Origins

[jjhunter]

Just as Dreamwidth itself is a code fork of Livejournal, poetree is an explicit code fork of its sister comm poetry. It borrowed poetry's basic format of a weekly Poetry Host and, at least initially, duplicated the other's explanation of what Hosting entailed. Given that poetry was and continues to be an superlative Dreamwidth community for poetry sharing, I knew from the start that poetree needed a clear answer to 'So why do we need another poetry comm?' Initially, the answer was very specific:

There's one type of poetry (besides song lyrics) poetry explicitly doesn't take, and that's the poetry written by the poster. Less explicitly, there is a bias toward poetry that has been published on paper as opposed to posted online or shared through other more unorthodox channels.

In other words, poetree was originally conceived as a version of poetry where poets could share their own poetry. The poetry discussion element that has become so central to poetree's identity today was literally an afterthought on the original signup post.

From that first month, there were also two other important divergences from poetry's format: one, the custom of asking Poetry Hosts to write an intro post as their initial post, in effect foregrounding what background they chose to bring to the table and making it part of the conversation; and two, the tradition on the part of the admin to invite Guest Hosts from outside the poetree (and frequently, the Dreamwidth) community.

The next major innovation had humble origins of desperation: no one single person wanted to Host the entire week of Thanksgiving. Hence our first 'non-Hosted' week: Call For Anonymous Poetry.



In additional to the impromptu dirty poem battle (handily won by this very very NSFW limerick), that week led to another playful non-Hosted week, and then eventually to our current tradition of monthly 'multi-Hosted themed weeks' starting in January. By that point the community had successfully survived its first three months, and more was in store.

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Next up: Evolution of the Sunday Picnic



Further Reading
* poetree's first Guest Host was David Kopaska-Merkel. You can browse David's posts via his comm author tag.
* poetree's first multi-Hosted themed week centered on Poetry Complements. Click the link to read its introduction post and find links to individual posts from that week, including On illustrating poetry by guest artist meeks.