Kickstarter

Greetings everyone!

With one week left in our fundraising campaign, we have several reasons to celebrate.

First off, thank you for all of your support in helping fund the Found Poetry Project! We hit our funding goal just one week after we launched the campaign, and are so jazzed that we're going to be able to launch this initiative in April. Every additional dollar pledged beyond our requested amount goes to helping us create even MORE found poetry kits into the wild. 

Here are some stats we can share with you about the campaign so far:

• The amount of dollars pledged from people finding us on Kickstarter and people discovering us through external links is EXACTLY 50/50 as of this evening.

• The largest number of total pledges from a single referral source come from people chancing across us on the "Small Projects (Discover)" page.

• Our most popular reward is at the $10 level, where YOU get to participate in the project by receiving 5 found poetry kits.

Secondly, we're happy to inform you that the Found Poetry Project website is now live at http://www.foundpoetryproject.com ! 

What does this mean? It means we're now ready to have people sign up to receive free found poetry kits to distribute in late March/early April. While we're hoping most people will want to donate $10 to receive the poetry kits at that reward level, we know it's not possible for everyone interested to show their financial support.  (If you have pledged $10 or more, do NOT sign up again on the site -- we will collect your information through a Kickstarter survey following our campaign's end on March 4.)

It also means that we now have the capability to encourage and collect information about people extending the reach of the project by creating kits of their own. Even if you're receiving five kits as a reward, you can still participate further by creating additional kits yourself to send out into your community. Create a few kits on your own, or if you're part of a poetry or arts organization, encourage the group to make some kits together. The more kits we release, the more poems will come back to us!

We're going to be pitching the Found Poetry Project to bloggers and publications in mid-March. If you have personal ties to anyone who might be interested, please feel free to send us the details via a message here or by contacting us directly at foundpoetryreview@gmail.com.

Thank you again for your support, and we look forward to getting some of the rewards in your hands once the campaign ends!

Greetings all!

It's day three of the project, and we're so pleased to already be 42 percent funded. We are also very grateful to the Kickstarter staff who have named us one of their picks in the publishing category!

Secondly, we wanted to let you know that a press release about the Found Poetry Project on Kickstarter is now available. If you know any bloggers or journalists who might be interested in what we're trying to accomplish, please share with them the details below.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                            
Contact: Jenni B. Baker
Email: foundpoetryreview@gmail.com

‘FOUND POETRY REVIEW’ LAUNCHES KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN FOR NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

Project aims to crowdsource funds to distribute found poetry kits across the United States.

Bethesda, MD – February 6, 2012: The Found Poetry Review, the Internet’s first quarterly journal dedicated to publishing found poetry, has launched a new Kickstarter campaign at http://kck.st/foundpoetryproject to raise funds for a new National Poetry Month initiative called the Found Poetry Project.

Found poetry is the art of excerpting words and phrases from any written source and combining them in new ways to form a poem. Sources can range from traditional texts like books, newspapers and magazines to more unexpected origins like product packaging, Twitter updates and court testimony.

The Found Poetry Project aims to distribute 250 kits in public places in communities across the United States. Each kit will contain everything that someone needs to participate in the project – directions on how to write a found poem, a source text, a pen, writing pad and information on where to upload their poem on the web.

Beginning in April, a website for the project (set to launch later this month) will curate all poems written as part of the project. Site visitors will also be able to sign up to distribute found poetry kits and extend the reach of the project by assembling and making their own kits.

“While poets have been incorporating and building on one another’s work for centuries, the art of found poetry is still an under-practiced and, in some cases under-appreciated, art form,” said Jenni Baker, founder and editor-in-chief at The Found Poetry Review.

“The Found Poetry Project seeks to get more people involved in experimenting with found poetry and to showcase the contributions that are being made in the genre.”

Kickstarter, founded in 2009, is a crowdsourcing platform that helps creative projects come to life. The platform is powered by an all-or-nothing funding method; projects must hit their predetermined funding goal before any money changes hands.

To thank users for their contributions, The Found Poetry Review has devised several tiers of rewards, ranging from found poetry kits, to custom found poems, to being a guest editor on an upcoming edition of the journal.

Individuals can read about the project, view the pitch video and support the project through March 4 at http://kck.st/foundpoetryproject.

Hello everyone --

Thanks so much for your support during the project's first weekend! We are currently 34 percent funded and, even cooler, are currently featured in Kickstarter's 'Popular This Week' section under the poetry category.

We will be posting a press release soon -- if you know any bloggers or journalists covering poetry or the arts, please share the document with them.