Poetisphere.com, Poets101.com, BloggingPoet.com, and Billy Jones have created the online poetry honor "Poet Laureate Of The Blogosphere." They run an online nomination and voting process that runs the month of April, in conjunction with Poetry Month. The rules for nominating a poet include:
- poets must be bloggers who have been blogging and posting their own original poetry online for no less than six months (prior to the starting date of the nominating process) OR links to their poetry may be found easily on their site.
- poets must be posting at least some of their poetry in English
I’m posting about this only because I read Robert Silliman’s blog and he posted about being nominated, which, in my opinion, is a very noteworthy nomination. I only know Silliman from his blog. I am not familiar with his poetry but if it is anything like his engaging and erudite essays, then it’s exceptional. If anything, Silliman’s Blog should be receiving a Pulitzer nomination for any number of categories: Feature Writing, Commentary, Editorial, etc.
I followed the link to Poetisphere.com and learned that Robert Silliman (from Pennsylvania) ended up winning the vote by 1, 95-94, which looks more like a college basketball score than an international poet laureate decision. The poor bloke who lost the vote by one is Asharf Osman (also from Pennsylvania). Word up! Pennsylvania is obviously the land the muses call home.
This annual Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere appointment isn’t necessarily a bad idea. What is bad is its narrow breadth of reach. And the argument that it is only in its second year doesn’t hold water. Don’t you think that the prestigious title "poet laureate" requires visibility? Shouldn’t it be advertised and communicated to a majority audience of poets and online publishers in advance so that they can, in turn, participate? Sadly, it seems that only the members of or readers of these blogs (listed above) were even made aware of the event. Outside that minute circle, we of the interested party had to rely on the nominated poets themselves to market votes for themselves, a.k.a. Silliman, a process that is both humiliating and depletes the prestige-ness of the nomination.
Bottom line: advertising is key. Now, having just said that, I came up with a devious thought: wouldn’t it be something if Silliman’s win was staged to actually generate attention. I know. I know. Stop while I’m ahead.
Congrats, Ron.
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