Hey, @PoetryFound, Kolleen here. It's been a long time since we spoke...7 months, maybe? Anyway I'm here to chat with you about why it was incredibly damaging to both your audience to your already tarnished reputation to include work from a convicted pedophile in your last issue.

I'm going to be honest with you: I only find out about these things a bit after the fact because I can't stand you, so I don't read you. I think you're terrible. I think you continue to learn nothing. It's your thing, I guess?

(CW for the rest of this thread btw)

I don't know how you run your journal, how you pick and choose who to run, if the stuff is redacted or not. But I want you to know that googling your submitters is a really good habit to get into. It's so simple even one person can do it.

I know this because I am one person without a whole bunch of trust money or funding or whatever the fuck you're working with. You could hire someone to do this and probably even pay! Think of the possibilities if you extended even the slightest effort into Google!

Voices of the incarcerated are important. There is much to be said for our carceral system & the failings of the judicial system but that's neither here nor there because you published a convicted pedophile, someone with half a million CP files, the most officers had ever seen.

And ok, maybe, simple mistake maybe. I can't keep track of all the abusive men in the literary world. Can anyone? Maybe this one slipped through the cracks. Who is to say ?

But then you doubled down! I just looked and you deleted the tweets, unless I'm Twittering wrong. But you doubled down with the audacity to say you're trying to "facilitate conversations".

I ask you: what conversation about pedophiles did you want to facilitate?

Because do you know what conversation was actually facilitated? This one:

- the (many many many) victims/survivors of CSA/ sexual assault/ etc get to be reminded of this sort of trauma

- they also get to be reminded that they will most likely not be believed, or...

...best case scenario, be completely disregarded because

- abusive (w h i t e) men will always be given platform after platform, regardless of the atrocities they inflict on everyone else.

That last point you've proven over and over again.

I don't pretend to expect anything other than foolishness from you. You can "listen" to your critics & "have a dialogue" & "make hard decisions" and sometimes even "apologize". But it's useless because all you ever do is inflict pain on the very community you claim to uphold.

You are probably one of the most insidious and abusive platforms poetry has. And I know from abuse in the poetry community. It's so toxic that I've carved this little space I hope is safe, and I barely write anymore. All you do is hurt people! Why do you do this?

Like at this point you can't blame Don Share. Isn't he gone? You're like an infected tooth and Don was just a cavity. You have to extract infected teeth or they can k*ll after a while.

Honestly you need to just go. There's no reforming you.

Every single person who was (for lack of a better term) triggered by the mere mention of CSA etc in their timelines deserves an apology from you. A big one. But you won't, you never have, given a sincere apology. It's like waiting for the moon to explode or something.

The amount of people I saw who expressed having to log off because of this shit... it's depressing.

It's even more depressing to know that no matter what, no matter how much they hurt others, or take, abusive w h i t e male poets are always going to be given another chance

That's all. Go fuck yourselves.

- @KolleenCarney
EIC

Addendum:

- I am wrong, the double down tweets are on @poetrymagazine Twitter, that's why I couldn't find them. So, CC: POETRY Mag

-that typo in the first tweet— why

Also!!!ALSO!!!! @PoetryFound @poetrymagazine you PAID that pedophile for his poem. You gave him MONEY. You are disgusting. Dear god.