Welcome to OCP -- PLEASE READ BEFORE POSTING

TL;DR You need to give feedback to two other people before you can share your own work, and then put links to that feedback in your post. If you don't know how to give feedback, read the guide.

Heyo, welcome to OCpoetry. (That’s “original content” if you don’t know). This is a place for sharing and getting feedback on your own poems. We are the sister subreddit of r/Poetry, which is for sharing and discussing published poetry. Our goal is to create a place where anyone can learn to become a better creative writer, kind of like a free online writer's workshop.

This post is an orientation to the subreddit. If you’re new, read this before sharing your work. If you’re less new, then read this anyways, as it has a few changes to how we've done things in the past. If you’ve still got questions after reading this post, please send a modmail. There are some FAQs at the end of this post which will be updated as we go. We also have a huge and very disorganized wiki containing all of our resources, essays on how to write poetry, and historic writing prompts, and I recommend you check it out.

So, here’s basically how it works:

This subreddit works on a pay-it-forward system. If you want to share a poem, you need to give feedback to two others from this subreddit. This ensures that everyone gets some readers and hears some response, rather than just shouting their verses into the void. If you don’t think you’re up to writing feedback for others just yet, that’s no problem and no judgement; we recommend you check out r/Justpoetry or r/Poems, where there are no requirements for sharing your work.

1) All posts must include two links to recent feedback.

Every post must contain two unique links to posts on this subreddit where you have given feedback. Don’t re-use the same feedback comments to post multiple times, even if you are reposting an old poem. The feedback must be from the last two weeks. All posts without feedback links will be removed, probably without notice. Do not post your poem without the links. We have a robot that will remove your post if it doesn’t have links to feedback, so if you post with the intent of editing the links in afterwards, it won’t work. (If you're not sure how to put links into the post, look to the FAQ below.)

2) At least one of your comments must be on a poem that has received no other comments.

This ensures that everyone will get some feedback. If for whatever reason you can’t find any lonely poems, then comment on the poem that seems to have received the least amount of feedback. The easiest way to do this is sort posts by new.

3) Feedback must be high-effort.

High-effort means different things to different people. It does not mean “super long” or “expert quality”. But it does mean doing more than the bare minimum.

You don't have to complement, or criticize, or try to figure out the "deeper meaning". You do have to try to notice your own reactions, and then to try and explain them based on the text. If the poem tells a story, sum up what you think that story is. If the poem made you laugh, cry, feel bored or confused or nostalgic, say so, and then try to say why you think it did. A good rule of thumb is that each of your feedback comments should be at least a paragraph.

We understand that giving other writers feedback on their creative work can feel a bit artificial or uncomfortable, if you’ve never done it before. That’s why we’ve written a feedback guide for beginners. There are more feedback guides linked in the FAQ below. You should also read some of the other feedback comments around the sub to get a feel for what works for others.

Poems that link to low-effort feedback, and low-effort comments themselves, will be removed at mod discretion, or if you report it to us. However, we’re less interested in policing you and more interested in helping you grow as readers and writers. We are more likely to ask you follow-up questions, than remove your work entirely. The mods skulk the comments sections and will ask follow-up questions on comments that seem a little thin, and please answer those questions if you get any.

4) Please Be Kind.

Treat each other with kindness and respect. The mods have an incredibly strict definition for each of these concepts. We will proactively remove comments and poems and ban users that make others feel unwelcome or unsafe. Your right to creative expression does not extend to poetry that promotes misogyny, homo/trans/queerphobia, racism, etc.

If your poetry’s especially violent or covers sensitive subjects, please label it with the NSFW tag or a content warning in the title.

Harsh criticism is allowed -- encouraged, really -- as long as you’re being harsh on the poem, not the person. Remember that the narrator (or the “speaker”) of the poem is not necessarily the author.

5) Audio, video, and image poems are allowed; but the text of the poem must be included in the body of the post.

This is so that people can still enjoy your poem if they're unable to view or listen to your link for whatever reason.

6) You may include a link to your poetry blog at the end of your post.

Or your instagram, or your personal creative project, or your soundcloud, or your Etsy page. As long as it's poetry-adjacent that's cool with us. Just don't get spammy.

Attempting to dodge any of these rules, or abuse directed towards moderators enforcing these rules, will earn you an immediate ban.

​

FAQs

What do the Poem & Workshop flairs do?

They simply allow you to show your intentions and expectations for the piece you are posting. The Poem flair is for sharing a piece, with the expectation of receiving mostly surface-level feedback and general advice. The Workshop flair is for a piece that you really want to work on, something you want to pick apart and analyse. It signals that you are open to discussing the piece, and that you invite strong critique.

How do I get the links to my feedback comments?

That kind of depends on what platform you're on. If you're on desktop or on a third-party mobile app, there should be a 'share' or 'permalink' link underneath every comment on Reddit. Clicking on that should give you a unique URL to your comment. Just copy + paste that into the body of your post.

If you're on the official Reddit app, you might have to do the insane workaround where you 'share' your feedback comment to your notes app. Once you've gotten both of those links on the same note, copy them, type your poem into the Reddit app, and then hit paste at the bottom.

How do I format my poetry on Reddit?

Reddit is written in a coding language called 'markdown' which is genuinely terrible for displaying poetry. Though you've hit enter to give yourself a line break in the editor, that doesn't mean that your post will have a line break. This is a stupid thing that we cannot fix, and unfortunately, you must learn some Markdown. Fortunately, it's just a few simple tricks:

• Two spaces at the end of a line gives you a line break
• Type two spaces and then hit enter twice for a stanza break
• A big row of dashes (those are the "---" mark) will give you a line through the post
• Type " " without the quotation marks for an empty space or an empty line so you can get lines that look like this
• For blackout poetry use the following format:[content](#b) or [content](#blackout)

And then the fancy courier font trick:

four spaces before a line

means that it's in courier font

the markdown rules don't apply

and it keeps whatever formatting

that

         you

  type

        in

 !!!!

                  w o w

Can I print one of these poems out/use it on my instagram with my art/put it in my book?

Ask the author. Part of what makes this space a useful workshop space is that everyone feels safe to share their stuff; if people start using poetry without the author's permission, or god forbid, trying to pass off another artist's work as their own, the userbase of this sub will feel less safe to do so. Please, ask the author, and then do what they say.

I'm thinking about trying to get my poem published somewhere. What should I do?

The standard thing is to find a literary journal. There are a zillion literary journals and magazines all over the world. They have different themes, tastes, styles, audiences, readerships, levels of prestige. Some charge fees for submission, some do not, some will pay you if you get accepted, some don't, some will give you feedback, some won't let you know anything for months. So first you'll want to pick a few of your poems, get some feedback from some trusted readers (or from here, of course) and then start looking for a journal that's a good home for your work. Most lit journals have submissions periods where they accept all the work for their next issue, and then sift through everything they get.

You will probably get a lot of rejections. This is normal. It's kind of a numbers game. You can submit the same poem to multiple journals as long as the journal says something like "simultaneous submissions are allowed". If you do get accepted, congrats! Most journals want 'first publication rights' or 'first serial rights' or something similar, so that means you'll have to tell all the other journals you submitted that poem to that you've been published elsewhere. (For that reason we strongly recommend deleting your poem from reddit if you want to submit it to a journal -- technically and legally speaking, writing a post on reddit is still considered publishing your work, and reddit owns all the text on the site.)

Here are some places to get you started looking for journals:

Duotrope and Submittable are two apps that help you search for journals, and help you track what poems you've submitted to which places. Submittable is free, Duotrope is not. They are GREAT.

Poets & Writers has a list of lit journals, small presses, and writing contests. This is a great place to start. They also have a newsletter (monthly? I think?) listing all the presses and journals going into their submissions period.

Entropy Mag puts out a list of publications and writing contests going into their submissions periods every three months. Very useful.