Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land
...
Especially When The October Wind by Dylan Thomas.

Lots of changes in this busy month. Here is a summary of them all.

Critique
New leader board for those poets who donate so much of their time to providing thoughtful critique on other poets' work. I suggest you donate 5 minutes of your time to reading and critiquing a poem; it has quickly become the most popular section of the site. Your talent and experience can make such a difference to someone who is just getting started with their writing. Thank you to all of you who have contributed so far.

Groups
You can browse all groups, and we've added a new section to show "trending" groups to help you find active groups.

Poems
We've moved furniture, so to speak, around on the Poems page in the community. We've temporarily taken down the "Poems by recent interest" or "Top 25" as it become known. We didn't like competitive, political attitude it brought into the community, so we've taken it down for now. In its place, you can see a stream of the latest poems added, recent critiques, and recent reactions. Thanks for all of your feedback.

Going forward
We'll be reviving an old part of the site, Questions, to handle public discussion of features and issues related to the website itself. This is partly for you all, and partly for our own sanity, as we currently deal with a large amount of email and questions on a daily basis. We try to respond to every message, but we are somewhat behind, so it may take some time to get a response. Hopefully these changes will help you get answers quicker and help us sleep more.

Also, for those of you still reading this, we'd like to bring your attention to the Community Guidelines. We have been relatively lax on these in the past, but not going forward. If you're abusive towards any members of the community, stirring up controversy for controversy's sake, misusing or abusing the tools of the site, spamming members or plagiarizing work, you will be flagged by our moderators. If your account is flagged, you will have the opportunity to speak with one of our moderators before any of your account data is permanently deleted. As long as people are respectful of one another and stick to poetry, there should be no trouble.

That's all from us for this month. We have some other really exciting features in the cooker, so stay tuned. Hello Poetry remains the best place online for poets to share and develop their work and it wouldn't be this way without all of you in the community. Thank you.

Eliot
HP