Poetry Highjacking

I did a post over on The Ink Ladies yesterday about literary scams and how to avoid them. I focused on poetry, because poets have very few venues in which to place their work, let alone be paid for it.

One of my commenters visited a site I recommended, detailing a serious writer's comical--and vain--attempts to get rejected by one company that takes the writings of all comers. I believe her comment contained the words "seriously hysterical." Yeah, his pseudo-poetry is that.

In the article, the writer tells how he decided to search for his real name as author among the six million+ poems listed on the website of this company, and found that some of his already-published legitimate work mysteriously had been acquired and posted. Not until he threatened a lawsuit from himself and his publisher did they remove his work.

I decided to trot on over to Poetry.com and check my name out. Unfortunately, my name is listed as the author of several poems, but fortunately, none of them is my work. The unlucky Marsha Ward and Marsha L. Ward shown there (who may be one and the same) are not me. The poetry there is not by me. I've never submitted to the company, and certainly don't plan to ever do so. For now, my poetry has not been highjacked. Perhaps I'll continue to check from time to time. Maybe you should, too.