Emdad Rahman: S.O.S. (Save Our Site)! Calling all football/soccer poets, football fans and people interested in promoting literacy and poetry, especially linking poetry with a subject they love: football! football! football!
Football Poets is the world’s original and by far the largest football poetry web site. It has received thousands of entries over the years and hundreds of thousands of unique visitors to the site: it is loved by football poets worldwide.
The Football Poets site is the largest collective of footballing bards in the world. I have personally contributed well over 500 poems to this superb group for many years.
The site is twelve years old now, extremely large – and written in old technology (ASP), while also coping with housing over 13,750 published poems from over 28,000 submissions made since 2000 . We now finally have to look at any ways possible of making a complete re-vamp in order for the site to survive. The editors alone carry the cost of annual hosting, but other than that there is no budget for anything.
This is a grass roots poetry initiative that has survived for twelve years without funding from any source and it now deserves the support of Government and commercial organisations in order to survive – in fact, from anyone who might be interested in football or poetry or both, like thousands of people who already value and have contributed to this football poetry site in the past. It would be a massive loss both to football and to grass roots poetry if this website were to fold due to lack of funding.
In mid-March, the site received 100 Euros from Italy! This came from a certain loyal poet and Everton fan. The editors thank those who have kindly donated so far.
Thousands of poems from the site have been filed for safe keeping by the British Library. You can find them on www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/target/120341.
Can you spare £10.00?
The site isn’t set up for credit cards and can only accept cheques (for those still with cheque books).
•All suggestions – technical advice, sponsorship suggestions and donations – are welcome. Please email Crispin Thomas, one of the original creators and editors of this website, or Simon Icke on editors@footballpoets.org or poetsimon@aol.com. •Send cheques made payable to The Football Poets to The Football Poets, 4, The Retreat, Butterow, Stroud, Glos. GL5 2LS, UK. Tel. 01453-757 376 or 07837-798 463. •Do say hello by “liking” on Facebook and following on Twitter.