Welcome to April

April

Volume  I * 2010

Publisher:  The Penny Blog 
Editor: Penny

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Welcome to April.

Welcome to the first  issue of April magazine, meant to be an annual journal of internet poetry. Published by  The Penny Blog, edited by Penny herself, April brings a sample of what’s new on the Web, on usenet and groups, and in the blogosphere.

April is named for the month of April, which is National Poetry Month in Canada (established in 1999 by the League of Canadian Poets) and the United States (in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets). The poems of April are published on  The Penny Blog over the course of the month.

The idea of April was conceived this past January; the original goal was 15 poems, meaning publication of one every second day throughout April 2010. The response exceeded expectations, as the 27 poets and more than 30 poems in this volume attest. Some were poems requested from my or Penny’s favourites; others were from favourite authors, but chosen by the author; still others were submitted cold by authors I didn’t know.  Penny made a deliberate decision to publish as much of everything as possible.

No attempt was made to define or dictate what “poetry” is or should be. Rather, the goal was to show the diversity and variey of poetry on the internet. There is diversity in forms, from traditional forms to free verse to concrete verse and even prose; diversity in skill level, from professionals to hobbyists to beginners; and an absolute diversity of subjects and styles.

Because of this variety, my expectation is that no reader will like every poem in April. My hope is that every reader will like more than one, and will strongly like at least one. 

My long-term hope is that April will become a recurring annual event (and that eventually there will be a print version generating revenue and collecting royalties). For now, as in the future, the magazine can be read for free on  The Penny Blog: Volume I is now archived and future volumes will be treated similarly.

I hope you enjoyed 2010 National Poetry Month, and wish you many more of them to come. Penny and I hope that you make April an integral part of that annual celebration in the future.

George Dance
Publisher,  The Penny Blog 
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

To read Volume I, click here:
http://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html