About PoemShip
Why PoemShip exists
A poem lives twice: once when it is written and once when it is read. Minutes or centuries may pass between the two, but without either there is no poetry.
PoemShip is meant as a meeting place for both sides. For those who read, there is a library; for those who write, a space where poems find their readers.
The library
The library brings together classic and contemporary poetry. It holds poems that still speak to readers today, whenever they were written. What counts is not the date or the fame of a name, but whether a poem can speak to someone now.
Human-made poetry
We start from the conviction that poetry is a human craft. What matters in a poem is not only the text but the person behind it: their experience, their choice of words, their doubts. Every poem on PoemShip is therefore written by a person, and poems generated by artificial intelligence are not published here. Authors who join the project accept the same condition: they publish only poems they wrote themselves.
Reading
Some poems open at once; others ask to be returned to. To support closer reading, poems come with a short summary and an analysis, mood and theme tags, and some with audio recordings. Poems can be found not only by author and title but also by a few words about how you feel. A poem worth holding in memory can be learned by heart with the trainer.
Authors
A poem needs a reader. Authors who join PoemShip publish their own poems here and share them: each poem has a page of its own, and anyone with the link can read it. These pages are not part of the library and are not indexed by search engines; any poem can also be kept private.
An author can submit a poem to the library. An accepted poem becomes public: readers and search engines can find it, and it receives reading aids of its own. Copyright stays with the author; publication is free of charge and involves no payment.
Removing a poem
We respect poets, their heirs and everyone who looks after their work. Every poem in our library is credited to its author and source. Still, mistakes happen, and permissions can be complicated.
If you are the author, an heir or another rights holder, and a poem is here without your consent or with the wrong credit, write to [email protected]. A plain email is enough; no formal notice needed.
Please include:
- a link to the poem’s page;
- your name and how you are related to the poem (author, heir, publisher, agent);
- what you would like: removal, a corrected credit, or a link to your site;
- anything that helps us confirm it.
We reply within a few days. Once confirmed, we remove the poem or correct the credit, as you ask.
If something is wrong with a poem published by one of our authors, write to the same address.