting did a great job of addressing it, with it being mostly down to doing the right thing. And now we know the right thing to do, because of you!
Thanks Jessie!
I think I’m a bit old school in that I never really posted my poetry on my personal website/blog. I decided to build a readership through sending my work to literary magazines instead. Ya know, it really is a completely different way to build a readership! That just occurred to me
While most poems can sit a day or two without
‘sticking’, sometimes they are there when the search
engines sweep through. When that happens, you are
in the ‘cached’ pages for months or years. The engines
hit you more if your site is popular.
There is some way to tell them not to look, though
that makes you invisible. You can also take a pic
of a short poem and post the jpeg…no text.
I have poems in categories, like very-short
and some rhyme, that would take a lot of work
to get into a very few places. I post them from time to time.
I should post more experimentals, since I don’t have
the time to travel to a po-mecca for that sort of thing and
schmooz as needed.
I’m slowly developing the idea of ‘for web’ poems.
Things I really enjoy, and don’t feel an editor
would stretch for. I should march out some of the
oracle poems.
As for more mainstream, the general take on it wavers, so I’m wary.
Poems that were published a while ago seem mostly OK.
Jim I think you have good reason to be wary. It is such a hard decision to make. I have been lucky, I guess, so far that it has never been an issue but I strongly caution people about posting online if they they want to publish later. I think a lot of it has to do with intent. If you are posting for critiques and then remove the poem, I think most editors will understand but when you just publish it on your blog and promote it on Facebook/twitter etc and then send it to an editor asking them to also publish it–well, then that gets icky
I don’t mind if a poem has been on / is on, someone’s blog. But I changed my guidelines a little while ago to accept stuff that has appeared previously in print as well. And I’m a pretty casual set-up. But still, I don’t know, maybe I’m missing something, but what’s the big deal if it’s been on the poet’s own blog?
Another question, what if an early version of a piece has been on your blog and you’ve revised it since then, but it still has the same title, say? Just an idle question….
I will also take things that have only appeared in print if the author tells me. I feel it gives them a new audience for their work.
Many editors feel that if they take the time (and space which sometimes involves money) to post a poem for you, that it should only appear in that location. I’m still a bit torn about it myself.
With your question, I think a lot of editors would still consider it published but I’d be of the thought that you were just workshopping it on your site and not intending it for “publication” per se in that form…
Yes, I think that re print as well.
Ah, time and money! I hadn’t thought of that. It just seemed like something 90 percent + of journals did when I first started looking at online journals (“no previously published…”), so I did the same. But always kind of wondered why….
Interesting re poem drafts! I’ve put two of my own poems on my blog, out of over a year and a half of posts, and they weren’t for their own sake, but as a collage word thing, instead of writing a review of someone’s book, which I wanted to write, but I’m bad at writing reviews I think, so I did that. One of them turned out okay, so I edited it and put it in a ms I’m working on atm, from which I’ve been submitting some stuff. That’s why the “idle question.” (!)
Thanks Jessie and other commenters! Interesting post and thread.
Always glad to have good topics suggested when I have a week where I have no topic ideas!!
Great post JC!
thanks! I still need to get caught up on the blog reading
I often post my drafts in progress. The “finished” poem is usually quite different, so I don’t worry about it. Sometimes I take them down, sometimes I leave them up.
I really think that the work of critiquing poems should be such a different animal than “publishing” them on a blog. I like how you say “finished” because that is what most of it is about isn’t it? Intent. If your intent is to put a finished product out there and to publicize it and then send that same item to a magazine…well, then I can see some of the issue but if you are just posting a work in progress for the point of showing a work in progress…well, then I don’t see why that is bad.
Does any of that make sense at this way too early hour