I’ve just received this by email from The New Writer and I’m sure they won’t mind me passing on the message…

Nthposition.com in London is calling for "poems for Madrid". A selection will be published online in their second-anniversary April issue, in several weeks. The poems will be dedicated to the people of Madrid, Spain; and their friends and family throughout Europe; and the world. The editors are open to a variety of responses, themes, and perspectives. This is a fragile time caught between mourning and protest, rage and sorrow, loss and achievement (as in the recent Spanish elections). Europe is unsteady after its "own 9/11" - three minutes of silence observed across the continent. After silence, what shall we say, what poems will we write? The "poems for Madrid" will follow the e-books "100 poets against the war"; "Times new roman" and "poems for Lord Hutton" as a tradition of sharing voices, concerns, struggle, hope and art, through poetry, across the world, in the near-instant of the Internet. Send poems to: nthposition c/o todd@toddswift.com http://www.toddswift.com http://www.nthposition.com

Dee,
Thanks for posting this; I'm sure many of us will try to produce something of an appropriate nature. Let's just hope that Andrew Motion doesn't try his hand at it! I'll pass the onfo on, if you think that will be o.k.

Best,

Mike

I'm sure it will be OK, Mike, but do you think I should check?

Dee

Ummm.......can't see why they might object.

sadly this link doesn't appear to work

http://www.nthposition.com

but an admirable cause

I've asked TNW to check it.

Dee

Try it now...

http://www.nthposition.com

<Added>

Yesss...

This is a copy left site which means they do not recognise copy write and encourage people to down load the items poste don their site that may affcet your decisions to post or for ward poetry.

I didn't realise that, David.

I just thought, as some poets on here had already written a tribute, they might want to join in. But no-one should post any of their work on a site they're not sure of...

Thanks for the warning.

Dee
x

dee

I asked Todd and he straight away mailed me back and was quite upfront about it.

just depends on your view if you don't mind people downloading your stuff fine

if you are a litle more protective then now at least you know

david

I take what you say on a general note, but if you're writing a poem for Madrid, should you really be protective about it?

just a thought really

better to know than to send something and complain after it has been downloaded and starts apearing elsewhere without your knowledge

Hi,

I'm the general editor of nthposition. The poetry ebooks are copyleft, but on the rest of the site, the authors' words are copyright, and each page has a copyright notice. The ebooks are copyleft because they are meant to be spread as widely as possible - about 100,000 copies of the pre-war '100 poets against the war' series were downloaded from the site, other sites were encouraged to host them, and all the poets involved understood that they were contributing to a copyleft anthology. There were readings in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland and mainland Europe. We'd like the poems for Madrid to be equally widely spread as a protest against this carnage. Hope that clarifies things!

Best,

Val Stevenson

Thanks Val, that's great to hear from you direct, I'm sure that will clarify things for everyone here.