The Write Review

The Wild Poetry Forum & jollyroger.com

There’s a website for just about everything and everyone these days. When in 1999 I retired from teaching after 30 years--to the outpost of Tasmania, a place which in its relation to Australia is not unlike Newfoundland in its relation to Canada---I was somewhat concerned that I would not be able to get enough print for my reading tastes.

But by 2004 I could find a site for virtually any poet, novelist, sociologist, historian, inter alia, on my intellectual horizon. So when Marylin Houle asked me to write a review of a website many sprang to mind. At first I though I’d have a look at a site with lots of information: the ones I use for studying history and the social sciences. Then I thought that anyone who reads this piece can do that themselves at sites of their own choice. Such people don’t need me to enthuse about sites which are already providing fertile resources for them. Then I thought I’d go for the newspaper, magazine, the print and electronic media sites which now litter the web and make the whole idea of buying a magazine or newspaper a bit of an anachronism--at least for me. But, again, people who read Words Words Words can access these kinds of sites with little grey matter required.

I said to myself, people who do a lot of writing would find sites useful that I find useful, at least if they are into poetry, essays and the literature of the western intellectual tradition. “So,” continuing to talk to myself, “I’ll give them two.” The Wild Poetry Forum and jollyroger.com are two rich and rewarding sites.

I’ll tell you a little about the wild side first and then go over to jollyroger. The first is a special poetry site with a very Greek flavour, not contemporary Greece, but classical. The poetry sections all have headings after the 9 muses. The second site of my choice has just about the entire literary tradition of the west encapsulated on its multitude of sub-sections.

What makes each of these sites attractive to me is that I can get my poetry slotted in to a multitude of places with a few clicks of the old key-board. After twenty years of trying to get my poetry into a hard cover, I now casually stew my creations all across creation thanks to the gradual invention and implementation of the internet system.

The Wild Poetry Forum is visually attractive and that helps I find in my dealings with these, for the most part, impersonal entities. The physical attractiveness of a site, is not unlike the cover of a book. It’s important from a marketing point of view. Like bees to a honey-pot the internet users come a clicking onto the nine-muse sub-sites. And you get feed back on your poems. In fact, for every posting you make you are obliged to give two feedbacks to the works of others. The feedback does not need to be a long essay. Just a few words, three words, six words, a sentence or two, will suffice: whatever seems appropriate.

Jollyroger.com has an incredible array of sub-sites. Why, I’ve opened an arch-lever file in my study to keep track of all the divisions and sub-divisions. There is a classical flavour here too. There’s poetry all the way back to the origins of the western intellectual tradition. You can post your work, your thoughts about any one of hundreds of writers, poets, novelists, dramatists, any one of dozens of social, psychological and sociological issues. If you are a serious writer and thinker you could probably immortalize yourself by your extensive postings at jollyroger.com And if you are not into serious reading but prefer instead the act of creative writing--well there is something here for you too. I could wax eloquent about jollyroger.com and the two hundred pages I’ve photocopied from this labyrinthine site which provide a fertile resource base for both reading and writing--but it’s best to leave it to you. Have a surf at jollyroger.com, but watch you don’t drown in the sea of sites and sub-sites. As they say somewhere at, what is it, Nantucket, Great Books, KillDevil.com, Forum Frigate, Hatteras, “this site is not for the faint-hearted.”

I think I’ve given you all a taste of two sites and it’s over to you to enjoy the meal.

Contact Ron Price