poetree

Official word is that the Rhysling Award now accepts nominations of crowdfunded or self-published poetry. (In several previous years, staff ruled out crowdfunded poetry as being self-published. Then it was rediscovered that some previous Rhysling winners were self-published poems, so the rules were clarified to allow self-published poems. I asked about crowdfunding specifically and it's eligible!)

The Rhysling Award is run by the Science Fiction Poetry Association. SFPA members have the right to nominate and vote in the Rhysling Award, and also receive a copy of the annual voting anthology, which is an excellent source of top speculative poems. If you enjoy crowdfunded or self-published poetry, consider nominating/voting for your favorite examples so as to raise awareness of these alternative business models as a successful venue for poetry.

The Rose & Bay Award honors excellence in cyberfunded creativity aka crowdfunding in the categories of Art, Fiction, Poetry, Webcomic, Other Project, and Patron. Complete rules appear on the 2012 Rose & Bay Award Landing Page.

So far, the Poetry and Webcomic nomination pages are online; you can watch for the others to appear later today or tomorrow. Please drop by and nominate your favorite projects! Boosting the signal helps too. This is a great opportunity to celebrate crowdfunded poetry that isn't eligible for most other awards. Beyond the contest rules, you can read about what makes a crowdfunded project in "5 Steps to Crowdfunding Success."

I've already made a couple of nominations for Poetry. It's hard to find projects that qualify, though. Does anyone else know of some other crowdfunded poetry projects from 2011?

Given this community's focus on alternatively published poetry, I think it would be cool to have a page that lists crowdfunded poetry projects. That would help people find them. Some projects are one-shot things, like using Kickstarter to fund a book tour; but others are done periodically or regularly so that people can follow their favorites over time.