When Sally Evans first launched the broadsheet Poetry Scotland in the 1990s, we discussed the idea of giving it a web presence – with add-on features that wouldn’t compromise the broadsheet’s promise to print only poems. Having done a bit of web design, I offered to design and host the PS website, and it was launched back in 1996.
In the early days it included a lot of extras: a Webitorial, a Soapbox, images, reviews and competitions, and an open space where anyone anywhere could submit poems which wouldn’t have been appropriate for the broadsheet.
That was fine, but it began to take up more and more of my time, at a point when I needed to spend a lot more time on other things. So I gradually cut back on it, at the same time as Sally has been increasing her own web presence through blogging, the Keep Poems Alive site, and other initiatives. I spun the Open Mouse off into its own WordPress site, which publishes new poems twice weekly, and has a constant flow of good quality submissions. The Poetry Scotland site now functions solely as a links site, and it’s been static for some time.
So at the end of 2015 Sally and I discussed the future of the site, and we’ve agreed I won’t renew the domain name subscription when it comes up this September. I’ll make sure that all of the remaining functions the site caters for can be accessed through other means.
