We started The Raggamuffin because we were sick of reading bad poems by the same old poets in reputable journals. We were sure, as many of you are, that such poems were only published because their creators were famous, had been published before, or were friends with the editors.

We were also sick of the technophobic fog that continues to envelop the world of poetry. What's with forcing people to submit their poems by mail with a stamped-self addressed envelope? There's this thing called EMAIL which works through THE INTERNET...

But most of all, we started The Raggamuffin because we wanted to read good poetry, full stop.

We believe in the death of the author (or poet), and we judged all submissions in line with this philosophy. Each poem that has been published in The Raggamuffin is there based on its individual merits.

Our editing process ensured this was the case. Upon receiving a submission, we acknowledged it immediately (a common courtesy that is often ignored in the world of poetry!), catalogued the titles and authors and then put each poem into a document, removing all identifying features aside from the title and the poem. We numbered them and shuffled them up, then went through grading each poem. An individual poem was therefore judged with no reference its poet and the other poems that they had submitted.

We published good poems.

We hope that we have smashed through the glass (paper?) ceiling that many unpublished and unfamous poets may previously have observed in the world of poetry publication. 

Even though some people had multiple poems published and some didn't have any published at all, we hope that the poetic community can take comfort in the fact that all submitted works were judged on a genuine level playing field.

If you submitted and didn't have anything published this time, try again for our Spring issue (which will come out September-ish). 

In the meantime, please enjoy the Winter 2011 edition of The Raggamuffin.

Yours in good poetry,

Victoria and Pip