poetree

Welcome to

poetree . I'm Elizabeth Barrette, known as

ysabetwordsmith on Dreamwidth and on LiveJournal. I'd like to thank

jjhunter for launching this community and giving me the opportunity to serve as the first week's Poetry Host. The goal of this community is to promote interest in poetry, whether your own or someone else's. It also encourages appreciation of poetry that gets published online or in other alternative venues, in addition to conventional print venues.

I've been writing poetry for more than 30 years. I've had over 380 poems published in over 120 markets, including magazines, anthologies, websites, and many other venues. I have two poetry collections, Prismatica: Science Fiction Poetry Spanning the Spectrum and From Nature's Patient Hands: A Collection of Poetry. I'll be sharing a sample poem from each of those books later this week. Among my main topics are speculative fiction and nature, both of which you'll see in this week's examples. Folks interested in alternative spirituality or mythology may also enjoy some of my Pagan poetry.

Poetry isn't very popular in the mainstream today, but there are other areas where it is considerably more active. Speculative fiction and Paganism are two genres that run to poetry. There's even a Science Fiction Poetry Association, which fields a magazine, Star*Line, and an award, the Rhysling. An alternative business model that lends itself well to poetry is crowdfunding, or cyberfunded creativity. It puts the audience in the gatekeeping role traditionally held by editors and publishers, so that poetry fans don't have to wait around for someone else to pick out good poetry -- they can go right to the poets and buy whatever they want. You can see one example in LiveJournal user Stryck's "Poetry Kitchen."

Among my biggest successes is my own crowdfunding project, the Poetry Fishbowl. I set a theme and ask my audience to give me ideas. Then I write poems based on whatever they suggest. I post at least one poem free, and the rest become available for sponsorship. There are also some perks that can release more free poetry. One interesting development from this project is serial poetry, when people request new poems about established characters or settings. You'll get to see sample poems from some of my most popular series this week. Although I've had a lot of conventional publications over the years, these days a majority of my poetry sales go directly to my audience rather than through an editor.

So despite the mainstream indifference to poetry, we have lots of ways to enjoy it anyway. You don't need a class to learn how to write poetry; just get started, maybe invite friendly feedback from your audience, and you'll improve with practice. It isn't as hard as some people make it out to be. You don't have to wait for some editor to accept your poetry for publication; you can post it on your own blog, in this community if you volunteer as a Poetry Host, or in many other online venues. You don't have to be a fancy scholar to read and analyze poetry; you can just talk about what works for you (or not). You can also use this community to discuss poetry in the comments under any posted poem. You don't have to buy expensive literary magazines; you can find reams of free poetry on the Internet, both here and elsewhere.

Grab a blanket and join us under the Poet Tree, where verses are ripe for the picking.