Making the most of forums to hone our skills.

When I first started to write poetry, I decided that the best medium for me was to set up a Blog.
But sfter spending endless days and hours just getting it to look the way I wanted, and then filling it with what I thought was the most splendid of poetry, I was in for a shock.

Who was going to read my masterpieces?
How was I going to point poeple in the direction of my work?
What was the point of it all?

I then decided to use poetry forums to help promote my Blog.
But there was another shock to come. For as in life so as with poetry, things never go as expected. I was not the new Ezra Pound or Dylan Thomas.
Not even the new Pam Ayres.

The thing with forums is that you need to pick the right one. I was lucky. In the end I found myself washed up battered and bruised on the shores of Critical Poet.
There they brushed me down, and set me on the road to feeling confident enough, to eventually think that I might have a go at inflicting a modest book of poems on an unsuspecting world.

But I was indeed lucky. There are some forums that will rip the innocent poet to pieces. Like a pack of wolfs they will fall upon their prey and devour them without mercy.
Once this happens, we are unlikely to venture from the safety our ignorance anymore.