Hi all! I have completed what is hopefully the last revision of our groups guidelines. It is a statement of what our group stands for, what we encourage and why we exist. Before this becomes the final, set-in-stone Group Goals and Guidelines that goes in our gallery and that we ask all new members to conform to, the staff and I want to get your feedback on it. If you have issues with any of the statements, or want clarification on any of them, or want to see something added please let us know. Commenting on this journal is fine, then we can hopefully get a discussion started to help us get a clearer vision of our goals. I believe in participation and discussion!

In other news, looking at the month of September with community DA events including the Weekend to support Breast Cancer and the reminders of Sept 11, *MegMcMuffin and I are ready to announce the theme of our next contest which will officially start next week Monday, September the 17th. The theme is Survivors (or any other form of the word, surviving, survival, survived). We will be giving official dates, maximum and minimum line counts and other important details on Monday for the contest.

Okay, so this is going to be a long long journal, please don't be afraid! I encourage you to read through all of it!

Unknown Poet Project: By the Poet, For the Poet.

We, the members and staff of Unknown-Poet-Project, believe in the uniting of artists. We believe that each person has something unique to share with the community. We believe that all poets, experienced or just learning, open or structured, need encouragement and critique to continue in their writing journey. We believe that all forms and themes of poetry are valuable and interesting. We believe in the originality of the lone author. We believe that exposure to other artists and styles encourage growth and maturity in one’s writing. We believe that the DA community at large is missing out on great poetry and that the community of poets is underrepresented on DA.

We believe in poetry as a distinct and beautiful art form that can reach all people.

Our goal is to expose unknown poets to each other, to the poetic community, and to the larger DA community. Our goal is to see poets grow in their skills and understanding of the art form. Our goal is to see our members get the exposure, recognition and critique they deserve.

We, the members, agree to support our fellow members through commenting and critiquing poetry and the sharing of ideas. We agree to participate in the various activities the staff has set up to achieve these goals. We agree to strive to expose our fellow members, the group and poets all across DA. We agree to support the staff of the project by suggesting ideas for contests, by suggesting poems and poets to be featured, to read journals and respond to questions. We agree to be encouraging in our critiques. We agree to read each other’s poetry, to expose others in order that the larger community, of which I (the individual poet) am a part of and therefore receive exposure as well. We agree to give feedback to the staff, we agree to encourage the staff, we agree to give helpful criticism to the staff where due.

We the staff agree to support our members through being devoted to our jobs; to holding contests; to searching through our members’ galleries; to inviting new members; to feature artists and their writing; to keep communication flowing between members, staff and our affiliates. We agree to be fair in our exposure of structured poems, and contemporary styles. We agree to be fair in our decisions; we agree to take criticism, comments and suggestions. We agree to respond to the needs and questions of our members. We agree to explain our decisions, our thoughts and our work. We agree to hold up the goals and values of this group. We agree to notify the members when changes have been made to this statement, to staffing positions, and to our member list.
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If you've made it this far, I'm proud!
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Suggestions we are taking under consideration in response to the surveys:

 Polls to determine next contest topic.
 Chat-room Freestyle competitions.
 Contests with our affiliates
 Unknown poetry featured in each journal posted.

Some other comments in response to the surveys received:

We are not a mentoring community per-se. We mentor each other in a non-structured environment. We do not set up a new poet with an old poet for instruction and feedback. We have the group set up so that every poet can learn from, respond to every other poet, regardless of the level of poetry.

It is not our main goal to have our members receive DD’s. We strive to see each other grow and learn, and their efforts to be recognized. DD recognition would be fantastic, though the staff is not going to necessarily suggest our members poems to DA staff for DD features. We first want to expose our members to each other, then to the larger poetic community. We want poetry in all its forms and genres to be recognized more broadly by the DA community. We hope to achieve this by having the poetic community on DA unite, strive to help each other, rather than seek their own recognition apart from the other poetic members. As the poetic community grows together, it will grow closer to the larger DA community, for when one poet is exposed, the avenues will be opened for the others which that single artist supports to be exposed. The domino effect is what we believe is the most effective and best way to see the poetic community grow and be recognized.

We received mixed feelings on Featured Artists. We think that it is valuable to keep, though reading it may not be necessarily useful or fun, we will continue it because it is a useful avenue of exposure. We will strive to ask deeper, more interesting questions, and we ask those that we select to feature to be open with us.

We are not totally revamping Comments for Poets. We will, though, be looking at who is participating in the group activities (via comments, contests, suggesting things, noting staff) and in turn for their support to others, support them by featuring them if they have not had the opportunity. We are doing this so that those who are committed to the group and its ideals are not overlooked, and so that members will be motivated to be involved, to keep the cycle of critique and exposure going.

Parting Comments

We had a total of eleven responses. To you eleven we thank you greatly. We hope that this statement expresses your thoughts accurately. We hope it has answered your questions, and clarified the purpose of UPP. To those who did not respond to the survey, but read the journals: hopefully this encourages you to be more involved. To those who did not have time to respond, we hope that you find your own thoughts expressed here, and ask that if there is more you would like to add, to send us a note. Thank you for reading these journals.

Melinda
~honeymfr