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MEDIUM EARNINGS | POETRY
A Penny for Your Poetic Thoughts
Or maybe a little more these days, if you’re lucky
James Joyce is best known for his impenetrable doorstop work Ulysses, the Mount Everest of classic literature in English. We all know it’s there, but few will ever make it to the top and back again.
Years before, though, he had published a much slimmer volume of verse, entitled Pomes Penyeach. A typically playful Joycean neologism for ‘Poems a Penny Each’.
The book cost 12 pence, and contained 13 poems — one for free in the ‘baker’s dozen’ tradition, or ‘tilly’ in Irish.
The title has always come to mind whenever I publish poetry here on Medium. I have literally had verses which attracted a grand total of 0.01 cents, largely as a result of the 30-second rule. You can read (and even enjoy) a short poem in less than that, hop off elsewhere, and leave the writer with nothing but a read ratio penalty.
Whether that much-criticised formula has been adjusted, or whether it’s down to the Friends of Medium bonus (those who do read poetry are perhaps more likely to be hardcore members?), I have exciting news to report.
My latest poetic post has already clocked up a grand total of $2.62! Unprecedented!
