CURATION
In Response to a New Trick — and to Curation Surprises
Melissa Coffey blew the lid off this thing. And curation just got even more weird.
I don’t often learn a new trick that get’s me excited as much as the coding super-trick I learned from Melissa Coffey today in her article Discovering the Topics for your Curated Stories on Medium. But the thrill soon settled into bewilderment as I researched the last two months of my distribution topics.
They are as follows:
Poetry: 9 Psychology: 5 Self: 5 Mental Health: 3 Writing: 3 Psychology: 2 Marketing: 1 Humor: 1 Film: 1 Fiction: 1 Lifestyle: 1 Creativity: 1
The topics themselves aren’t the surprises. It is how the POETRY topic is being handled. I mean, it downright nearly angers me.
Yes, my most frequent distribution topic is Poetry. Not surprising, as I write newsletters, run a FB group, and a rather busy publication about poetry here on Medium. I write poetry and poetry articles as well. I am also almost always in the top 3 Top Writers for the Poetry tag, and those spots are highly competitive (see pic below). I have both feet in the Poetry tag here on Medium, and have a reputation for being involved in poetry here.
In other words, it makes sense that curators would “notice” me when it comes to poetry. Right?
But are they really noticing me for my poetry? And are they necessarily thrilled about it? Not exactly. Here’s how my poetry posts were handled for the poetry distributions:
Out of the 9 times (in the last 2 months) that my work was selected for distribution in the Poetry topic, only TWO of those were actual poems. (I published 12 poems in the last 2 months.) One selection for distribution was in P.S. I Love You and they are much more likely to be distributed. If I understand it correctly, they do their own in-house curations there.
The other one was selected for distribution in the Poetry tag and it was NOT in PSILY, and came as a big shock to me. (It’s been maybe a YEAR since this has happened.) And in my opinion, the selected poem was not one of my best poems of recent. Perhaps the curators were feeling especially generous that day? Who knows.
The other 6 were:
- Poetry writing prompts (4) (These are part of a series so I am surprised to see them selected.)
- Posts about a Facebook poetry reading event where I was encouraging people to read more poetry on Medium (As a clear series of 3 posts, I was shocked these were selected at all for distribution) (3)
- a NEWSLETTER — I mean, HOW? (1) (Note, this says it was selected for distribution in Poetry but is not showing up in the poetry curations list. Newsletters are NOT supposed to be eligible for distribution.)
Here’s the proof — This is the newsletter link:
As disappointing to see my actual poetry being ignored for literal fluff pieces, here’s where it gets really weird. Consider these two poetry articles I did the last 2 months:
Poetry Can Teach Us Much About Self-Love: This article was chosen for distribution in SELF but NOT FOR POETRY.
Not thinking that’s too weird? Here’s another:
Poetry Resources to Help You Hone Your Skills: This article was chosen for distribution in WRITING and CREATIVITY ….but NOT FOR POETRY.
What is going on? I mean, I know Medium isn’t pushing for poetry but come on? Those articles would highly benefit being circulated to people who are following the POETRY topic, right? Isn’t Medium supposed to be moving in a more relational direction? Like showing people stuff — they would want to read?
The takeaway (for me) here is this:
It seems…Medium would like for me to stop writing poetry and concentrate on writing about relationships, mental health and such, but leave the poetry writing to others. Write prompts for them and stuff. Write poetry articles — ok — but add something else in those poetry articles so people might get to read a little poetry with their real topic. This seems sensitive of me to feel, but those are my feelings nonetheless. Sometimes I have even speculated or worried — maybe the curators just really don’t like my poetry?
I think my poetic heart is just a bit confused — about it all.
Topics are meant to help my work find the most interested readers, when the quality warrants such distribution. Not everything I write is deserving of distribution. But I happen to think more of my poetry warrants selection for distribution. I don’t think that’s conceited. I am just being honest about it being, for the most part, well-written poetry.
It is alarming and disheartening to see what is often chosen for distribution under the poetry tag — some with misspellings, wavering tenses, sloppy line endings and punctuation that isn’t well-chosen, and not one ounce of depth. Yes, poetry quality is subjective but mastery is often not. Basic grammar and spelling and understanding of how language moves properly — these poems should not be hard to filter through based on quality. Perhaps poetry selections for distribution are chosen not just on quality? Readability is certainly important. Emotive response. But honestly — it seems randomized.
Like bots are propped up with fake coffee cups and orders of how many poems to select each day. Algorithms that look for posts that contain “love + poetry” and select a few here and there. It doesn’t feel very genuine when really fantastic poetry is overlooked or articles that are clearly beneficial to poets are not selected for distribution in Poetry, but are distributed in other categories instead. Hell, we’ll take the distributions wherever, but there are a lot of really dedicated poetry readers here and they are following the Poetry category because they are interested in reading about poetry. They are being left out when distribution practices forget about the Poetry audiences.
Poetry deserves to be handled better here on Medium. There, I said it. The genre deserves better. We as writers of poetry owe it our best efforts and platforms that host it owe it their time and energies as much as any other valid form of writing they support. That, folks, is just my personal opinion, of course.
These distribution choices on my work feel like a smack on the quilled hand — stick to the real stuff, dear girl. You know, like love and stuff. Write articles please, fluff is fine but yes…yes, keep driving traffic. Thank you.
Poetry, let’s face it, does not reel in new membership by ranking high on search engines without the boosts of SEO and such, therefore, it’s tolerated, not preferred but the platform. Understandable; it is a business, after all.
In spite of the distribution surprises (and the subsequent irritation with which I now type and will likely later regret), I am grateful for the new trick (thanks Melissa!) to give me another feather in my quill, or what have you. The more you know, right?
For the record, I am advocating for poetry to be treated as a relatable, quality, valuable genre here on Medium — just like fiction or other genres. I will argue for higher literary standards with regards to poetry here on Medium, and that distributions in the poetry tag be handled with some kind of literary discernment.
Now, I have poetry to edit, poetry to read, and poetry to write — till next time!
Thanks for reading.
And since this post is not eligible for distribution, I can ask you to please follow my profile and my publications:
Fiddleheads & Floss Poetry publication The POM
And I can invite you to read some of my latest work. Here are a few of those poems from the last two months: I’d like to know if you would have chosen them for distribution? The first one, These Shared Walls was selected, the others were not.
Prose poem Morning Blooms in Birdsong is a wilderness morning greeting over coffee. You’ll want to come along! Another prose poem is the opposite — a bitter look at impoverished urban living in The Abstract is Absent Here. Etch Me Upon the Glass is an emotive poem about feeling displaced after a breakup and the fear of being forgotten. The Morning Alights is a poem in form, the Pantoum.