Time To Confess
One can wonder why I’m saying this. Being an
editor of a web journal, I know our weaknesses and strengths. And to produce
quality work, one has to depend on others. In our case, we have to depend on
the quality of the poetry written by contemporary poets especially, those with
an online presence. We know not all poets around the world have an online
presence. We know most of the renowned poets of our time never depend on online
publications, especially online web journals. So, we don’t have any access to
their creative excellence. Readers have to venture through the print editions
of their books. In case any reader wants to read their poetry. So being a web
journal publisher we don’t have access to their poetry as well. We can only
depend on the poets with an online presence. And on those who want to publish
their creativity through online web journals such as OPA. I do hope, readers
will understand our limitations. With limited capacity, one cannot attain any
success that depends on qualitative excellence.
We have to acknowledge the fact that anyone with
an online presence and a dream to be a poet, can venture through this medium of
the internet and social media. The Internet has enabled all to publish anything
online. A person with a hobby of writing poems is not outside of this new era
of self-publishing. Yes, this dream has made most of us poets and writers for
not long. Of course, this new era has achieved quantity. But quality assurance
has been compromised. Obviously, for any web journal, it is very difficult to
attain and maintain qualitative literary excellence with these conditions. And
OPA is no exception. Yes, this inherent weakness of online publishing remains
with us from the very beginning of our journey. Although consciously we keep on
trying to manage and sail through our limited capacity if not overcome our
weakness.
Every month we have to reject, a lot of
submissions to maintain the quality of the journal. Yet, as an editor I cannot
claim, we are not publishing a single poem without any literary brilliance. I
know, we publish too many poems which nobody will read for a second time. I
confess we are compromising with quality to maintain the quantity of the
journal. It is the true story of our seven-year-long journey of online
publishing. Again, this true story has a big twist. OPA publishes a lot of
translated poems. Most of the poets of Europe submit their poems along with the
translated versions into English. Few submit only the translated versions
without the original versions. Nobody can claim that these translated versions
of the original poems bear the same literary quality. Even the poets themselves
do not know about the quality of the English translations as they do not know
the language. I don’t know how many poets get the translations done by the
online translator applications. The quality of these translator applications is
too poor to bring back any literary brilliance of the original poetry. So, both
the poets and editors have to compromise with the quality of the translations.
Only the readers who can go through the original versions of the poems can get
the real essence of the poetry written in different European languages. This is
an area of weakness of OPA that we have to bear on. Otherwise, we cannot
develop this platform of cultural exchange of various literary traditions and
heritages. We can only ask our poets, to get the translations done by the
experts of this field.
Yes, we would like to take this resolution that we
would keep on asking our poets, those who write in languages other than
English, to get the translations of their poems done only by the professional
experts of the field. We are also asking those poets, who write primarily in
English to submit qualitative poems of literary brilliance. With the advent of
the eighth year of the online journey of OPA, we’ll look forward to uplifting
the literary quality of our web journal. To go in that direction, we’ll have to
decline a lot of poems of those poets also, who are the frequent participators
of OPA. During the last seven years. We hope, all the poets associated with OPA
will welcome these resolutions. We hope lot more poets will take OPA seriously
as a literary journal of excellence. We hope our readers will also welcome
these resolutions. And yes, to maintain the quality of the poems we may have to
compromise with the quantity of the poems.
So, friends, with the upcoming April issue of OPA
we would like to extend our promise to add more quality to our publications. It
may bring down the quantity. But with enhanced quality, we hope OPA will become
more popular than before. Again, this depends not only on us alone. It depends
primarily on the poets, the translators, and the readers as well. If we all can
give our best, we can attain a minimum benchmark of qualitative excellence.
Let’s take it as the new year resolution of 2022. Let’s hope to rewrite the
history of online literary ventures with
qualitative
measures.
NilavroNill Shoovro
From The
Editorial Desk
OPA
A
WORLDWIDE
WRITERS’ WEB
PRESENTATION!
PUBLISHED
BY
OPA
OUR
POETRY ARCHIVE
ONLINE MONTHLY POETRY JOURNAL
https://ourpoetryarchive.blogspot.com
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Hearty Congratulations for successfully publishing OPA for seven years.It is a great achievement.I admire OPA for quality.My best wishes to esteemed Editor Nilavro Nill as well as all members of Editorial Board.
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