by Dani Couture

February 2005: http://www.cranksandlurkers.com/ 

Have you ever thought that you could select better poems than what you read in various lit journals? Here's your chance. Touted as the "world's first self-edited literary journal,” CRANKS&NDLURCKERS is the Battle Royale of literary journals. Anyone can be an editor, simply sign up on the site for free. Once you have signed up, you are issued two accounts: one for voting and one for submitting. It’s partially up to you what poems get to stay “alive.”

The journal works on a basic points system. As an editor, each week you are given 10 voting points that you can award to poems you like. Four poems are posted online each week. Don’t like a poem? Don’t award it any of your votes. The three poems with the least amount of votes in one week will disappear into oblivion. The poem that is awarded the most points each week gets to move on to the next round of competition. As stated on the site:

Each month, the previous month’s four weekly winners will face another round of voting. The winner of this round will be posted to our archives section and published in our quintennial print anthology.

On joining, you are also issued 50 points for submitting, the exact amount that one needs to submit a poem on C&L. If your poem does not garner at least 50 points, you are banned from submitting to C&L for one full year. So, pull on your thick skins and get ready submit!

For the complete rules, visit http://www.cranksandlurkers.com/. Also, if you sign up, you will receive short weekly updates from C&L founder and moderator, Pino Coluccio. The website design alone is worth a visit.

*

January 2005: http://stonestone.unbc.ca/ 

So, winter won’t cooperate. A weekend of winter camping in the rain has left me happy to be back home and surfing the net. At the suggestion of a friend, I punched in the URL for UNBC’s online literary journal. Greeted with cool blue tones and a minimalist aesthetic, the site’s unpretentious nature is welcoming. At least it looks as if it’s winter somewhere.

The site’s advisory board is comprised of folks from Prince George, Winnipeg, and Montreal; you can find the culmination of their efforts on the “current” page where all of the latest stonestone lit. is corralled. Want more? Check out the archives section for three back issues of poetry and fiction. Among the archives, I am happily reacquainted with the poetry of Jon Paul Fiorentino, which reminds me to take stock of my post-holiday medicine cabinet. Anyway, there is another point of interest on stonestone’s rails: The Dome Car: Poetry Train Poems.

The link to the Poetry Train Poems is a tunnel to a collection of talented poets such as bill bissett, Jay MillAr, and Deborah Stiles. These poems are, for me, the most provocative on the site. And lo and behold, Mr. Fiorentino again!

So, yes, another cool site to check out on the literary internet map of Canada. However, I wonder at the riddle of the “sound” link. “still sounding...” Indeed.

*

October 2004: http://www.goodreports.net/

Those who visit the site on a regular basis may instinctively associate goodreports.net with the picture of the barn that graces the top left hand corner of the home page. This barn, engulfed in a perpetual snowstorm, stands sentry through all four seasons, as does the site's founder, Alex Good.

Alex manages to scour the web for interesting reviews, articles, poetry, and fiction which he then links on goodreports.net. Most notable and interesting is the goodreports.net Anthology, an archive of links for poetry and short fiction on the web. While savvy web-browsers are able to discover these poems on their own by visiting literary journal websites, goodreports.net selects a few of the more interesting pieces and then links them.

It’s also important to mention that not all of the material on goodreports.net is skimmed from other sites. There is an extensive archive of essays and reviews written by Alex himself. Whether it’s his A Defense of Reviewing, or an interview with Pierre Berton, Alex’s casual style is welcoming and relaxed. It’s difficult not to feel like the site is maintained by someone you know and maybe have not seem in ages--so long, in fact, that you seem to forget what he looks like.

Dani Couture is poet living in Toronto. Her website is http://www.danicouture.com/ More website reviews will appear here in the future.

"My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music."
- Vladimir Nabokov