A friend who is also an editor said to us recently, “You can privately award monthly prizes for the rudest message. I imagine there will be one or two. I have had some amazing ones. It takes all my self-control not to reply rudely or sarcastically, since it only escalates.”
We had to hold ourselves back from asking more about the escalations, as they were clearly speaking from experience. But so far our experience is that you lot out there — poets, writers, readers — are delightful; friendly, interested and supportive. You have sent us lots of poems of a high standard, you’ve read our features and reviews (if page views are anything to go by) and said you’ve enjoyed them, and you have given us great feedback on the site, its speed, its accessibility and the way it foregrounds the text and looks clean and attractive.
What have you said? “I have seen The Friday Poem — it’s excellent!”, “Great website, loved the clarity and general vibe and the photos made me chuckle”, “You seem to be making exemplary progress”, “I’ll follow the site with interest”, “Long live The Friday Poem!” Aw shucks guys (blushes).
Obviously it’s early days, but we feel heartened and encouraged by all this. Big thanks to Khadija Rouf for her piece on how poetry can be used to help heal trauma, and also to Bruno Cooke for his essay on the poetry of pandemics, both up on the site now. Thanks to Amy Wack for agreeing to be the subject of our second In Conversation, up soon. Thanks also to our contributors this month, Matthew Stewart and Katrina Naomi, and our reviewers, Steven Lovatt, Richie McCaffery and Mat Riches.
We initially planned to upload a bunch of features and reviews on the first Friday of every month, but have decided to put up a new feature and a new review every Friday, along with the new poem. We will editorialize (is that even a word?) once a month, and put up a new picture of us, the editors, in some sort of daft guise. Well, someone’s got to do it.