About the Popular POEM

What is the Popular POEM, really?

The Popular POEM is a paid annual subscription service for collaborative poetry: subscribers post one short message per day, and those messages are anonymously combined into shared public poems.

A POEM consists of twenty-five independent lines of text that are built by combining anonymous contributor messages. It updates daily with equal weight given to each contributor's single daily submission. Initially random, it evolves over time to reflect the consensus opinion of all contributors.

What does POEM stand for?

POEM is an acronym: Public Opinion Evolutionary Machine

Subscription

$12 per year. Pricing in some countries is adjusted to local purchasing power; you'll see the price that applies to you on the subscription page before paying.

Gift subscriptions

A one-year subscription can be purchased as a gift for $12. The recipient redeems a gift code on their own account — no payment method required.

Refunds and cancellation

You have two weeks after subscribing to complete identity verification. If you cannot complete verification within that window, you are entitled to a full refund. After verification or after the two-week window, subscriptions are non-refundable. Subscriptions can be cancelled at any time; access continues until the end of the current billing year. Full details: Refund Policy.

One daily message

Submit one short message (up to 75 characters) per day to any active poem.

Geographic contribution tag

The geographic origin of each message is folded into the public poem. The country breakdown is visible to everyone on each poem line.

Daily streak

Your consecutive posting days are tracked and displayed on your account.

Gift subscriptions

Buy a one-year subscription for someone else.

Multilingual interface

The site is available in nearly 100 languages.

Privacy by design

Your individual messages are destroyed immediately after processing and cannot be deconvolved from the public poem. Read more.

Create

Provide and verify an email address.

Subscribe

Purchase a one-year subscription for $1 / month.

Certify

Certify your identity to prevent anyone from having more than one account.

Why must I certify my identity?

Certifying identities prevents anyone from creating more than one account to artificially amplify their influence.

Why can I submit only once per day?

This ensures equal influence across all accounts, preventing any individual from dominating through volume submission.

How do I help write the POEM?

Craft messages that match existing POEM lines while still expressing your opinion.

Is there an obscenity filter?

A basic algorithm detects crude language and suggests improvement without modifying your submissions because the Popular POEM is a poem and poems are art.

Who reads the POEM?

Hopefully, the person in the POEM's title.

Where and how can I report a bug?

Please report bugs through our contact form. All bugs will be addressed as soon as practicable.

Is my profile private?

Yes. The Popular POEM does not hold any of your personal information in our database.

Are my messages private?

Yes. All private messages are permanently destroyed immediately after they are used to inform the production of the public POEM. This typically occurs in under one second. Messages will not be sold or distributed and are not included in database logs.

Can my private messages be linked to me?

No. Because each POEM is a mixture of messages with some randomization, it is generally not possible to extract any one contribution to link it to a specific poet. Database logs exclude message content.