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Ian, if you look at my defunct magazine Lynx you will see that contributions could come from anywhere. That is what the Internet has been about since its beginning. When I was closely involved with the poetry scene everybody knew everybody else in the webzine area. But that is some years ago and I am not familiar with the current situation. Maybe I should check out my old haunts and see if things have changed. But in those days British webzine was minimal. Douglas Clark, Bath, Somerset, England .... http://www.dgdclynx.plus.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "ian davidson" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Monday, October 11, 2004 7:08 PM Subject: Poetry and the Internet > Hi > > The internet does allow poetry to be distributed fairly easily and Great > Works is, as Paul Green pointed out, a good example. This doesn't mean > Peter > Philpott doesn't work hard at it, but it probably isn't much more work > than > producing a paper magazine and it can, in theory, be read by anyone on the > list, and all issues are permananently available. > > I'm trying to get at what is different about the internet as a way of > distributing poetry or rather what difference it might make to poetry. As > I > said in an earlier mail just about all of its functions could be carried > out > by previous technologies but I'm still wondering whether speed of > distribution and volume of potential readership does make a difference. > Some > of the figures quoted by Dylan and Douglas are pretty impressive and as > someone who helps to produce a magazine with a distribution of a couple of > hundred (Skald) and those mostly to local people, I know we'd never get > near > those numbers. > > I was thinking about whether the internet made poetry more > 'international', > not just in the sense that it can be read in different countries but > whether > its place of origin was less important. So rather than such and such a > poet > or publication being English, or Welsh or Australian for example those > distinctions become unimportant. The internet has no 'sense of place' but > exists everywhere and nowhere. This kind of ties in with earlier > experimental poetry which sought to be specifically international, and > would > often implicitly critique an essentialist idea of a sense of place and > identification with that place, although there is an irony in that most of > those poets would be anti globalisation. Yet the internet is both a cause > and effect of processes of globalisation. > > So the question I seem to be asking is whether the internet continues and > develops an exeprimentalist project of critiquing place and regional or > national identity through its processes of distribution or whether it is > simply another medium for distributing poetry. > > Ian > > _________________________________________________________________ > It's fast, it's easy and it's free. Get MSN Messenger today! > http://www.msn.co.uk/messenger > > -- > This email has been verified as Virus free > Virus Protection and more available at http://www.plus.net >