Poets and Lovers lives since three years and a half, regularly facing threats. Our Internet provider had registered the domains of his sites with the domain registrar Njalla. On April 20, without any warning or explanation, Njalla decided to block the domain names of of all sites hosted by our provider, in particular Pigtails in Paint, Poets and Lovers and the sites of Graham Ovenden and Garage Press. Moreover, Njalla blocked our provider’s access to the virtual server that they hosted for his sites, they did not even allow him to download the latest contents before terminating it. The pretext was a supposed complaint against the contents of Pigtails in Paint, about which we have no details. After requests for information by our provider, they claimed “child porn,” then later “sexual objectification of kids.” They told him that he was “free” to move the domains to another registrar, but for several days, they refused to transmit him the authorisation codes for transferring the domains to another registrar. After a few days, Pigtails in Paint got its codes for registering the domain name with another company, but for Poets and Lovers it took a month to get the correct codes. The sites of Graham Ovenden and Garage Press had to change their domain names.
One should not be astonished by such a thuggish behaviour against a legal website devoted to poetry. Njalla was founded by Pirate Bay, they are pirates, they made a career by abetting theft of intellectual or artistic property: for years they registered domain names for numerous illegal pirate sites, a criminal activity that they halted only when they were themselves threatened to be blocked by Iceland. On its website, Njalla boasts about its commitment to privacy. Indeed, pirates will protect the privacy of other pirates and thieves, but don’t expect them to defend the freedom of writers and artists.
There were also serious problems with the successive servers of the blog, which went down too often. Moreover, before the blocking of the domain by Njalla, backups did not function, so all recent contents had to be restored manually. Now, with a new server, the situation is stable.
Given the numerous attempts at censorship of Pigtails in Paint, this site has restricted its access. Some posts and many images are now visible only by registered subscribers. As Poets and Lovers and the sites of Graham Ovenden and Garage Press were “collateral victims” of such attacks, one can thus expect a quieter future for this blog.
Past and future articles
There remain only a few articles from Agapeta that have not been republished. New material consists mostly of French poetry. Thus, I cannot give any guarantee on the posting frequency, which is currently one article every five days.
A call for collaboration
A project like this blog can be maintained in the long term only with the collaborative efforts of several people. Up to now, I have written all articles, and only one results from a suggestion by a reader (the poem “Bells for John Whiteside’s Daughter” by John Crowe Ransom).
You can help in various ways, by suggesting an author or one of his works, by pointing out some poem, or even by writing a draft article yourself. The criteria for inclusion in the blog are quality, originality, and relevance to the topic of younger girls (either as authors or as subjects of works).
“Indeed, pirates will protect the privacy of other pirates and thieves, but don’t expect them to defend the freedom of writers and artists.”
Thank you. I’m quite tired of people who have the least capability to process (and produce) beauty and aesthetics to finger-point who are trying everyday to make the world less ugly in behavior, gray in arts and demeaning in architecture.
I’m around your website for a couple of weeks and I’m really pleased with the quality of the material. No comparison, no other person doing it, like in Pigtails in Paint.
My thing is painting. I doubt if I can help anyhow, since language barriers are already an issue, even if I’m doing my best to learn them.
Maybe I could pin-point books, I don’t know. But I owe you for the songs list. And presenting me to good poetry niche that I’m interested, which I’ve missed for so many years.
Just looks to me that you already hoarded everything about poetry! The blog is huge. Kind of an Encyclopedia.
… Maybe one day publish it as a beautiful ornamented book? It would be awesome.
Warm regards,
Cobalt Blue
Thank you. You can help in various ways, as indicated in the last paragraph. You can suggest a book, a poem, a song, etc. It is better to provide as much information as possible. You can also present yourself a song, as you did in Pigtails in Paint.