Fanpoetry Ambivalence

[stuttermoan]

According to fanlore, people tend to be on the fence about fanpoetry. Several of the reasons are fandom-specific (poems as filler in zines, poems as 'easy' contributions to zines). Several of the reasons are the same reasons people don't like poetry in general. Reading the article has me feeling pretty vindicated. I am a person who has never finished writing a fic. I have a mental block about it. I am a fanpoet, and it's nice to know that the out-of-place feeling I've had for years isn't something to do with me, personally, but can instead be blamed on people's ambivalence about poetry as a whole. Or maybe I'm just projecting, but I thought it was interesting.

Speaking of interesting, as I've been poking around the Wayback Machine for fanlore references, I found a fanpoem by switchknife. It appears to not be archived anywhere. I'm considering posting it (with proper credit, obviously), because the thought of a poem going unread makes me sad. Still, is this above board? If you're reading this, let me know what you think.

[Poll #1968886]
POLL EDIT: The journal in question was purged due to inactivity, not deleted.

Comments

[arcanetrivia]

IMO, unless the author posted some kind of release to the effect that it's okay to repost or re-archive their work, the copyright is still theirs and they should have control over where and whether it is posted. You could just post a link to where you found it, maybe?

As for fan poetry, I am fine with the form as a whole, but tbh so much of it is so poorly written that it's painful to read. When I come across good fan poetry I am usually delighted for that, even if I'm not taken with an individual piece (just as I might not be for fanfic).

[stuttermoan.livejournal.com]

Hey, thanks for your reply! After a bit of research, I'm surmising that most likely switchknife's journal was not intentionally deleted, but automatically purged due to inactivity. Unfortunately I can't change the wording of the poll to reflect that. I think it actually makes a difference if the poem was intentionally left public and the purge took it down without author knowledge. The poem is still publicly viewable here (https://web.archive.org/web/20050913004932/http://www.livejournal.com/users/switchknife/data/atom) (the August 16 entry). It's a decent poem, nothing remarkable, but it stands out to me because I never knew switch wrote any poetry at all.

And yeah, as far as poetry goes, a lot of it's bad. I'm lucky enough to have several of my poems on this rec list (http://members.madasafish.com/~cj_whitehound/Fanfic/links/HP/poetry.htm), and the reccer in question said something similar -- there's so much bad poetry, she found it worthwhile to put all the decent stuff she found in one place.

[iulia_linnea.livejournal.com]

I agree with shyfoxling. I'd save the poem for your own use but link to its current location from your journal rather than reposting it.

[estherthegb]

Well, the other two voters might be more correct.
However, if you wanted to analyze said poem - it would fall under fair use act to
repost it with proper credit and your written commentary.

I'd say link to the poem instead of reposting. I think you can post rec-links over at ao3.org too.