Poetry Fishbowl Report for Tuesday, October 14

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This month's poetry fishbowl got off to a slow start (comments turned off again, but I caught that after about an hour) and gradually picked up speed. I started around 11:30 AM and wrapped up a little after midnight, with lunch and supper breaks.

I wrote 23 poems, the majority of them medium-length. Oddly, all of them were free verse -- not another form in sight. I also noticed a surprising tendency towards vulgarity, something that appears rarely in my poetry; I tried to tag those accordingly in my descriptions, so if you dislike crude language, check yesterday's post before voting in today's forthcoming poll. The freebie poems are "The Doll House" (with 15 comments) and "The Repair Job" (with 4 comments; be aware that this poem is snide and gruesome political humor). There were 38 comments on the main fishbowl thread, and 9 people posted prompts.

This month's donors are: dakiwiboid, dulcinbradbury, minor_architect, janetmiles, and je_reviens. So far I've received $38, with another $20 coming via snailmail. Thanks to everyone for all the generosity and support. I have posted the sponsored poem "Motherless" (with 8 comments) in a separate post. I'll get to posting the general sponsorship poll and the donor perk post as soon as I can.

Poetry Poll in My Blog Today

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I've posted the poll to select poems for publication funded by general donations to yesterday's Poetry Fishbowl. You're welcome to drop by and vote.

Perk Technique: Extra Votes

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Donors love perks. It's good to reward people for contributing to your cyberfunded creativity projects. Here's a new perk technique I tried today.

I wound up with so many poems and so much money for the October Poetry Fishbowl that the general donation poll had to be structured differently. Most of the time I figure out the available options and list those (this single poem OR these two poems, etc.), with radio buttons. This time I had to list all 20 eligible poems individually, because there would've been WAY too many combinations, and I used checkboxes. So what I did was give the donors FIVE votes and other audience members THREE votes. This way, everyone gets to vote, but the donors have a little extra influence over what poems get published.

What do you think? Good idea? Something you can use?

Duotrope's Digest in the Red

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One of the best online market guides, Duotrope's Digest, is free to users and runs solely on donations. They're short of their goal currently and need donations. If you can spare a few bucks, please throw something in the virtual hat.