POETRY RESOURCES

An enormous quantity of poetry, literary criticism and theory, and much else besides is now available on the Internet, and new sites appear by the week, many of them excellent. Even more staggering is the growth in non-English and non-European language sites, which is surely to be welcomed. Literary ezines also appear like overnight mushrooms, disappearing just as fast. Keeping up with such phenomenal activity is not easy, and many academic sites have given up trying, arguing that the better work is still in printed form.
I think that is true, but only for the moment. When the new generation of ebook readers finally arrive, most of what is carried at great cost and inconvenience in major libraries will move online, a boon not only to scholarship but immensely important to education in the Third World. Even the 3,000-odd small presses should benefit, of which only a few currently have more than token Internet representation. Some have disdained Internet representation altogether, and continue to assert an avant garde status in a seventies magazine style, guaranteeing that circulations stay in the low hundreds, and finances a recurring nightmare.
All that will change as readers demand value for money. Marketing has become enormously sophisticated — I am writing now as the Editor of a well-known site for online selling — and some very sharp minds in large corporations are figuring out how content can be turned into ready cash. Believe them when they say it will be done. Even now it's practically impossible to get a good listing in the major search engines unless your site is astonishingly good, or you are prepared to pay, and pay handsomely.
How does all this affect the resource listings here? Only that you should take advantage of a service that is already under threat. I don't have the time to maintain these 2,800 listings by more than automated link checkers at intervals of a few months, and would ask you let me know when your site address changes, or you come across something of interest in your own browsing.
Poetry Online
On this page are listed directories of poetry magazines and ezines, popular (amateur) poetry sites, sites for mainstream British and American poetry, for foreign poetry, for sites with audio and multimedia, and sites announcing poetry readings. Poetry ezines per se are not listed, and the small presses have their own page (see below). Please don't ask me to list your own poetry site or ezine — there are just too many to do this properly — but submit to the directories that do maintain such listings.
Poetry Resources
Poetry is also an intellectual activity, and calls on a great deal of material. On the poetry resources page is to be found general writer's resources, online libraries and dictionaries, guides to style, rhetoric and grammar, plus leading sites for philosophy, literary theory and criticism, poetry teaching, book news, poetry publishers and publishing advice, legal matters, electronic publishing, website hosting and access by subscription libraries.
Workshops
Your local writing circle or community centre will be your first port of call, but this lists on- and off-line poetry workshops, Internet bulletin Boards and individual critiquing or tutorial services.
Bibliography
Books and printed sources cited in the text are listed some eight hundred in all.
© C. John Holcombe 2007. Material can be freely used for non-commercial purposes if cited in the usual way.