Hello Poetry

On the very top-right of the page, click your profile photo/icon. That will reveal your user menu, where you'll find the 'Pencil' icon. Since you're here though, you can just click Write a poem.

The best way to get your work read is to connect with other writers by reading and commenting on their work. Next, you can put your poems on boards to get a lot more readers. Read about boards and stars below.

On the poem page, use the "Request permission" card to send a short note about how you would like to use the poem. Your request is reviewed first, then forwarded to the writer with your email so they can reply directly. If the poem is by a classic poet, check whether the poem is already in the public domain for your country and use case.

The best place is the Front page, where the community votes on today's board. You can get there by clicking on "Hello Poetry" at the top center of the page. You might also like to check out the Classics.

After you read a poem, you can express your reaction in several ways. Clicking the heart will "love" it and save the poem to your favorites, clicking the repost (recycle) icon will post the poem to your profile and share it with all your followers, and clicking the star icon shows you the boards you can add the poem to using a star. You can also sparkle a poem when it is on a board.

Daily poems are sent to your email inbox each day and are selected from yesterday's daily board winner.

Yes. If your poem contains certain explicit words it will be automatically marked as explicit and hidden from those who don't want to see explicit work.

A poem can be tagged with up to 7 tags.

Boards are contests you can vote on with sparkles and add poems to using stars.

Once you've posted some poems, dig around the site (Front page, Latest poems) to find other poems and writers that you like. Write a nice comment, like a poem or two and find some people to follow. Basically, get involved and connect with other people, and you'll find that other people soon start discovering your work.

Joining is free. Visit the Join page, enter your email and click 'Join'. We'll email you a 6 digit login code, grab that from your email, then come back to the page and enter it in, and click 'Join'. Now you're a member, welcome!

On the top right of the page, click the Login icon (a little person). Enter your email and click the button. We'll email you a 6 digit login code, grab that from your email, then come back to the page and enter it in, and click "Login". That's it! No passwords to forget.

Please check your spam folder, or your filters, and make sure you're using the correct email address.

Please reach out to [email protected] and we'll figure it out together. Don't worry, your account and poems are safe!

Once you're logged in to the account you'd like to delete, click the "Delete my account permanently" link on Advanced Settings, where you'll be asked to confirm the decision.

You can change your email by going to your Contact Settings. After changing it, you'll need to confirm your email with a six digit code.

Drafts are only visible to you. Unlisted are visible to anyone with the link. Public are visible to the world.

A board is a collection of poems that you can vote on (a contest, if you will). When the board is "open" you can add poems to it (using stars). After some time, the board moves to "sparkling" where you can vote with sparkles. When sparkling finishes, the writers of the top 3 poems (using dense scoring) get the sparkles they received.

After reading a poem, click the "Star" icon. You'll see boards that are open (or that you have saved). Select a board from the list and click "Add".

After reading a poem on a board (for example, the Front page), look for the "Sparkle" icon. The default is +1 but you can adjust up/down. Read more in What are sparkles?

You start by adding poems to the daily board using stars, then they're voted on. Each daily board is open for 24 hours before it votes for 24 hours. There are no daily boards for the last 3 days of the month. Each user can win (top 3) one daily board each month.

The top three winners from the daily boards are added to the monthly board. The monthly is open and accumulates poems from the 1st of the month until the final 3 days of the month. During those final 3 days the poems are voted on.

The top five winners from the monthly boards are added to the yearly board. Voting time is TBD around the end of the year.

Each writer is eligible to win a daily board once per month and each poem can only win a monthly board once. So if a poem was removed it means the user just won an earlier daily board and became ineligible to win again. So, we figured we'd return your star to you and let everyone sparkle the other poems that are still eligible to win. These rules don't apply to theme boards or community boards.

Givers are people who spend stars to bring newer poets' poems onto boards or feeds. Scouts are people whose additions receive the most sparkle support from readers. Both are ways of recognizing the readers who help good poems find more people.

Stars are used to put poems on boards. Most boards require one star to add a poem. Purchasing stars is what keeps this site alive.

Reading offers let you reserve Stars on a poem to encourage someone to record it aloud. Open offers appear on the poem and on the Readings page. When someone posts a reading, anyone with open Stars on that poem can award some or all of those Stars to the reader. The Stars are then theirs.

You can purchase stars on your Stars page. You can also convert the embers you earn into stars!

Stars expire one year after they are created. We made a handy table on your Stars page to help you see when your stars will expire. Anytime you use a star, we'll automatically select your oldest stars first.

Embers are the small currency you earn by participating on Hello Poetry. Convert 52 embers into 1 star whenever you like. Track your balance on your Embers page.

You can earn embers in many ways: reading poems, sparkling poems on boards, getting your comments thumbed up, and winning boards. See your Embers page for all the details. Embers can become stars, but stars cannot be converted back into embers.

Each day (EST), you can get 3 embers for the first poem you read each day and 7 embers for the first poem you sparkle.

They don't! You can convert them to stars whenever you'd like.

Sparkles are your votes on a board. You can vote up to +3 sparkles on a poem. You can only sparkle a poem when it is on the board, and when the board is "sparkling" (voting).

Sort of, yes. You can keep adding more sparkles up to the limit (+3) but can't undo sparkles.

As a member, here are the guidelines we ask you to consider when flagging others' work:

- Obscene or Inappropriate: We are generous around here about sexuality and violence, particularly if it's not the only kind of content posted by a member, and it has some genuine creative intention. Heaven and hell are within, so some expression that may be upsetting is appropriate (and is actually encouraged here). However, an obvious indulgence in being hateful, crude, or upsetting others isn't tolerated.

- Harassment: This should be self-explanatory. If another person or group is singled out, explicitly or not, in a harmful context, that is harassment. Criticism of others' work is part of what it means to be a creative outlet, but abuse of other members' characters is not acceptable and will result in longer suspensions that other categories.

- Copyright Violation: Plain and simple: posting work you didn't write. Could be lyrics to your fav song, a contemporary poet, or copying someone else's work from HePo. Try building on top of what they wrote; improving it; destroying it; parodying it; anything but copying it verbatim.

- Spam: Generally robot submitted garbage (selling ED pills, return of long lost love, promise of eternal salvation after you send money, etc), but could include someone overtly promoting or selling a product of their own. Rare now a days but you might still find some slip through the front door.

This list is a work in progress. Please message me if you have additions or refinements.

It is a small group of members who have demonstrated an interest and commitment to making this place better for all of us.

Once enough people have flagged a poem, it is temporarily hidden from the site while the moderation team reviews it. You'll be emailed when your poem goes under review. If the moderators agree with the flags, the poem will be removed and a timeout may apply. If the flags are dismissed, the poem may be reinstated.

That's the direct result of having a poem, comment, or message removed for violating the guidelines. Each time content is removed, it increases the amount of time your account will be in "time out". You still can access your poetry, but cannot add new work or use the site as you normally would.

For example, the first removal may only be a 24 hour suspension, but the second would be 3 days, the third 9 days and so on. The time frames increase dramatically but start low to give everyone a chance at redeeming themselves. Continued and deliberate disregard for the basic rules of decency and kindness we have in place will no longer be tolerated.

That is handled through Stripe. Visit your Stars page and click "Manage subscriptions".

Visit your Stars page and click "Manage subscriptions". All subscriptions are handled through Stripe.

To answer that question, I'd suggest you read more about the Creative Commons Licenses. To my knowledge, they're the best online copyright resource, and offer a variety of licenses you can use for your work.

Due to the nature of online publishing, someone can copy/paste your work without your permission, and there is little you can do to stop them. However, we've found this is rarely ever done, and is of little consequence when actually done.

Hello Poetry hasn't even dreamt of owning your poetry. If you read into the details of the Terms of Use of the website, you'll see that we do request the right to "use" your content only so we can display it on the website. That's it.

Absolutely. We'd never think of asking for exclusive rights to your work; it is your work, after all!

If you have found someone on Hello Poetry using your work, first contact that person directly via private message and ask them to take your work down.

If they do not respond, flag the poem as "Copyright Violation" and our moderators will review it. Please comment on the poem in question with your proof so our moderators can review that too.

Hello Poetry is for the poetry in your life; a place to belong; a place to practice expression, play, reflection, vulnerability, exposure, forgiveness; a place to be unfinished, unpolished, works in progress; a safe space for your expression, creativity and chaos; a tight-knit online community; whatever you want it to be.

Ah, this is where I introduce myself. Ahem, hello, my name is Eliot York. I built the site in the wee hours of many hot summer nights in 2009. Though the site has changed a lot since then, I'm still working on it part-time and it's intention is exactly the same: to create an online space for poetry that is, as much as humanly possible, 1) open to the dark 2) glowing with light, and 3) a sustainable business. How're we doing?

Aiming for a release in early summer 2026.