In 2001, Poetry International established the ‘Poetry International Web’ (PIW) Foundation, which set out to give people access to poetry from many countries in the world by the hell of the Internet. The website is a great success, now attracting some 1200 unique visitors a day from all over the world. And each week we welcome more. Poetry and the Internet are hitting it off far better than many of us expected. In 2003, Holland’s outgoing poet laureate Gerrit Komrij, inaugurating a poetry site for the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague, spoke these immortal words: “Poetry at last has found its ideal partner. It has made it more fluid, more agile, you name it. Paper is after all more like – a gravestone. It’s final. The computer screen renews, rejuvenates, it allows for addition and relegation to the trash – it’s mobile, it’s versatile. It’s just the thing for poetry.”

The website
www.poetryinternational.org has been online since November 6, 2002, providing anyone with access to a computer anywhere in the world, with an opportunity to meet poetry, poets, and a country. Countries participating to date are Australia, Greece, Portugal, China, India, Slovenia, Colombia, Israel, South Africa, Croatia, Italy, Ukraine, France, Morocco, Zimbabwe, Germany, Netherlands.

In these countries organisations and editors make their national poetry accessible in their own language and in English translation. They collaborate with the central editor in Rotterdam in preparing a versatile digital magazine, which serves as an up-to-date source of information on international poetry. Five more countries, England and Belgium among them, are wishing to join. PIW has set its sights on forty countries within the next five years.

The quality of the poetry and translations is high, as is the standard of maintaining the site’s versatility and topicality. These standards operate independently of such notions as First, Second, or Third World, even without taking account of the difference between countries that are fully digitalised and those we think are not. One of the site’s best domains is Zimbabwe, brimming with amazing, beautiful poetry, a domain which constantly renews itself and is truly representative of that country’s poetry. Not surprisingly, for Zimbabwe’s poets the site is their one and only window to the outside world to air their voice. A free voice, that is, so long as the Internet escapes the watchful eye of the authorities.

European countries seem to be having more trouble building a satisfactory domain on this international poetry site. In many of them government culture budgets have to be shared out among hundreds of projects. Most of them serving only a national purpose, and what is available for international literary projects has to be divided between several organisations, each claiming the honour of being their country’s poetry ambassador to the world. Yet the European countries taking part in the site, find it a superb opportunity to distribute their poetry around the world in a simpler and livelier manner than by way of a book.

The festival
The website is a rich source of poetry and information for magazine editors, publishers and festival planners. Poetry International, which instigated the plan for the site in 2001, itself benefits from it. Poetry International annually stages the Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam, which is one of the world’s leading poetry festivals. Through the international website, the festival can tap into an enormously rich source, not only to feed a public which needs more than an annual festival to still its appetite, but also to keep up with developments in international poetry.

“Evening explodes in my hand, my hand and fingers unravel a hot clumsy hand stitches darkness in zigzag the orange exploded in my hand the orange spits blood evening is crowded in an old tin can The sea gathers in my lap I stroke its head Sleep and be silent the sea the sea–” Ella Bat-Tsion (Israel), a participant of the festival. Above passage has been taken from his ‘The orange exploded in my hand’.

The funding
The site has so far been made possible by a subsidy from the European Commission (until mid-2005), the Netherlands Ministry of Culture (start-up subsidy), and several other funds. The country-partners also contribute, and some of them pay their contributions with help from such institutions as the HIVOS foundation and the City of Rotterdam.

Most of this funding will cease in 2005, the project has become either too established or too international to fulfil the funders’ criteria. Although the Dutch government’s Culture Board and Culture Ministry seemed favourably disposed, PIW has not escaped the effects of this year’s cuts in the culture budget and has lost its title to ongoing government funding over the period 2005-2008.

Other major international funds seem to be exhausted, and PIW’s only hope for survival is a second three-year grant from the European Commission. The Commission rarely approves second grants, but Poetry International has good hope that the success of this project, which involves the cooperation of so many European partners, will make it decide otherwise.

Poetry.com: Rhyming your way to success

Poetry is believed to be a valuable form of expression, no matter who writes it. It does not belong to a chosen few only, as everyone has his/her own individual style and point of view. Poetry is believed to be solely an expression of the heart, irrespective of the poet’s educational level or background. Poetry.com, the prime destination for amateur poets on the Internet, aims at giving encouragement to ones unique vision. It is sponsored by the ‘International Library of Poetry’, and is the largest and most comprehensive poetry site on the Internet. It works towards the mission of eliminating the traditional barriers that prevent most people from having their messages heard. What makes poetry.com the definitive source for personal creative expression in the world is the fact that over 5.1 million poets have submitted poetry to this site. The website provides the perfect platform for the entire world of real people, who share their passion for poetry and are interested in learning more about the poet and their artistry. Each year, poetry.com conducts two conventions and symposia that provide three days of non-stop poetry, fun, and entertainment. Yearly participation of over 4000 poets from 60 countries around the world, makes it the largest international gathering of poets. The site provides a variety of exciting online contests to encourage creativity and talent. Listing some of these contests, presently the website has a poetry contest for amateur poets, whereby it has slated 1175 prizes totaling $58,000.00 in the coming months. Another online contest is the ‘poetry in motion’ where one can win both cash and prizes. This entails creation of a poem from the selection of words presented. The ‘Haiku contest’ is based on ‘Haiku’, which is a Japanese verse form that relies on brevity and simplicity to convey its message. It is usually three lines of five, seven, and five syllables, and frequently includes natural images or themes. It is based on a Zen Buddhist philosophy of simplicity and the idea of perfection that excludes the extraneous. Poetry.com provides an opportunity to the poets to compete against other poets, for great prizes, in a fun and entertaining way. The website provides an exhaustive data bank of over 100 greatest ever written poems, along with the same number of love poems. Moreover, there is a huge resource of poets from across the world, this being an alphabetical directory of poets where a huge resource of poems is available. A unique feature of the website is ‘rhyming dictionary and thesaurus’, which allows the visitor to find synonyms, meanings, rhythms, definitions, homophones and more, for a particular word. This surely proves to be an inspiring and learning experience for poets. A section on ‘poets’ workshop’ provides an enriching experience to the poets to get a highly personal and honest feedback that would help them improve their craft. The website allows the poet to check his/her general poetic knowledge, however at the same time this has nothing to do with ones creativity or present ability or future potential to write good poetry. It is simply an assessment of one’s knowledge of poetic structure, form and technique. Under the section on ‘poetic techniques’, Kathy Hoeck in ‘Poetic Metamorphosis: Revising Your Work’, gives a perfect guide for one to produce a well-laid, polished and professional work of art. ‘Publish your own book of poetry’ is another option that the site provides. Watermark Press, the largest publisher of poetry in the world, has developed an exclusive technology to enable the poet to publish as few as fifteen copies of their own collection of poetry, in a fine setting. Furthermore, the website allows any person to listen to poems as with audio. The resources and links section on the website gives a random list of various poets who have their poetry online as an individual page. A tour down this page is sure to be a delight for the poets. Poetry.com gives a marvelous opportunity to poets from all over the world to contribute their creations on the websites. It makes it possible for the poets to reach millions of people. Divya Jain, divya@csdms.org