There are degrees of skill in poetry as well as pottery. Maybe it's enough to get your hands covered with clay and see the crude lump turn into something vaguely resembling a vessel. Until one day someone comes along and says, "Hey, you really have something there. Have you thought about selling your work?" You might pull together a few of your pieces and sit in the sun at the next wine and art festival or, if you are clever, talk a local shopkeeper into displaying a couple of your pots on his shelves. If you are possessed of genius, your work might attract the attention of an art critic along the way or you might win a competition if you can only find out where to apply. But the process is pretty random and public tastes aren't ready for your style. They can get glitzier looking imported stuff from chain boutiques for only a few quid.

What is the market for poetry? A few of my friends have complained that poets these days are only writing for other poets. I am not sure that is such a bad thing. I have read poetry since I was a child, but have read a lot more since I started writing my own. The authors I read earlier in my life were more well known than those I have found myself reading in the last three years but, with a few exceptions, I have been touched more by the "unknown" authors that have crossed my path. Something about writing myself made me appreciate what people were attempting to do and how well they were doing it. I couldn't get enough. I was disappointed in the two feet long poetry sections in my local bookstores and started pawing through piles of discarded books at flea markets. I found a second hand book seller who, noticing my tastes, would watch for poetry volumes, selling them to me for no more than fifty cents a piece. I could tell within a minute or two whether I was going to like the collection and rarely came home from his stall without three or four volumes to read.

The literary magazines I picked up in the larger bookstores were disappointing. In most cases, I couldn't justify spending the three or four dollars asked. There were collections of the more well known poets but new books are quite expensive. I didn't need to own them — I just wanted the opportunity to read the poems. The library was full of older stuff but there was nothing available that was published after the seventies.

In the course of searching for good new poetry to read I discovered the World Wide Web. Now talk about stuff not worth reading: the web is full of it! But, on the other hand, access is easy and search engines, link sites and webrings abound to point you in a direction. Granted, it is just a direction — not necessarily the right one. But it is a path into which you can take the first step. It doesn't take long to glance at a poem or two on a site and get a feel for the tastes of an editor, or the lack of same. In the course of winding my way around the Poetry Webring (when I started, there were only 800 some odd sites in the chain — now there are close to four times that many, and the list is growing) I learned HTML and (off and on) have edited my own poetry zine:

iguanaland: still the hottest poetry rag south of the virtual border

I received hundreds of submissions for publication that I felt the need to reject. Better than 50% of the poems I actually published were ones that I recruited from other sources, including the web-conferencing portion of my site, Fandango Virtual. The only important criterion for inclusion was that the poem had to sing to ME. I received only a few emails from people who wrote to say they loved the mag. I finally reached a point where the time spent in keeping it up didn't justify the satisfaction I received from it. I don't surf as much as I once did because now that I have moved to Scotland I have to pay for the phone call to make the connection in addition to the cost of my ISP. With no income these things matter. With luck, that situation will change one of these days and I can read as much as I like.

In the meantime, those of you who want to be read can find a multitude of places that will accept your work. Look for a venue that seems to be selective and features work that "sings to you." In spite of your frustration with being told that your work is not right for a particular zine, take all criticism in the spirit in which it is offered. Be especially grateful if an editor takes the time to tell you what seems to be lacking. Even if you think he or she is "wrong" you can learn something. And don't try to see how many places will take your work. I would rather have my work published in one or two zines whose standards reflect my own than to have my name splattered all over the web in forums that signal between the lines "send us your poems — we will print anything."