The Poetry Institute of Canada - Truth or Fiction?

This post comes with a rather bitter taste to it, but in good conscience it needs to be said. I'm a firm believer that information should be shared, and that each of us needs to take that information and make of it what they will. That being said, when you read this I encourage you to do your own research and conduct your own conclusions. I'm a cynic at heart, so it's easier for me to believe the worst of people, so where I stand is rather predictable. At any rate, when this information came to my attention, I was deeply hurt... and upset, both with myself and those involved. After a poor night's sleep, it struck me that the obvious thing for a writer to do in this situation is simply... to write about it.

So here it is.

The Poetry Institute of Canada and similar contests follow the pattern of what is referred to as a "vanity scam" - one which appeals to our sense of vanity in an attempt to part us with our money. They take submissions from prospective authors eager to receive recognition for their literary efforts, send a flowery acceptance letter, and then charge you typesetting fees to be included in an anthology of poems (or whatever) and sell you as many copies of the anthology for youself and your family as they can manage.

Yours truly fell prey to vanity and bought into it lock, stock, and chequebook, I'm ashamed to say. Not for nothing does Al Pacino, in his role of the Devil in "Devil's Advocate", state that vanity is his favorite sin.

I've since read up on other identical scams and spoken with various individuals via Yahoo answers, and every source says the same thing - anyone can get accepted into these "poetry anthologies" if they pay the money to these scams. What I haven't found is evidence of any of these anthologies making their way into bookstores, libraries, or even the National Library of Canada's catalog.

In one article I read, a professor in the U.S.A. tested his suspicion of a similar scam (they appear as sites like www.poetry.ca, under names such as International Library of Poetry, etc.). He had three students send in submissions: one was an Emily Dickinson poem, one a garbage original work made intentionally bad on the subject of female breasts, and the third a series of fortune cookie fortunes strung together.

They were all accepted, with an offer of publication in exchange for typesetting costs and the chance to buy copies of the anthology, according to the article.

Now January may tell the tale, but my suspicions are that I fell for one of these "vanity scams". So I fought back with my most proficient weapon of choice... I traded my poison pen in for a keyboard (the pen being to the sword what the keyboard is to an automatic weapon, for you metaphor fans out there), and I wrote. Whether this truly is a scam as I have come to believe it is I leave to you to each decide for yourselves - and I offer my best words of wisdom, ones I failed in this instance to listen to myself.

Information is power... and like power must be used with both wisdom and compassion. So don't believe everything you hear (including what you hear from me on this blog!) - judge everything for yourself, and live by your own conclusions.

"Vanity... definitely my favorite sin." -- Al Pacino as "The Devil", Devil's Advocate