Poets on Fire: have you seen it recently?

Just thought I'd remind everyone of the existence of POETS ON FIRE, a marvellous poetry resource currently being run by the equally marvellous Matt Merritt.

Back in 2006, I wanted to find a way of keeping tabs on what was happening in poetry right across the UK and Ireland, and although there were various online resources which helped with that - such as the Poetry Library site - I wanted something a little more interactive, preferably with daily updates.

So I launched POETS ON FIRE and started blogging about poetry events. After a few years, the demands of running that site and all my other work began to tell on my psyche. So I asked around, and a number of people - Charlotte Runcie, Nina Davies and Matt Merritt - came forward and offered their help with maintaining the site.

Charlotte Runcie did a great job of overhauling the 'look' of POF, but then had to slip off to university. Nina also couldn't take the pace, with a career and a young family to look after, and these days only brave Matt Merritt shows up for work, stalwartly blogging UK poetry events for the benefit of the many thousands of visitors to the site.

So, a very merry Christmas and three loud cheers for Matt Merritt -- without whom I would have to do some serious blogging!

If you've never visited POETS ON FIRE, why not do so now?

There's even a highly selective poetry forum attached, which I administer ... ;)

Update on POF forum problems

This is a circular re the problems at POF forums, issued by the board hosts:

"An issue at one of the datacenter buildings has knocked the domain name system for InvisionFree and ZetaBoards offline.

Since your ISP remembers domain name information for a few hours at least, this outage will not immediately affect all users.

Please note that even if you can not reach your board, no data has been lost and the server itself is fine. We are working to bring up a backup domain name system for InvisionFree and ZetaBoards as soon as possible."

Trouble at Mill: the POF forum is offline

Due to problems related to the Invision and Zetaboards server, and unfortunately beyond the control of the board admin, the Poets on Fire forums went offline today without any warning.

As the host support forums are also offline, there is absolutely no news at the moment to give board members, either good or bad. All I can do is wait and see what is going on. It could be a temporary glitch, lasting maybe a few days, or it could be a permanent issue related to problems at Invision/Zetaboards. Without either of those sites online, the truth may take some time to emerge. Or the board could be back online within a few hours.

Meanwhile, I suggest members who see this message congregate back at the original home site, which is still extant (a ForumforFree site) at The Poem forum. If you could also pass this message on to others via email or personal blogs, I'd be very grateful.

If you are not a member of The Poem forum, it's easy enough to join and continue the discussions of contemporary poetry there.

The Act of Making

There's been some ping-ponging discussion online in recent days about 'the act of making', thanks to a post on poet George Szirtes' blog where he's been responding to a controversial essay serialised in Poetry Review. The essay in question is by poet and Picador editor Don Paterson and is called 'The Lyric Principle'. Basically, it discusses how poetry is written, not so much in practical terms as in terms of our initial inspiration and the deep well-springs of the craft.

One of George's main objections - and I hope I'm not misrepresenting him here - is that he feels Don's attitude towards the craft to be too 'mysterious' and more like that of a high priest at times than a practising poet. I know exactly what he means by that, but at the same time, I don't see that it's such a bad thing to import a little more spiritualism and mystery into poetry in an age where poetry is being constantly sold to workshoppers as little more than a hobby or some sort of do-it-yourself therapeutic aid.

George Szirtes' excellent and discursive writing blog can be found here, along with links to other fascinating responses by bloggers and forumers to both his comments and the original essay by Don Paterson.

Thanks to Angela France for bringing this to my attention, by the way, via the Poets On Fire forum where she has been inviting others to comment on this too. You can view that topic as a non-member, but you do have to be a member of the forum to comment on it. (However, it only takes a few minutes to apply to join. Theoretically!)

Flight of the Forum

In recent months, problems logging-in and loading pages at the Poem Forum have been getting steadily worse.

Today, I managed to get onto the site briefly and saw a message from one of the other members, suggesting that we 'migrate' to another forum to avoid all the log-in frustrations. That had never occurred to me, as I had always assumed that the problems - whatever they are, and that's not clear - would be resolved and normal posting would resume eventually.

However, after a few moments' thought, it occurred to me to open up a space on my own message board, Poets On Fire, for any Poem members who wanted to keep talking. Which is what I've been doing today - creating a 'Temporary Poem Forum home' on the forum board associated with Poets On Fire.

My POF board is designed for people who want to discuss 'live' poetry. However, this specially-created 'Poem Forum' section will be for those of us who want to talk about English language poetry in print, mainly British poetry, but also from the US and beyond. If this idea catches on and members of the Poem forum do start to migrate to POF, I shall be doing my best to keep an eye on how the two types of member are integrating and will intervene if things go wrong.

I wasn't able to log back onto the Poem Forum to let members know what was happening, but I believe someone else has posted my invitation up there. So hopefully new members will be registering at POF even as I type this.

:ironic expression:

If you're reading this and would like to join the POF forum, it's perfectly simple. Choose a nickname or use your real name, go to http://z11.invisionfree.com/Poets_On_Fire/index.php and register as a new member. A validation email should be sent to you within 24 hours, usually much sooner. Then you can post.

If you have any problems getting validated as a member, contact me via this blog or my website, with your email details. Many spammers try to join POF, and it can be a tough job, deciding who is a bona fide poetry-lover and who deserves to be bent over a barrel and thrashed with fresh nettles.