Poetry

Big Miss was very excited. She had a letter from the USA. In the window of the envelope was her 16 line poem "The foamy sea in your eyes" that she had submitted to poetry.com - the International Library of Poetry. (I refuse to provide a hyperlink, for reasons that will become apparent).

After carefully reading and discussing your poem, our Selection Committee has certified your poem as a semi-finalist in our International Open Poetry Contest. Your poem will automatically be entered into the final competition held in July 2006. As a semi-finalist, you now have an excellent chance of winning one of 104 cash or gift prizes--including the $1000.00 grand prize...
And that's not all...
..In celebration of the unique talent that you have displayed, we also wish to publish your poem on its own page in what promises to be one of the most highly regarded collections of poetry we have ever published...

Immortal Verses

The letter went on to say she was under no obligation to do anything, but she could reserve a copy with a small deposit.

I was suspicious. How much was this book going to be? The enclosed leaflet explained it would be high quality and she could get it for $49.50 - a $20.00 discount on the 'Publisher's List Price' of $69.95.

Now I really was suspicious. No she couldn't get the book. Still she was really excited. "I'm a semi-finalist! I'm going to be published!" She rushed off to tell her mates.

I did a bit of a search. Poetry.com Scam says

Poetry.com is a fraud publishing organization that features it's online writing contest. It literally accepts 100% of applicants as 'Semi-finalists' in their 'international poetry competition' and sends a letter to the poor victims. The letter is full of flattery saying that you are a wonderful poet and the 'sectional committee' or 'panel of judges' has decided your poetry is good enough to be published.

Oh dear. And Poetrynotcom goes into more detail. The amazing thing is that poetry.com has been going for years, despite concerted attempts to get it removed from the web. There is nothing actually illegal about what they do, which is why they are still going, but I think they should come clean about publishing the poems only of people who offer to buy the book, and that they only sell the book to those people.

The missus went to fetch her and tell her. Poor thing. Still, she got a good laugh out of the Making Light review of attempts to write the worst possible poems to be accepted as semi-finalists. (Apparently nobody has yet succeeded in writing one bad enough not to be accepted). Flubblebop is my favorite:

flobble bobble blop
yim yam widdley woooo
oshtenpopple gurby
yip yip yip
nish-nash nockle nockle
opfem magurby voey
Ahh! “Wurby tictoc?”
“quefoxenjib masaloouterp!”
bim-burm nurgle shliptog
afttowicky wicky wicky
erm addmuksle slibberyjert! …
ILP declared it a semifinalist, and published it in their Promises of Love anthology

Our plan is to submit an acrostic poem and see if we can get it published. We've only written the first letter of each line so far:
p
o
e
t
r
y
.
c
o
m
i
s
a
s
c
a
m