Blog-posted poems and problems with publication

May 2007 

Does your blog or your participation in an online workshop jeopardize your future as a published poet? Are poems posted to personal blogs or workshopped on-line “previously published”?

Some editors believe so. It’s a question that matters to blogging poets everywhere. We’ve been exploring this topic over the last week or two and are very grateful for the time and energy many poetry magazine editors have taken to articulate their positions in this regard. As you will see from the input below, the editor community is divided on this topic.

So if you are a magazine editor, given the ambiguity and pervasiveness of this issue in the poetry blogosphere, please consider editing your submissions guidelines to state clearly where your publication stands on this point. If you would like to participate in the discussion by guest-blogging your own post, email me at nic_sebastian at hotmail dot com. 

Related blog posts:

Publications that accept blog-posted poems:

Publications actively uninterested in blog-posted poems:

9 Comments

  1. Blog-posted poems redux « Very Like A Whale said,

    May 25, 2007 at 4:57 am

    [...] started a standing page listing publications on each side of the debate here (link also in the standing page column to the left), with, where relevant, some additional remarks [...]

  2. Sam Rasnake said,

    June 1, 2007 at 1:57 pm

    At Blue Fifth, I only accept unpublished works by writers. I have a notebook blog where I post drafts of poems, hoping to obtain comments. I may edit the works or leave as is, but I only keep the posted for five or six days, then remove them. I have had a several of those drafts accepted for publication - but those poems that have been accepted aren’t archived at my blogs. I don’t consider those poems to have been published simply because they appeared for a short time at my blogs.

  3. 'Blue Fifth Review' editor on blog-posted poems « Very Like A Whale said,

    June 1, 2007 at 5:19 pm

    [...] Sam also says (commenting here): [...]

  4. Definition of ‘publication’ & the importance of editors « Very Like A Whale said,

    June 2, 2007 at 7:51 am

    [...] More on the blog-posted poems issue here. [...]

  5. 'Shit Creek Review' editor on blog-posted poems « Very Like A Whale said,

    June 3, 2007 at 3:32 am

    [...] More on the whole blog-posted poems issue here. [...]

  6. Simmons said,

    June 7, 2007 at 5:40 pm

    You can add Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments (www.terrain.org) to the list of journals that do accept/publish blog-posted poems, thanks.

  7. verylikeawhale said,

    June 8, 2007 at 4:07 am

    Done. Thanks for stopping by! Nic

  8. C. E. Chaffin said,

    June 8, 2007 at 7:51 pm

    I just ran into the blog publication issue recently. A poem was accepted by a paying journal, they googled me and found the poem at my blog. It did not queer the acceptance, but they did ask me to add a link to their magazine when the issue comes out. I thought that was polite and rational; I offered to strike it outright from my blog but the editor did not think that necessary. So, one reasonable solution– though I think to be safe, whenever you submit a blogged but otherwise unpublished poem you ought to erase it from your blog–unless it continues to live on in search engines for a while? This is another question to be answered. Thanks for your lists and raising this issue.
    CE

  9. Little Fury » Blog Archive » sorry I could not travel both said,

    February 8, 2008 at 9:22 pm

    [...] 2007 11:37 am Ross Bull City Press, Poetry Very Like a Whale has been sorting out all sides of the “previously published” debate for a week or two. When I stumbled across these threads this morning, I immediately blurted out my [...]

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