The Poetry Channel & Information Network was instigated way back in the distant mists of ancient Internet time by the inimitable Juliette Torrez—it was an irregular email newsletter, part on-scene report of Juliette’s explorations in the national spoken word scene of the late 1990’s, part vehicle for news and discussion from writers/publishers/poets/instigators all over the country, and part literary gossip column. Juliette told her subscribers, “As my friend Genevieve Van Cleve likes to say, ‘If you can’t say something nice, honey, well come sit down by me.’ So, yeah, there’s some kibble with the bits too.” The “semi-timely” emails were thoroughly entertaining and useful in creating connections among Net-savvy poets from everywhere, but they were ephemeral, disappearing into the email ether. So Poetry Guides Bob Holman & Margery Snyder invited Juliette to host Poetry Channels at About.com Poetry, and from November 1997 through March 1999, each episode of Poetry Channel was archived on the Web site with live links.

The Poetry Channel & Information Network went silent in 1999. Its successor was the weekly About.com Poetry Museletter, which ran until the end of 2003 with reports from a staff of Museletter correspondents around the world and was also archived on the Web site with live links.

Too many of those links have died over the course of the years since then—so many that we found it impossible to maintain the archives, and we made the difficult decision to close them. You can still keep up with what’s going on in the poetry world and at About.com Poetry by signing up for our weekly email newsletter, but the newsletters are not archived on the site. If you want to browse through past postings, we’d suggest you visit our blog archives.