ABOUT THE TEXTETC SITE
Overview
The Text Etc site is written, maintained and owned by its Editor, Colin John Holcombe, who'd be grateful to receive suggestions for improvement, and notification of any errors or oversights. Please drop him an email.
The City Workers / The Architects poem, the translations and workshop material are copyright of C. John Holcombe, but they and the essays on these pages may be used for non-commercial purposes if cited in the usual way. It's probably wise to give date of access as the workshop and exhibits material is continually being revised. I should also apologize for many irregularities in reference (cite conventionally if you use the material), and explain that I haven't found the time to check how much of the bibliography material can be accessed in Questia (which appears as Q in the resources sections.)
Text Etc is a continuation of PoetryMagic, and it may help to know:
1. Some 96% of the 2,800 listings were live when last checked. The remaining 4% odd were generally sites being reorganized or likely to return. Do let me know if your site is being modified, and when new sites of interest appear.
2. Please link to any page on this site that interests you: you don't have to tell me.
3. I usually respond to emails within 3 days, but do please search the site before firing off questions. You will need to distinguish your query from the usual spam, which arrives by the thousands every week.
4. I'm always delighted to add to listings, but please make sure that your site furthers Text Etc's aims — is fully operational, extends the coverage and gives visitors a decent return for their browsing.
5. I try to represent a good width of opinion — which means including sites with whose views and practices I am not always in agreement. Poetry enterprises are generally more labours of love than businesses, but I would urge readers to use their common sense and do a little homework before parting with money for conferences and winner's anthologies, etc.— advice that applies especially to poetry.com, the source of many complaints.
6. Only the smallest percentage of small presses are listed, naturally as they exceed 3,000 in the English language alone. Purchase one or more directories (there's considerable overlap).
7. I do not list ezines or individual poet's sites — for reasons of space, and because it would imply that I had the time and width of reading to select the best from thousands of worthy candidates. Poets should try to feature on ezines with such listings — e.g. those maintained by Tim Love, Patrick Martin, A Little Poetry, Hypertexts and Email Submitted Poetry
8. Requests come in to review poetry collections and chapbooks, sometimes by poets whose work is already well known. I am sorry to say that I do not have the time for this, though I will (to repeat what appears on the exhibits page) look at poetry sites that poets and webmasters may care to point out to me, provided that no glowing review is expected, or indeed any response at all. I hope the absence of feedback will not seem discourteous, but I decided long ago not to get involved in the reviewing business.
9. Also with regret, I must ask readers not to send me poems for publication / review / advice. Critiquing is a time-consuming matter, and it's not something I feel happy about doing. The poetry resources and workshop pages list the many services available elsewhere.
10. I should also point out that I am not in any way associated with the Poets Laureate (a publishing scam) or indeed the many other sites that plagiarized these pages. Please attribute properly.
Do remember that:
1. These are notes, summaries, compilations. Annotation is light: to point the reader to further information, not to fully represent the views of the references.
2. The sections have been written tersely and categorically, with many exceptions, qualifications and subtleties omitted. Read the references for a fuller picture.
3. The older convention of "his" rather than "his or her" or "their" has been followed. Nothing sexist is intended by this. Most contemporary poets are women.
4. What can be done has been done with critical theory, which is not generally written for ready comprehension or summary.
5. What is offered here is not "a philosophy of poetry", which would defeat the open nature of the site, but the material to fashion various philosophies, if and as required.
6. For many areas there are no popular treatments, so that the references, often works written by one academic for other academics, do have to be read and digested.
7. Pages are written in hypertext. Click on words showing red to be transferred to other sections, each with their references and further links. Use the browser "back" button to return to your original place. Though any order of study is possible, it is as well to remember that the Theory Section is structured in a top-down fashion. Most sections start with an Introduction and/or Overview. Introductions place the topic in context. Overviews draw the threads together and suggest why the topic is important. Thereafter the pages more closely resemble impartial accounts. At the very foot of the pyramid lie the references used to prepare each page, which the reader can check and take further by reading their contained bibliographies. References are generally to the secondary literature. In many ways this is unavoidable, as all the fields touched upon have enormous literatures. The works cited are generally available in bookshops and university libraries, or can be borrowed through the interlibrary loan service. Subscription to an online service may be cheaper for extended research.
The illustrations are without significance: simply decoration. I don't have a list of sources. Since I have now added Google Adsense to many pages, their Terms of Reference requires me to point out the following:
When you click on a Google Adsense advertisement, Google sends one or more cookies – a small file containing a string of characters – to your computer or other device that uniquely identifies your browser. Google uses cookies to improve the quality of their service, including for storing user preferences, improving search results and ad selection, and tracking user trends, such as how people search. Google also uses cookies in its advertising services to help advertisers and publishers serve and manage ads across the web. Google may set one or more cookies in your browser when you visit a website, including Google sites that use their advertising cookies, and view or click on an ad supported by Google’s advertising services.
About
the Author
Geology was my first passion, and I spent the ten years following graduation on mineral exploration in the wilder parts of world: Iran, Afghanistan, Bolivia, Indonesia, Morocco and Australia. Thereafter it was the usual career path of the corporate high-flyer, heading up research for a mining multinational and eventually assuming technical responsibility for large company takeovers. In 1988 I left mining to concentrate on writing and private research, supporting myself with computer work and international coin-dealing. My poems started appearing in small presses, and I was much involved in the London poetry scene, acting from 1995 to 1998 as Chairman of Phoenix Poets, a writing circle of poets, journalists and novelists founded in the 1930s. Computing drew me back into the business world, and in the dot com boom I was working for a web design company and helping to program the world's largest online gaming site, etc. Computing continues with Ecommerce Digest, a successful guide to online selling, with Oil Painting Techniques, Publishing Explained and this Text Etc site, but as much as possible I am focusing on the writing, having moved operations to Chile, where I live in quiet domesticity in an old suburb of Santiago. Given the situation sketched in these pages, I don't send out much work, but over the last few years my poems have appeared in Light, New Formalist, Astropoetica, Candelabrum, Monterey Bay Poetry and The NeoVictorian.