Poetry Ebooks

[Adele Ward]

Poetry is tricky in ebooks and taking off slowly. I wonder if people would like it better if it came with a free audiobook with the poet reading. I'm reading Alice Oswald's latest book Memorial. It was shortlisted for the T S Eliot prize, our top prize for poetry in the UK, and she dropped out because the prize is now sponsored by a hedge fund.

[purple_fishy]

I have been noticing that there is a sad lack in the poetry department when it comes to ebooks. I hope that changes soon.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by purple_fishy

I have been noticing that there is a sad lack in the poetry department when it comes to ebooks. I hope that changes soon.

I've designed two poetry ebooks for Circaidy Gregory Press - Into the Yell by Sarah James, and wormwood, earth and honey by Catherine Edmunds - this one is illustrated by the author.

And I know that Repulsion Thrust by Magdalena Ball is available from BeWrite Books - and I'm sure they have more.

[vice-versa]

in French, but I love this one

http://www.manybooks.net/titles/baud...048flrm10.html

[moyogi2]

I have a couple of books by Mary Oliver, my current favorite poet. Formatting is not consistent - the font changes poem to poem. I just love being able to take a minute to dive into one of her poems.

[purple_fishy]

Originally Posted by vice-versa

in French, but I love this one

http://www.manybooks.net/titles/baud...048flrm10.html

I have a copy of this on my bookshelf, I had no idea it was formatted for ebooks. Sweet! Thanks!

[Adele Ward]

I love Mary Oliver too. It's tricky converting poetry for ebooks because when lines roll over they don't indent, the first line indents and the second is left justified, so they look like a new paragraph of prose. With poetry the opposite needs to happen so that if a line is too long it rolls over slightly indented. This makes it tricky for poets self publishing. An easy explanation of how to solve this would be handy for a lot of people. I don't do conversions so I don't know.

[ficbot]

I enjoy poetry. There are a few on the Kindle store. I mostly like classical poetry so it's easy to find a lot of free stuff. I have been putting together my own anthology in Sigil, copying over the ones I like. It's been fun but I have not shared it here because not every single author is in the public domain (although probably 80% are). If you PM me, I am happy to share more info.

[Namekuseijin]

Originally Posted by Adele Ward

Poetry is tricky in ebooks and taking off slowly. I wonder if people would like it better if it came with a free audiobook with the poet reading.

Of course not. Reading aloud, who needs that? They should sing it like everyone else.

You know, they call it lyrics now to sung poetry and just poetry to the written kind, but back in the times of Homer, it was just poetry and it was sung and oral tradition was the only way of recording it. Then came written word and out was written down, but such a system for recording the melodies and rhythm was not yet devised, so the music was lost. Then came the press and music notation, and it was possible to record both the music and the words, but it came too late and already a tradition of written poetry alone had formed. Then came a funny irony: sound recording. It was possible now to record both the music and an oral presentation without even needing to write anything down in weird symbols. So it's possible to simply listen to Homer himself singing or rapping his epics along while academics keep themselves busy deciphering old symbols from clay tablets or e-papyr.

In other words, the written language is merely a historical accident and we've got now much better recording means with automatic reading for us.

Thus I hope poets put some more effort to entertain us than merely reading aloud, that my software can do for me.

Originally Posted by Adele Ward

I love Mary Oliver too. It's tricky converting poetry for ebooks because when lines roll over they don't indent, the first line indents and the second is left justified, so they look like a new paragraph of prose. With poetry the opposite needs to happen so that if a line is too long it rolls over slightly indented. This makes it tricky for poets self publishing. An easy explanation of how to solve this would be handy for a lot of people. I don't do conversions so I don't know.

Precisely so.

[sonofpendragon]

It's all in the formatting mainly, at least I think it is, but with basic html it's possible to knock out a good poetry ebook. But there are a good few poetry books already on Kindle etc, I suppose it just takes a careful check of the genre, if a straight forward search on poetry doesn't do the trick.

[Adele Ward]

I completely agree about the singing. I love it when poets sing their work. I sing too and I've even joined Rock Choir because I love a good sing song. You've asked for it. I'll sing more at poetry readings and on the audiobooks we give with our Kindles!

[Adele Ward]

There's a really good workshop forum on here where we're getting down to the nitty gritty about formatting poetry for an ebook. You'd be surprised what editors get up to in order to make the poetry look as good as it can on the page or screen.