As anyone who has read my signature should know , I self-published my first collection of poetry a few years ago. I'm currently working on another, and I'd like some help getting it into the best shape I can before I release it to the public.

My poetry is nearly all blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter), and on average is around 10-15 lines. This collection is currently planned to include about 70 poems (each paired with a public-domain drawing or illustration, eventually, but that's much later in the process), which I've divided into three sections (or maybe four, since I'm including one seven-poem cycle, which perhaps should be on its own).

I'm looking for readers who can read the draft collection and give me feedback. While any thoughts readers may have are valuable, in particular I'm looking for help improving

• The order of the poems. Unlike my first collection, where I had the concept of the multiple simultaneous calendars guiding my choices of which poems came first and which poems followed which, here I have had to just make arbitrary decisions. If you think a poem would work well as the first or last poem in a section, or two poems should or shouldn't be next to each other, or one poem should be after another instead of before it, that would be tremendously helpful.
• The details of the poems themselves. If a word, a line, or a section of a poem "sounds" odd, I'd like to be able to try to improve it. (While I'm going to read through the whole collection with an eye for this kind of thing several times before sending it to any volunteer readers, I am a notoriously bad critic of my own poetry.)

(Anything else, such as ideas for titles for any of the poems or the collection as a whole, suggestions of poems I didn't include but you think I should, links to suitable artwork, or anything else, would be most welcome, but those two areas are what I'm most looking for.)

I expect to have the collection together enough to send to beta readers later this month. Are any of you interested in helping me get this collection of my poetry ready to publish?

I'd be interested! I will give the caveat that I've never beta-read for anyone before (besides my sisters, which I suppose counts). Still, I do love poetry and would love to help out if needed. (Although the naming of works is not my strong suit )

*claps Jon on*

Thank you kindly!


Like I said, I'm sort of somewhat hopeful that someone will come up with some suggestions for titles, but if they do that's a bonus.

(The collection as a whole has to have a title before I publish it, of course, but individual poems can go without a title; it's just not exactly typographically clear whether something is a continuation of the previous poem or a new poem in itself when there isn't a title.)

I now have all the poems slotted into their tentative positions, and things are set up to produce the for-beta-readers PDF, but I want to take a few close looks over every poem to find the obvious things, that'd be a waste of beta-reader time to catch, before I send it to you.

I've now finished my pre-beta proofing of the collection, so could Gailius and any other interested party PM me how you would like me to send you the PDF for you to review?