Poem reading?

[Angela]

Question - does reading out a 'finished' poem/poems at something like the Bluegates poetry workshop with Lesley Saunders mean that it can't be sent to competitions, read out or be published anywhere else?

Angela

[jayarr]

Angela

my personal interpretation of published is:

publicly available in print

The 'in print' means on the page and/or other media e.g. the internet - Blurb, on Youtube, on a CD.

The exception to this is if you state that it is a work in progress or make it available in a place that is patently used for unpublished work. E.g. if you publish a poem in the Buddy Exchange forum then I would argue that it is not published, even though it is publicly available.

I emphasise this is my personal interpretation. Poetry magazines, competitions, and publishers have their own rules and interpretations.

This is a long way round of saying that reading or making available a poem at workshop would (because it falls into the exceptional case), not in my opinion make it published.