The last year was good to Hello Poetry. Our community now bustles day-in and day-out with writers, both young and old, traditional and anarchic alike, from nearly every position on this sphere we inhabit. It is hard to imagine how much has changed since the tumbleweed days of 2009 and I'm excited and grateful for the talent and enthusiasm of the people who choose to publish their work here. Poetry is dead?? Long live poetry!

As you'll have noticed by now, I've updated the design of the site. Nothing dramatic though, as I only wanted to make certain features more accessible for newer users while maintaining the focus and simplicity of the original. Every page should be faster and smoother, collections are working better now, the "classic" poets are easily found and searching is more accurate. Thanks to all of you who have sent me messages in the last 24 hours with kind words (and bugs to fix!).

So, what's next? Probably the most urgent is that the expense of running the site is now too much for me to handle on my own, so I'm exploring ideas for covering these monthly costs. Donations? Freemium? Kickstarter? A magazine? Books? Advertising?? Poetry competitions?? Respond to that $6,500,000 offer in my inbox from the Cote D'Ivoire???

There are many ideas floating around, some good, many bad, and I've yet to settle on one. Hello Poetry has always been a labour of love and an opportunity to support people and a practice that I care about, so I'm not about to let a silly thing like "money" get in the way, but, of course, I do need to settle on something.

Either way, Hello Poetry is here to stay. If you have thoughts or ideas, I'm all ears.

Until next time,

Eliot

P.S. I'm also working on some more goodies. I'll be in touch soon, and in the meantime, send me your favourite poem!