I can't believe I'm asking this, but I really am very new to poetry.

A poetry pamphlet - can someone please explain this to me? Is it a small self published collection, or do you get one with a traditional publisher?

Does this raise your profile? Does that mean then that you are a published poet?

Ashamedly
Heather

Frankly, I have never heard of a poetry pamphlet. I am thinking you may referring to a chapbook. A poet can self-publish a chapbook or small collection or enter a manuscript to be considered for traditional publishing.

a chapbook is a more modern way of saying a poetry phamplet. i bought some in the distant past which were called that

A poetry pamphlet is a self-published collection of one’s work that involves very little financial outlay (or none at all, if one plays one’s cards right). ‘Chapbook’ is a recent vogue-term imported from the US, and essentially means the same thing: a booklet bashed out on a photocopier. They make useful things to sell at gigs, especially since the minuscule expenditure means that one is also able to sell them for a very low price (around £1 is fairly normal). This is really their purpose: something for an audience to remember you by. They will not raise your profile, as anyone can produce one and they will have often passed through no editorial stage other than the writer’s own. Like other forms of self-publishing, they will not count towards making you a ‘published poet’ (a virtually meaningless term that should in any case be treated with caution), nor will their mere existence cut any ice with poetry journals or ‘proper’ poetry publishers. Unless, as sometimes happens, one is entering a competition or a submission process that specifically requests pamphlets. Needless to say, a pamphlet is only as good as what’s inside it.

Of course, they can act as a worthwhile exercise in gathering one’s poems into collection-form – juxtaposing them and ordering them, etc – and in perhaps drawing a line under a stage in one’s writing by giving oneself some kind of end product. If you Google the term “poetry pamphlets”, there are some useful online guides to putting one together.

Good luck with it. Hope this is some help.

Thank you all, that is so helpful.

I really would like my own collection, so I'm off over to Google now.

Bless you

To add another perspective - pamphlets/chapbooks have often been the way to disseminate poetry that is outside the mainstream - either too experimental or political or not fitting in a standard format. Many poets have used them as ways of establishing a reputation among the groups they feel comfortable with. Thus, Writers' Forum for instance produced over a thousand pamphlets from the 60's to the 90's, often of very strange, visually weird and challenging material very much outside the norm. These were often duplicated and came in all kinds of shapes and sizes.

Also, many small press publishers publish pamphlets, and it's often a way for established writers to publish discreet projects or sequences together in one book.

Thank you, Steven. I thought that might have been the case. Have you done a pamphlet? If so, can I see it?

Heather