Some years ago poets and emergent writers used a forum on Poetry Ireland for discussion, testing poetry, and commenting on the work of others. The idea was good, although the tech wasn’t so hot. After some discussion with the then Admin it was decided to have a place (not online) where poems could be published with a view to later submissions. This was a generous extension of your basic discussion forum, and geared to the need of the emergent writer. Poems that appear online are not published by many magazines, so the space had to be a closed one.
Many at the Poetry Ireland Forum went on to publish these works. Unfortunately, the forum is to be closed and while there is no announcement on the forum pages, there is brief note there on the closure and deletion of the forum available to members. There was an email :
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| Dear C Murray
Over the past few weeks, Poetry Ireland has been engaged in an in-depth review of all its online resources, including the Poetry Ireland Forum. After careful deliberation, we have decided to close down the Poetry Ireland Forum, with effect from Friday 8th November 2013. We strongly advise all members to make copies of their posts by midnight Thursday 7th November, as after this date the Forum and all its contents will be permanently deleted from our servers. We would like to take this opportunity to thank all Forum members for their participation over the past few years. |
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I believe that this deadline for removal of works has been extended, though not indefinitely, and that an archive has been made available to members of the PI Forum. The type of tech used does not allow for portability, so files must be manually taken off and uploaded elsewhere. This is a huge and upsetting inconvenience.
I have been in and out removing drafts of poems, the majority of them later published. I am linking them below this brief post. The conversations and encouragement on a place dedicated to poetic interests is to be expediently dumped down the tubes and some of that loss is irretrievable for me (and others)
I hope when PI finish their deliberations on their online facilities that they will find a way to extend their space to emergent writers in a manner that includes data liberation tools and a stated ethos regarding intellectual rights.
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| Dear C. Murray,
There is an archive of the Forum, which is currently available to all registered Forum members at http://www.poetryireland.ie/forum/archive/index.php Unfortunately, we no longer have the resources to host and moderate the Forum. We strongly recommend that members make copies of any posts/original work they wish to keep. |
Chris Murray 