Well written and thought out. Medium isn’t interested in poetry. It buries it. I used to read a number of poets consistently. Now I have to dig deep to even find them.
Over the past three years I have published over 1,000 poems on Medium. To find them a reader has to dig deep indeed and scroll down endlessly. I have over 10,000 “followers,” mostly from the period when Medium was using bots to build up everyone’s followers.
I have seen my stats plummet from hundreds of readers to, usually, under a hundred readers, all this with over 10,000 followers. Seem logical to you?
Medium was never interested in poetry. Now it doesn’t even pretend to be. It is now what it set out to be, a place where people under 35 can read listicles, life hacks, identity political rants, and how to improve themselves articles.
My response has been to publish less. Perhaps soon not to publish at all. I think the same is happening to fiction as well.
Also, I have quit reading anything on Medium. It’s just too much work to find content that interests me
I have to say thanks to the publications that have supported poetry. There are too many to mention, but they have done good work, futile, but good. And thanks to my hardcore readers as well.
Medium is a business in search of profit. As Auden said:
Poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper…
Ev Williams and crew are not interested in money losers. Can’t blame them, but I’m not interested in joining them either.
bookgardener@gmail.com.
