Saturday, May 13, 2006

Online poetry update ...

I have a lot of reading and thinking to do, so blogging will be light for the remainder of the day. But here's a question: Anybody have any numbers worth citing with regard to online poetry?

6 comments:

  1. According to Internet World Stats, internet users have grown from 16 million in 1995 to over a billion today.

    According to the New York Times the number of blogs doubles every six months.

    According to Cordite Review in Australia China has more than 250 poetry websites.

    According to search, after search, after search, there seems to be zero number of people who actually know how many poetry websites exist.

    Same thing for literary websites.

    Any of this interesting enough to cite? Probably not, huh?

    -blue

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  2. According to the American Academy of Poets, their poets.org website draws one million unique visitors each month.

    Technorati claims that there are around 4000 blog posts per day tagged as "poetry."

    Google returns 397,000 results for the "online+poetry" search phrase.

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  3. Thanks, guys. That's actually helpful - you know how newspapers just love numbers.

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  4. Here's some fun numbers. Poets.org has 1130 active members, Poetry-Free-For-All has 10,143 active members (defined as 1 post or more in forums in the last 12 months)

    My very informal numbers from searches: dmoz lists approximately 1800 poetry writing related links.

    http://www.poetry-portal.com has listings for poetry related sites. It's somewhat out of date - but out of 61 listed poetry writers forums, 19 are broken, the rest are viable. Based on those links and their active memberslists (where available) forums have an average of 381 active users.

    Of course, that sample isn't really statistically sound, but if you take it as a sample of the total population (do a search on Google or check out the Electronic Poetry Center) where any search returns virtually thousands of poetry links...my average comes from just 42 sites. It makes you wonder about how big those numbers really are, you know?

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  5. You're welcome, Frank.

    This isn't exactly a number, but I feel it's important:

    Amateur poetry is everywhere on the internet. It can be personal, prideful, or cathartic - but it's undeniably popular.

    It is circulated via e-mail, posted in private and public group discussion forums, shared on thousands of weblogs, published in many small e-zines, and growing. Exact numbers are difficult to estimate, because it isn't an organized activity. It's a grassroots culture of personal artistic expression within an encouraging medium. Some of it is quite good.

    Is it literature? Not according to academic definitions.

    Will it influence the direction and appreciation of poetry in the future? That's the question worth asking.

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  6. Writing 'about' online poetry must be somewhat like writing 'about' the sky...which just is...This is a fractal, I'm sure you'll discover.
    Try these links
    Web Del Sol poetry portal
    Writers Block forum
    AnnMarie Eldon
    but I'm just a poet so imagining life without the fractal-link is like trying to think of life without arms and hands.
    I wish you sincerely the Brit-best-of-luck Frank.
    Sunday best...

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