Oh June, you make my heart go boom!

by Dermot Glennon

Tuesday 1st June 2010 12:00 am

Hello, hello, and welcome. And, crikey isn't it a scorcher. The yards to the fore of the village inns echo with the sounds of vomitting yorks, and the delicate thwack of leather striking buttock floats on the breeze from next door.

Yes, the summer has blossomed once again into a gathering thirst and I, once more, must hie me to a small island, whence to swim to another island. So, if you send me your wonderful letters, articles and submissions, and I don't reply immediately, it's not because I don't like what you have written. Quite the contrary, in fact, this last is merely a contributory factor.

Fans of the Poetry Jam will have noticed that there is no Poetry Jam this month... yet. The reason for this is that we have not had any usable submissions to this feature in recent times, but you can rectify this anomally. Here's how:

Send an audio recording of you reading one of your best poems to Steve Garside: stevegarside@hotmail.com

Please send audio poems that are recorded without any backing music or sound effects, because we can't use them (and we add backing tracks later). Remember to include the text of your poem in Word .doc or Rich text .rtf form with your submission.

Isobel writes:

Dear Dermot,

A lot of quality writing and hard work obviously goes into producing the Features section but it seems to be a bit of a back water, unvisited by many on the site.

For all its ills, the blog section seems to be the main hub of the site, where poets visit and interract on a regular basis. Bearing this in mind, I thought it would be a good idea if you considered also blogging some of the articles in the features section. This would give people a taste of what can be found in features and direct them there for more.

I personally, don't like the uninteractive nature of features. I want to comment on Poem of the Month, and on some other articles but too often comments are disabled. You no doubt have your reasons for this, (avoidance of contention for one) - I do think it detracts from the atmosphere and community feel of the section though.

I realise that WOL is under constant development so it could be that future changes see all this resolved. You did ask for opinions and suggestions though...

Regards,

Isobel

Hi Isobel,

Hope all's well with you and thanks for your email. I understand your suggestion regarding the less interactive nature of the Ezine (features section), but that is what we are aiming for (to some degree) and I will explain what I mean by that.

If you can imagine that you are out at a Write Out Loud event, and someone hands you a glossy magazine that is the official magazine of Write Out Loud and is packed with features and articles, this would be by definition an entirely non-interactive publication, other than any opportunities to submit articles and opinions. The features section can be viewed in a similar manner.

It is true to say that the Ezine a bit of a backwater when viewed as a component part of the entire Write Out Loud site, but it is an additional section to the site that hopefully complements the blogs, news, discussions and gig guide sections.

I am told that the analytics say that we have over 2000 readers per month, which is quite a high figure for a magazine about poetry. Doubtless, some of those readers will be non-participatory in some of the other sections of the site and vice versa.

We are keen to maintain the magazine-like nature of the features section and so we are still of the view that the content that we publish should mostly be selected by the relevant features editors prior to publication, but we do discuss such things at Ezine team meetings and this policy is not set in stone.

Best regards,

Derm