Guidelines
What gets a poem taken down.
Short, and by example, because a rule nobody can picture is a rule nobody can follow. Every decision a moderator makes is logged with a reason and their name — a taken-down poem keeps its page and says what happened to it.
Posting someone else’s work as your own
RemovedQuoting, answering, or writing after another poem is not this — say so in the note and it is welcome. The check at publish catches word-for-word copies; a person catches the rest.
Attacking the poet instead of the poem
Removed“This line does nothing, and here is why” is the entire point of the site. “You are talentless” is not a reading of the poem, it is just a sentence about a person.
Posting to sell something
RemovedNothing here can be bought, including attention.
A photo that isn't you
RemovedA photo is optional and should be of you. We clear photos of someone else, or that we could not show a stranger, and tell you when we do.
Writing about hard things
StaysGrief, illness, violence and despair are most of what poems are for. Naming a real person in order to harm them is a different matter, and gets removed.
Writing something bad
StaysObviously. Nobody is moderated for being unready.
If you are moderated
Your poem keeps its page and says what happened to it and why, with the moderator named. Nothing is deleted, so a decision can be reversed and the reversal is recorded too. A ban stops you publishing; it does not erase what you have already written, because those are two different decisions and each needs its own reason.