Poem Crit Tool Place

[Rik Roots]

The Poem Crit Tool Place (http://www.kalieda.org/pctp) is an attempt to explore a different approach to the online poetry workshopping experience.

The website has been designed around a set of ideas which have slowly fermented in my head during my years of participating at various online workshops - for instance, relying on anonymity during the poem and crit posting period, and presenting a template approach to offering the critique (if you think the crit template was influenced by Rachel Lindley's world famous überblurb then you would be right).

This venue will certainly not be everyone's cup of tea, and will definitely not be replacing forum-based poetry workshops in the near or even distant future (I for one will not stop loitering around these parts). But I don't think it harms us to test out different models and concepts every now and again. Feel free to pop in and nose around! If anyone has any comments, suggestions, questions, crits or flames about the site then please don't hesitate to share them with me - either on this thread or by emailing me direct.

And please note also that the website is a Beta test site, which means that I'm still tinkering with it. Don't be surprised if the landscape suddenly changes as I take on board suggestions, etc.

[Harry R]

Looks interesting. I'll havea proper go when I have a spare moment.

I found the front page a bit unreadable, though - on my system it would be better if the font was one size larger and the textbox about 2/3rds the current width.

It wasn't immediately obvious that 'Save your crit without submitting it' meant 'preview your crit' - to me, anyway.

I may have more thoughts when I've played a bit more.

Harry

[W.G. McLeod]

I really like how your format holds anonymity of everyone involved. That is sure to keep things honest and is a great idea. There is only one thing I can suggest thus far. I have to scroll left and right to read all the script on the opening page you've set up. Other than that tiny bit, I'm anxious to see what your idea will bring!

P.S.
In your Q&A page I can't get into any of the answers.
(Help!)

[Rik Roots]

Harry - thanks for dropping by. I've increased the pixel size one point and cut the home page by 3quarters. I've tweaked the width a touch - now 960px. My coding skills are not yet at the stage of getting cookies to do wonderous things like keep track of people's preferred screenwidths. Have fun exploring.

WG - again, thanks for popping along to the new site. The site is still in beta testing, which means that things like the FAQ haven't been finalised (in other words I haven't written the answers to most of the questions).

[Scavella]

Looks, great, Rik. I've registered. Like the concept muchly.

Course, some poems aren't likely to be anonymous. If I post anything about Lily, for instance, she'll be a dead giveaway.

Still, she's not my only subject.

Really.

Cheers.

[Rik Roots]

Hooey, Scavella! Do you like the echoing emptiness of it?

One of the principles I was testing was whether people would take to a site which minimised the social aspects of workshopping and concentrated entirely on the critique. The answer is clearly that people like a bit of banter alongside the work. So I've adapted the site to include a very crude ephemeral messageboard - we'll see if that makes the site more viable (because a workshop without participants is not much of a workshop), without ruining the main premise of anonymously offered crits on anonymously posted poems.

Oh, and I changed the name to The Poet's Lathe - I'm crap at giving my poems good titles, too.

[Ralph T]

Rik

Like yo try out the Poem Crit Tool Place but it won't allow me to register. What's the problem?

[Rik Roots]

Originally posted by Ralph T
Rik

Like yo try out the Poem Crit Tool Place but it won't allow me to register. What's the problem?

The registration is a two step process - it's all explained in the Frequently Asked Questions page. If you have any further problems then email me.

[Scavella]

Very nice. The anonymity is definitely helpful, I think.

C'mon peeps, give it a try!

S.

[Rik Roots]

For people who are interested in improving their critting skills, I've started to post a series of (out of copyright) "nonce" poems to the Lathe. People can crit the poems anonymously and after the critting period is over they can check to see how their crits match up with others offered on the same poem. The critting form sort of follows the pattern of Rachel's Uberblurb - a shortened version of which can be found here (http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32934&poems) -so practicing on the Lathe could help you improve your crits here.

Course, if you come across a genuine poem posted for crit on the Lathe, feel free to practice on that too.

[Rik Roots]

In September 2004 I launched The Poet's Lathe - http://www.kalieda.org/pctp - an experimental poetry critique website designed to see if a different approach to workshopping could lead to more useful feedback, both for the writer and the reader. The experiment has continued for a year with over 40 poems being workshopped, and considerably more people taking time out to check the experiment out and - occasionally - offer feedback on the concept.

Now that the concept has had a good run for its money I see no reason to continue the experiment, and thus will be closing down the website over the first weekend of September. I have already disabled the posting facility to prevent people posting new poems for critique - though people are of course welcome to offer comment on the last two poems undergoing the critique process.

If people have completed critiques of their poems stored in the public or their personal archive then I'd strongly suggest they print them off before the site closes - I will not be keeping poems or crits on the database once the website shuts.

I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to participate in the experiment. I hope people found it as useful and instructive as I did. If anyone has any final feedback they would like to offer on the experiment, then please feel free to email me your comments at the usual email address.

For anyone interested in the concepts behind the experiment, the experimental outline page can still be viewed on this webpage: http://www.kalieda.org/pctp/index.php?selectedbutton=501

Rik