introduction to the spot

A couple of years ago I was introduced to the website Gay Poetry Online by a regular poster who was unaware that I shared her queer poetic inclinations. She spoke of the site in a moment of openness, offering that the site gave her an outlet for expressing her feelings creatively, in a forum that was, as far as she could tell, unprecedented on the internet. Her words spoke to me. I had recently discovered blogging, and in my journey discover my voice, I noticed that it most often manifested in verse. That reality seemed to place me among an additional minority in the blogosphere, so I was encouraged by the prospect of discovering voices I could brand my partners in rhyme.

For the past two years, Gay Poetry Online has allowed me the opportunity to explore and interact with a number of like minded poets, with fresh, personal takes on life. That is one of the primary reasons the website was ranked among my personal favorites.

A couple of hours ago I received an email from the poet I have claimed as my GPO favorite, hinting that the website outage I'd noticed a couple of days ago, seems to be permanent. It didn't take me long to decide that this was unacceptable.

So I have created this space for members of the seemingly offline treasure, to unveil their creative gems.

I chose Blogger as the platform, because I housed a personal blog here, and the fact that the address gaypoetry.blogspot.com was not claimed seemed an indication that this was a good decision. In order to allow posters as much creative license as possible, I believe that the best idea will be to add interested former members, as authors of this blog. The Blogger platform allows for up to 100 authors, who, if I understand the blog contribution process correctly, would be able to add and edit their works independently once approved as an author by me, who Blogger has titled mastibadministrator. I believe that said title comes with some moderation capabilities. Now, I am neither a fan of censorship, nor disrespect, so all I care to say about that at this point is that I am starting with a spirit of trust and a hope that the need for moderation will be minimal.

As far as the template of this infant blog is concerned, it may change as warranted. Currently, the previous post feature highlights the 10 newest posts, and the archive features monthly publications. In order to prevent the loss of work that sometimes happens when websites shut down unexpectedly, it might be a good idea to save a back up copy of your submissions. Some people may have lost their published work via GPO, and I would like to prevent that from happening with submissions to The Spot (which it seems I just decided will be the abbreviated name for this site). I will also share from personal experience that Blogger tends to like it best if you cut and paste your work from Microsoft Word. And as for the font, sometimes it's a roll of the dice as to whether or not it takes. Also, if you maintained a username at GPO, you might consider entering it as a label in your new posts, so that faithful readers can find your work easily.

So this is a call to former Gay Poetry Online members. If you would like to utilize this space to post your poetic proclamations, send an email to br.thas0ul@gmail.com hit me up on twitter expressing interest, so that I can take steps to add you as an author to the blog. If you were not a member of Gay Poetry Online, but would like to participate, please let me know as well.

A large part of me holds hope that Gay Poetry Online will be revived, because
this techinical junk is some bull$@!# it has been the home to the artistic soul of a number of quality queer poets. However whether or not the space reappears, this space will be here, to encourage silenced poetic voices to ring out loud and clear.
Signed,
brothasoul