From: casteley@phil.ruu.nl (Eric Casteleyn)
Subject: Re: Attention, please!
Organization: Department of Philosophy, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 1992 09:25:16 GMT



In rec.arts.poems you write:


>this is your big chance to flame or fame...

>i write quite a bit of poetry and am experiencing a recurring problem
>with said activity.  friends and strangers alike often read my work and
>tell me that it is of excellent quality, and often tell me i should 
>consider doing it "professionally" (ie publish).  in addition, i am usually
>satisfied with what i write.  however, the problem is that whenever i enter
>a contest or present my work to some similar "authority" i never get any
>sort of notice, good nor bad.  so, i have come to the masses of r.a.p.
>(rap? hmm... what an unfortunate acronym) to ask that you would please
>solve the dilemma once and for all:  am i really good or do i stink?

>please praise, condemn, or otherwise critically comment on the following
>posts (if you would be so kind)...

>(thankyou)
>:) cyberdragoN *>


   A few comments:


 If you are satisfied with what you write, then that is the main (not the
the only) criterium. Publishers of course are business people, ergo they
have to see a profit in something before they publish it (or so I imagine).
There isn't much profit in even the most established poets, because poetry
(in print) has a small audience. 
 The reason that you don't get any reaction at all, might be that publishers
are very busy people (this I know!). There is an easy solution to all this:
Publish your own stuff! This may sound like a big step, but actually it's
not that expensive. There are copy shops most everywhere, so you just     
collect some poetry, do the layout by computer, print it, copy it, and
Bob's your uncle. I know it can be done because I did it, and so have 
lots of young poets I know. (If it seems like too much trouble, you
can always send me some poems, since I publish a small magazine with
prose, poetry, art and anything else worthwhile.. I'll put more info below)

 Are you really good or do you stink? Well this is of course a very
subjective qualification, and I for one would have to read some more
before giving my opinions.

 About the acronym: Why is it unfortunate? Do you think it's misguiding,
or do you just hate rap music? I don't think people will mistake this group
for one that deals with rap music (I haven't seen anyone from alt.rap post
here, ever.) If you just don't like rap music, that's ok (of course!) but
that is your opinion, and not everyone may agree (probably a lot of people
will..) I for one love hip hop (a much better name, I think, and less likely
to cause any acronymical trouble 8) and will even go so far as to grant
some of it the highly desirable name Poetry. (Time for a Frank Zappa
quote: Hip hop is poetry, it may not be very good poetry, but it's the
only poetry America's got. eoq , I do not totally agree, because I think
some of it is very good, and I imagine that there must be more poetry
in America than just hip hop (any thoughts?), but it gets the point across)
I apologize for the last sentence, it is horrible.

 (I hope I get the fame instead of the flame, we'll see..)

(Nothanks)


         the EJC


     disclaimer below is information for people who'd like to submit poetry
 
     or really anything for my magazine...








   To answer some questions: You can send in as many submissions as you want,
in any format you like, but if you don't want your entries to be restyled,
submit them on A5-size paper. Send all submissions to:

       Ikarus publishing
       (E.J. Casteleyn)
       Watermolenhoek 16
       2807 ED Gouda
       The Netherlands       or email them to: casteley@phil.ruu.nl

   And now for some more info: We are a very small, non-commercial publisher.
We publish Dutch and English work in our magazine, by all kinds of young poets
and writers. Since we have no large investers (yet), we do the typing, general
layout, copying and binding of the magazine and the occasional book we print    ourselves. We try to keep the prices of our publications low, so that anyone
can buy them. We (the editors of Ikarus) make no money whatsoever, and we
don't wish to, because we consider this more of a hobby. However, since we
don't make fat profits, we are not able to pay contributors to our magazine
in any other currency than eternal fame. Writers who publish an entire book
do receive an author's fee of 10% of the total sales + two free copies of their book. I hope this has answered your questions..

    We're looking forward to your submission(s) !!






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