Survey for TTB Patrons -- Please

[Tom]

Greetings TTB'ers,

I have recently been consumed by questions for which I have no answers. So I am seeking responses so I can start trying to understand things better. So here we go. Please post to this thread below your responses.

1. Other poetry sites. Do you participate at other poetry sites? How frequently? How extensively-- read only, post, critique? Etc. What do you like about other sites -- what draws you in? What keeps you going back? Anything they do that we could be doing beneficially? Do you think we should be attempting things cooperatively with other sites? I have lots of ideas on this, but very much want to hear from you.

2. Other Activities at TTB. You've hung out here, you know what we have and don't have. Some sites have different features. The old MWC had a very active chat board, a very active set of word game threads, and both prose and poetry. BBBFF has attempted the same thing, but of course their poetry sucks.

3. Keeping NaPoers. I have been abundantly overt in telling our seasonal NaPo All Stars that we are open all year around. I love that TTB swells with immensely talented writers for NaPo each year. I am saddened as the rest of the year unfolds in their absence. Thoughts? Leashes?

Please think and respond at your leisure. Please throw into the discussion any other ideas you may have, or have had in the last ten years.

Cheers.

T

[Colm Roe]

1. Other poetry sites...............I very occasionally visit our two previous sites...but only to see how bad most of the poetry is. I've also visited other sites (only because they were mentioned on TTB) but I've yet to find one that's as welcome and as easy to navigate as here. Not sure about cooperating with other sites; what are your thoughts?

2. Other Activities at TTB..............I'm not convinced that chat boards, game threads or prose will make any difference here, at the moment anyway. Maybe encouraging the current members to be more active. I know you're keen to increase the membership, one downside of that is an increase in time-wasting, crap poets; that's the quickest way of scaring off good poets. Success is a double edged sword. We could 'vet' new members, but that's too elitist for my liking.     

3. Keeping NaPoers...........Always a good idea, even if the number of 'occasionals' is small. I think the Zoom meetings might help here, and with membership in general. But only if we get a consistently decent number of attendees.  An idea for a workshop...Each attendee pre-posts a poem they'd like a deeper evaluation on. After they recite, a certain amount of time is allocated for honest, open discussion and analysis. 

Thank you, Tracy, for your continued enthusiasm and dedication 



 

[Dansinger]

1. Nope. No other poetry sites. Personally, I'm not interested in cooperating with other sites.

2. I visit BWF occasionally and take a stab at their word game threads, but to be honest there's not much going on there that keeps me coming back every day - or even every week. It's just a way to stay in touch with old friends.

3. I love the "Fives" - though after this month of daily poeming I won't be doing fives now, but I think that's a brilliant way to keep the poetry muse happy.

BUT... I'm primarily a prose writer, and most of my time is dedicated to my novels and short stories. So, I keep coming back for NaPo and the Fives, but much more than that is just not feasible for me.

 

[Mark]

I have posted sensitive material in this regard on the Let's Talk board in the Founder's Chamber.

[AlienFlower]

1.  I sometimes visit two sites. In one of them critiques are sometimes sardonic/snide, which I don’t see on TTB; in the other you have to do 50 critiques before you can submit a poem (I took a break about a year ago at around 25). Both of them seem too big for my liking. 

A forum I was on before coming to this one had two threads for posting poetry which caused some confusion. The names of the threads were, unfortunately, Beginning and Experienced which was elitist from the get-go and implied that you could rate yourself; however, I eventually took them to mean Thread 1 was for those who wanted gentle critique and Thread 2 was for more serious advice. That made sense to me.

2. I do more prose than poetry writing, but I haven’t seen an online site yet that does poetry and prose workshopping well. Maybe it splits the membership because the two cater to two types of writers; often I find the critiques of prose unhelpful because they reveal an incomplete or cursory reading of the piece. 

I would like to hear more about members’ experiences with getting poetry published; recommendations of where to submit, and so on. 

3. I wonder how many of the members also attend on-the-ground poetry group meetings. Because I live half here and half there, a virtual forum like TTB is my only chance at workshopping. Is there any interest in TTB’s occasionally being a virtual small-town poetry group with (monthly?) Zoom workshops on submitted poems (so we can read them aloud beforehand). Maybe we could have a minimum attendance of, say, six? Of course, the participants could change. 

Thank you for all you do here at TTB, T. To me the bottom line is that a forum is socializing, and if I want to be a writer, I have to ensconce myself and write—not be online. So much for keeping an active membership!

Jackie

[indar]

Other Sites

I posted regularly on Poetry Circle for a while. I started during a particularly dead period on TTB, but tired of it after a while. It moves TOO fast and there is very little dialogue carried on in the way I have been accustomed to beginning at MWC and now, to a lesser extent, on TTB. I love a good back and forth complete with digressions, non-sequiturs and perhaps a little razzing.

Once in a while I'm overcome with nostalgia and click on the MWC icon at the top of my screen to look around. Bad idea, depressing. I can't imagine how or with whom we could cooperate. I'm thinking there might be ways to cooperate with groups other than the established online forums---maybe we could toss some ideas around in more depth about that---maybe establish partnerships with library poetry writing groups or some such.

Other Activities

I post NaPo poems on BWF as do a few others from our group. We are ignored. That's because on the Best Writing Forum--no one writes, they play word games. That way lies death to poetry. Anyone who prefers word games can be referred there.

How to Keep Them

I am surprised every year that, after the intensity and camaraderie of NaPo, all but our skeleton crew sail off to parts unknown--it triggers my abandonment issues. Perhaps ongoing cooperation with other groups would keep some participants engaged.



 

[Colm Roe]

How to Keep Them
I am surprised every year that, after the intensity and camaraderie of NaPo, all but our skeleton crew sail off to parts unknown--it triggers my abandonment issues.



 

Great as NaPo is, I'm coming to the conclusion it's not so good for TTB. The exodus/vacuum it creates must make it look, to a new viewer, like a seriously inactive site. 
So the first objective here should be encouraging current members to post regularly. If we can't do that there's not much hope of expanding the membership. I think that well attended boards and organic growth is what we should be shooting for, and can foresee many problems if we were to succeed in attracting too many members too quickly.