Last month, I completed 15 years with Boloji as I had joined as a Poetry Editor in April 2005.
During this period, I've been able to edit and publish over 23,000 poems.
I've always been passionate about poetry and have penned over 2450 poems though not all my poems are on Boloji.
I've archived them all in PoemHunter as it gives me the facility of making an E-Book.
https://www.poemhunter.com/aparna-chatterjee/biography/
Though what I don't like about PH is that I have to submit poems with the same titles in different designs as their software cannot differentiate between poems if the titles are the same and thinks that the poet is duplicating his / her poems.
For e.g. in Boloji, I can submit different poems with the same title - She
But in PH, if I need to submit different poems with the same title - She, I have to keep changing the title designs, for e.g. She ~ She ~ *She* - She - and so on and so forth or it will not let me submit the poem thinking it is a duplication of my previous poem with the same title.
Sometimes, I keep running out of designer titles and I have to spend ages just to see how to design my title so that PH accepts my poem submission. It drives me nuts.
However, unlike on Boloji, I've kept all my poems open to comments on PH and so I interact with my fellow poets there.
I chose to do this on PH and not on Boloji because I thought that I write so many poems on a daily basis and with so much editing and publishing to do on Boloji poetry and also a lot of mail correspondence to handle, I'll not have the time to keep interacting with people all the time, responding to the reviews and comments on my poems and so I kept one site open and the other site closed so that there is less interaction but when I interact, it should be quality time as I make it a point to respond to almost all the reviews on PH barring a few, because I value people's time in reading and reviewing my poetry and so I acknowledge their responses.
15 years have passed with Boloji and it looks as if it all happened in a jiffy.....time flies.
It's not that I've always enjoyed my work in Boloji. There have been times when monotony has set in and I've not cherished reading and publishing boring poems. But many poets have enthralled me with their creations and their poems have been my favourites and have found a place in my Ed's Choice list.
https://www.boloji.com/ed-choice-list
Also, when I feel that I've read, edited and published a lot, I take some long or short breaks and I wouldn't see poems during that time or else my mind would feel clogged up and wouldn't feel refreshed enough to again focus on quality editing. Quality means a lot to me than quantity. Even if I publish 5-6 poems per day, they should be well-presented rather than just approving poems as and when they come and blindly publishing them with lots of typos and errors, theme mismatch, shoddy formatting, etc.
Some poems come to me. They hardly need any changes. I publish them as they are....But a lot of them come and I feel that they need some slick editing to make them look better so that the end product that gets published makes a good read. I won't take names but I'm sure many of my fellow poets on Boloji have seen such changes in their poems and I hope I've been able to make them happy with the finished product of their write-up.
And of course, as always, I'm not on my own on Boloji when it comes to executing such work. I'm thankful to Rajender Ji who hosts this website and helps us express ourselves and to Kapil and his team who maintain the technicalities of this website.
As for my favourite poets, well I'm not naming any....
But of course, the poets with the maximum poems in my Ed's Choice list are the ones whose creations I look forward to reading.....as they are the ones who make my day by giving me a nice poem every day :-)
Love you all,
Yours, as always,
Aparna Chatterjee
