HI---excuse the possibly ridiculous question.   But in guideline submissions, wording can be a bit murky, and sometimes I think editors want to know if they are going to have a virgin audience for your poem, or if it's been floating around on the internet already.

Some contests specifically mention internet workshops or posting as not OK.

I tend to think of this as more of a workshop, putting stuff out and getting comments...but what do the publishers think?

Any publishers, editors, legal experts out there?

Thanks!
Lynne

Not a publisher or legal expert but based on my experience, I'd say that poems on the submit board and workshop board would probably not be considered as being published. Front Page board might be a different situation.

There is no set rule about it. Each publisher creates their own guidelines.

Probably a matter of interpretation for the publisher.

Many on-line journals (and print journals with on-line editions) now state that they want work that has not ever appeared on the Web, either on a site like this or on a blog or otherwise.  The fear of obsolescence, perhaps?

Interesting. Thanks, Eric. I need to reflect on whether this makes any sense.

All themore reason to read the small print

If that is the case, then it makes it difficult to workshop poetry online.

It is  of course purely a matter for the publisher. Once the work is placed in the public domain, it has been published; the internal grading system here, if such it is, would seem irrelevant to the analysis. The distinction between a rough cut which was trialled in a workshop setting and a polished final version is quite a slippery one. However if the version you want to publish is recognisably the same piece as published here, then you may run foul of this  kind of proscription.

Thanks---this helps!
Lynne

While you may be right, what I find hilarious in all of this is that poetry publishers often don't pay the poets--except in "copies"! So, absurdly, you have these publishers out there adopting the "first rights" standards of paying publishers but offering nothing in return.

If it weren't for the vanity of poets--or their need to pad their resumes for academic careers--these poetry publishers might have to change their business model.

Long ago I wrote a poem around this topic. Here it is:

http://www.poetrycircle.com/index.php/topic,968.0.html

For my effort I was paid, of course, nothing.

:)

Poetry does not pay, even for successful poets it seems (in the UK anyhow). Ruth Padel, a distinguished and well-known poet, recently appeared on a BBC Radio 4 programme and vouchsafed that one of her most critically acclaimed books yielded her royalties barely in excess of £1,000.

Today I got my complimentary copy of Orbis, a UK lit. mag., and in the first paragraph of the first page they addressed this issue----for them, "anything that has appeared on the Internet"  is considered previously published.

Also, it seems that unless a poem being workshopped or reviewed on line is revised in a major way (changing some punctuation or a word here and there doesn't count) it is also considered previously published.

I guess the point is that anything we wish to send out to an editor for publication or a contest, which has already appeared on Poetry Circle, must be considered already published, and as such would not be eligible or any guidelines stating "no previously published material."   

Just sayin'.
Lynne

 

I'd tend to ignore that on the grounds that I'd take it refer to internet magazines, and this isn't one. I don't enter competitions but that might be different where considerable money is involved. With magazines, paying little or nothing, if an editor did pick it up and objected, the only loss would probably be any further consideration for publishing in that mag. And, if you pleaded your case, perhaps not even that. That this a 'forum' , not a publishing outlet, should be your let off.

milner