Closing out 2023 means that Poets Online has been online for 25 years. A significant number for any publication, especially one that features only poetry.
Our January issue will be the 316th prompt and issue of poems. I never referred to them as "issues" at the start back in 1998, but over the years as our audience and contributors expanded that became the label.
The site started as an e-mail exchange among four poets taking turns at suggesting a prompt and then e-mailing our poems to each other. As more poets joined the group, it became an awkward mailing process, and the website was created. The following year we created a mailing list to remind people to check the latest prompt and read the poems. That list now has hundreds of subscribers.
By 20023, a free hosting website and free domain weren't enough, so I bought the domain poetsonline.org, purchased hosting, and created a new list and email using Google.
We still try to accept the best poems that respond to the current prompt in a serious way. We have always thought of the site as a place where poets of varying ages and experiences could get published. We have plenty of people who read and don't submit and a good number of teachers and students have written us to say that they find the site useful. More than a hundred other sites link to us. If your poem is published and you use it in a book later, Poets Online should be acknowledged as its first appearance.
Although I never know how many more anniversaries we will have, I am thankful for all the poems I've read and poets I have made contact with over this quarter century.
Ken Ronkowitz
Follow this blog for all things poetry.
To see our past prompts and more than 300 issues,
visit our website at poetsonline.org
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