This site was developed because none of the poetry-related sites I saw focused on the free resources available to poets who wanted to continue to work on the "craft" of their poetry.
I've seen many poets on message boards state that they don't read poetry because they don't want their poetry to be "influenced" by others. These people are writing poetry for their own "fame" and not to contribute to the greater dialogue that the literary world helps create so that readers can see connections between themselves and the people/world around them.
Any poet worth his/her words knows that there is always something to be learned from reading another poet's work, or from the painful process of revising one's own poetry. In reading other people's poetry, we can see the great diverse number of ways that a poem can get a message across. We can see the numerous ways that language can be manipulated. We can see "new" ways of using words as a means of expression.
But, unfortunately, not every poet can afford to get an MFA or attend a three-week writing workshop in Tuscany. Some can't even afford an online class.
The free online lectures, articles and interviews presented here are for the benefit of poets who recognize that a poem is not a poem the minute our pen lifts from the paper, and who strive to write the best poetry they can, whether they have an MFA or not.
Link suggestions can be sent to geyerwin at yahoo.com.
