We have gathered the most asked topics subject by subject. If you cannot find yours, write to us from the contact page.
Membership, signing in and payment
No. Reading poems, liking them, building collections, writing comments and joining clubs are all free. Extras such as reading statistics, the yearly report and ad-free reading come with the paid plans.
You can: the buttons of the providers we have switched on appear on the sign-in and sign-up screens. An account opened through a provider has no password, so on your first visit the setup screen asks for your password, country and gender — so that you can still get in if you lose access to that provider account. Some providers do not give us an e-mail address; then we ask for yours on the verification screen and the verification link goes there.
You can cancel from the Membership screen in your member panel; we do not ask why. When you cancel, the features stay open until the end of the period you paid for, and after that your account returns to the free plan. All the refund terms — the right of withdrawal, an unused subscription and the refund period — are written on the Cancellation, Return and Refund Terms page.
It depends on the payment channel. On some channels renewal happens on its own and the amount is charged to your card at the start of each period. On others, repeat charges from a stored card are not made: there the membership simply ends when the period is over, no amount is charged, and you need to pay again if you want to continue. In that second case we do not leave you in silence — a notification is sent three days before the end, and the link inside it takes you straight to the membership screen. We state which channel behaves which way at the payment step, below the channel selection.
If your payment channel does not renew on its own, we recommend the yearly plan: a single payment covers the whole year, you do not repeat the payment step twelve times as with the monthly plan, and a forgotten payment cannot cut off your membership. The price rewards it too — the yearly plan costs less than twelve months added up, and we show exactly how much you save on the card in the membership screen. On such channels the membership screen opens with the yearly plan selected; if you prefer to pay monthly, one click takes you back.
The provider that collects payments on our behalf cannot do so from some countries; this is not a shortcoming but a limit that comes from international restrictions. If you are in such a country, the membership screen shows an explanation instead of the purchase button. The way is not closed: a friend can gift you a plan. Any friend who is a member can pick you on the Membership → Gift a membership step in their own panel and buy the plan; the gift is added to your account at once and every privilege opens.
There are two ways. For individual support there is the patron package: every Poet+ privilege opens and your name appears on the Supporters page (you can turn that off in your privacy settings). If you want to support us as an organisation — publisher, bookshop, magazine, university, cultural institution — there are three corporate packages, documented with a VAT service invoice; just write from the contact page and we will go through the items and the amount.
You write to us from the contact page; we go through the items and the amount and set up a period. There are three packages: Dize, Kıta and Divan. Dize has no limit on places; Kıta is limited to eight organisations and Divan to three, and that scarcity is deliberate. From Kıta upwards a line is added to one section’s credits — "published with the support of …" — and each section has a single sponsor. The Divan package also includes your own profile page on the site and a thank-you line on the home page. The fee is documented with a VAT service invoice, paid by bank transfer, and the period is one year.
Enter it under Membership → Gift Code in your member panel; no payment is taken and the membership opens on your account right away. Upper or lower case and dashes do not matter. A code can be used once, is valid until the sponsorship that issued it ends, and cannot be used while you have an active subscription — enter it after your subscription ends so you do not lose the time you already paid for. A redeemed code earns the issuing organisation no contribution points or any other privilege; its name appears only as a credit on your membership screen.
The yearly patron package includes three gifts per period: each one is a month of Reader+, it opens instantly on the account of the member you choose, and nothing is charged to you. How many you have left is shown on the Gift a Package screen, and the allowance renews by itself when a new period starts. The monthly patron package has no allowance. Gifts from the allowance earn no contribution points — points reward generosity, they are not something you buy.
It does not, and this is not negotiable. The poem of the day, week and month are not decided by money; golden leaves, contribution points, levels and showcase order are not for sale; a sponsor’s comment or content gets no privilege in moderation; no poem, poet or piece of writing carries a sponsor’s name; member lists, e-mail addresses and reading behaviour are shared with no one. Sponsorship buys visibility only, and every sponsored appearance is clearly labelled. The full list is on the Supporters page.
You can. On the Gift a membership screen in your member panel you pick the recipient and the plan and pay yourself; the subscription opens in the recipient's account, while the payment record and invoice stay with you. You may leave a short note as well. If the recipient already has a subscription that grants access, the gift is refused — so that their remaining time is not burnt.
In your member area, Membership → Invite has a link that belongs to you. When someone signs up through it, the invitation is credited to your account; the screen also has a ready-made invitation text you can change as you like. You can share the link over WhatsApp, e-mail or anywhere else. Do not use it to write to strangers in bulk: an invitation is a call you pass on to your own circle, which is why there is no bulk-sending tool in the member area.
Every five invitations earn you a month of Reader+. What counts is a person who actually verifies their account — someone who has only signed up without confirming their e-mail shows as pending. The reward never expires: if your membership is still running, the reward waits and you use it from the Invite screen once the membership ends, so no paid time is lost. Invitations also bring experience points (XP) and raise your level; they do not count towards your contribution score or editorial status — that status looks at the work you add to the archive.
Poems and poethood
You can. The Create an image button on a poem page produces a card from the lines you pick: square (post) or vertical (story), with the poet’s name, the title of the work and the site address on it. On a phone the share button opens the share sheet where Instagram appears; on a computer you can download the image and upload it from the app. The image is a quotation: at most eight lines are taken — printing a whole poem onto an image and publishing it would amount to republishing the work of a living poet or translator.
Adding poems to the archive is the job of the poet page’s manager. If you want to manage a poet’s poems, you can apply with identity verification from the Poet Claim screen in the member area. If you want to write essays, columns, stories or articles rather than poems, no claim is needed — see the writing questions below.
Write the title in everyday casing (not all caps, not all lowercase), do not put the poem's or the poet's name inside the text, do not add a date at the end, separate the lines with Enter and leave out links and HTML tags. The form checks as you write: it quotes the offending line, shows it in the text when clicked and removes a repeated title or a signature with one click. A poem that breaks a rule is not deleted; it goes to editor approval. The full rules and their reasons are on a separate page.
Poem Submission Rules
Our editors read what you declare and the identity document you upload. The document sits in restricted storage for the review alone and is never shown anywhere public. You get the decision in your member area and by e-mail.
It can: a poet page holds at most three images. One of them becomes the **avatar**, shown instead of the initial in poet lists and in the poet page header. The first image you upload becomes the avatar automatically; you can pick another later. Because the avatar is shown as a square it can be cropped: you drag the square over the image and set its size, and if you do not crop it a square is taken from the centre. The second and third images sit in a small strip on the poet page and open enlarged when clicked — the page’s real job is to show the poems, and an image does not get in front of them. Each image can carry a short caption (“1961, Ankara”, say) and the order can be changed; the avatar is also used on the page’s social share card. The member who manages the poet uploads them from the My Poet Details screen, and editors from the admin panel.
The fastest route is a poet claim: it is free, and once approved the control of the poems passes entirely to you — you can unpublish, correct or delete whatever you like, without waiting for anyone's permission. If you would rather not go through that for a single poem, it is enough to write to us from the contact page as the rights holder with the title of the work and your request; once we have verified it, we take the content down.
Translation
You can, and you do not need to manage a poet page for it: any member with a verified e-mail can submit a translation of any published poem in the archive. The "Add a translation of this poem" link below the lines opens the translation form in your member panel with that poem already selected. The translator's name is required: a translation is a separate copyrighted work and is not published without a credit. You are also asked where you took the text from.
Your translation goes into the review queue; an editor compares it with the original, decides, and you are notified of the outcome. Only editors can publish without review: managing a poet does not prove that you know the language. The same poem may have several translations into the same language — that is very common in literature; the one shown on the page is chosen by an editor or by whoever manages the poem, and the others open underneath it.
In both. The poem's own language does not change — a translation does not replace it, it is a layer added on top. But once published, a translation makes the poem findable for readers of that language: if a French poem has a published English translation, the poem also appears in the English poem list and comes up when searched with an English word. On the card you see the translation's title and opening lines, with a small mark saying it is a translation; clicking the card takes you to the translation section on the poem's page. The poem's address does not change, and the original text stays at the top of the page.
Yes: Пушкин appears as Pushkin. One rendering per language is kept for a poet's name and biography; it is entered by those who manage the poet or by an editor, and it also goes through the review queue. The poet page's address is not translated — links should stay single.
Writing and series
You can, and you do not need a poet claim for it. Every verified member publishes under their own name; there are ten kinds: essay, column, article, story, review, memoir, travel writing, diary, letter and free writing. If a text fits none of them, pick free writing. Poems need a poet record in between because the poet may not be a member here; a piece has no such layer — you are its author directly.
In the member area open “My writings” and press “New piece”. Title, kind, language and text are required; the blurb, the writing date, the source address and the cover image are optional. The text must be at least 400 characters — a single-paragraph note belongs on the Scribble Board. Once saved, your piece is published at its own address: /@your-username/piece-title.
Write the title in everyday casing (not all caps, not all lowercase), keep the text to at least 400 characters, do not put your name or the title inside the text, do not add a date at the end, and leave out links and HTML tags; if there is a source, put it in the source field. The form checks as you write: it quotes the offending line, shows it in the text when clicked, counts the length and removes a repeated title or a signature with one click. The full rules and their reasons are on a separate page.
Writing Submission Rules
The rules match the ones for poems: the title must use ordinary capitalisation (not all upper or all lower case), and the text must not contain a signature, a repeated date, links, HTML tags or advertising. A piece that breaks a rule does not go live directly; it enters the editorial queue and the reason is shown on its card. A piece you leave passive never enters the queue — it is not visible anyway.
Writing Submission Rules
Yes. From the “Cover image” field in the writing form you can upload an image of up to 4 MB. The cover appears above the text on the piece’s page and is used as the image on the share card when the piece is posted on social media. You can replace the cover later or delete it with “Remove the cover”.
In five places: on the Writings page (with kind, search and sorting), in the “Their writings” section of your public profile, on the series page if the piece belongs to a series, in the “Writings” and “Writing series” blocks on the home page, and in the Live feed. If an editor picks it, it can also be featured on the home page as “Writing of the day”.
Yes. A piece’s page carries every interaction a poem has: liking, adding to the reading list, adding to a collection, rating from 1 to 10, commenting, tagging, the Golden Leaf and reporting. Only two poem-specific things are missing: quoting a verse and commenting on a particular line — in prose a line number means nothing, so those buttons are never drawn.
You can: "Book" is one of the writing kinds, and a book lives here chapter by chapter. Here is the path: in your member panel go to "My writings" → "New writing", choose "Book" as the kind, write the first chapter as the text, open a new series in the "Series" field and name it after the book, and put 1 as the part number. For the next chapters you simply pick the same series and raise the number. The book gets its own address (/@your-username/series/your-book), the chapters are listed there in order, and when a reader finishes one chapter they see the link to the next. You can upload a cover image and write a short intro for each chapter.
You do not, and we do not recommend it. Squeezing a book onto one page tires the reader with endless scrolling, and in search results it shows up as a single title. Split into chapters, each chapter can be found by its own title, liked and commented on separately; the series page then works like the book's table of contents. One condition: the rights must be yours or the rights holder's — publishing someone else's book without permission is grounds for removal.
A series is one piece of writing that runs in instalments — part one, two and three of “Istanbul Notes”, say. On the page of a piece that belongs to a series you see the series title, which part it is, and links to the previous and next part; the series has its own page listing every part in order. When a reader likes one part, they do not have to hunt for the rest.
You create the series from the piece’s own form, not from a separate screen. The steps: (1) In the member area go to “My writings” → “New piece”. (2) Fill the piece in as usual. (3) In the “Series” field choose “Start a new series…” and type the series title into the box that appears — “Istanbul Notes”, for example. (4) Put 1 in “Part number”. (5) Save. When you add the second part, pick the now-existing series from the “Series” list in the same form and set the part number to 2. The series address opens as soon as you publish the first part: /@your-username/series/series-title.
Not required, but recommended. If you give numbers, the parts are ordered by them; if you do not, the unnumbered parts fall to the end of the list in the order they were added. You cannot use the same number twice in one series. You can correct a number later: edit the piece, change the number, save.
A series is a whole built by the author: it contains only your own writings, the part numbers mean something, and a reader starts at the beginning and reads in order. A collection is a selection made by a reader: it can take other people’s poems and writings too, the order is a matter of taste, and the point is not to build a whole but to keep what you love in one place.
You can ask the editorial team to change the title — a message from the contact page is enough. The address, however, stays fixed: once set it is never regenerated, so that published links and search results do not break. The same rule applies to poet pages.
No. When you remove the series link, the piece stays published as a standalone piece and its address does not change either. The same holds the other way round: if the series is removed altogether, its parts stay in place as pieces.
Collections and e-books
A collection is a selection you put together yourself: you give it a name like “Rainy days”, “Read to my mother” or “Exam week” and line up the poems and writings you love. If the reading list is a temporary shelf, a collection is a lasting notebook — you can add your own note under each entry.
The "Add to collection" button on any poem adds it to a collection you already have, or starts a new one. From the My Collections screen you can change the name, the description, the order and the visibility, and take poems out again.
That is your call. There are three settings: private (only you), by link (anyone you send the address to, but it stays out of the listings) and public (it appears on the Collections page and other members can follow it). Inside your own collection you also see poems that are not published; a visitor never does.
Yes. On paid plans, the “Download e-book” button on the collection page turns your selection into a PDF with a cover and a table of contents; the poems follow the order in the collection. The same button is on poet pages: you can download a book compiled from a poet’s poems. For now the e-book prints poems only — writings in your collection do not go into the book.
You can, and you do not need a plan for it. The "Download your poems as PDF" button on the My Poems screen gathers the published poems of the poet you manage into a single book. Downloading other poets' archives and collection books does need a paid plan.
Contribution points, levels and the Golden Leaf
Contribution points cannot be bought. Published comments, liked dictionary answers, translations taken into publication, club contributions and upheld reports all earn points. Points are time-weighted; older contributions lose weight. You can see exactly how many points each action earns in the table at the bottom of this page.
Your level is the accumulation of your effort here: each contribution — a comment, a translation, a dictionary answer — earns experience points (XP), and XP never decreases. Reading every day also earns XP: the daily reward grows as you read on consecutive days (from 1 to 3 in a seven-day cycle) and restarts when the streak breaks. As you pass certain thresholds your level rises; the first levels come within days, later ones take time, and there is no cap. Your level appears on your profile and in every list where your name appears (comments, the member directory, writings), and you are notified when you level up.
Every consecutive day you read counts toward a streak and earns XP: the first three days give 1 each, the next three 2 each, and the seventh day 3 XP — then the cycle restarts. What counts is actually reading, not opening the page: the text has to stay on screen long enough. Both poems and writings feed the streak. Miss a day and the streak resets, but your total reading days keep accumulating and your XP is never lost. One important detail: the reading streak earns XP only, not contribution points — so reading every day raises your level, but reading alone will not carry you to Contributor status.
They measure different things. The contribution score shows your current activity: each entry halves in value over 180 days, so the score can fade when you go quiet — the Contributor and Literature Envoy statuses look at this score. A level is the total of your history: XP is never erased and a level never falls. So a member who takes a long break may lose their status, but never their level.
A Golden Leaf is a mark you can leave on a poem, a comment or a poet when you find it genuinely worth something. Ordinary likes are unlimited; a Golden Leaf can be given only a few times a month, which is what makes it a way of saying "this one really matters to me". The count shows on the poem's, the comment's and the poet's page.
Your quota depends on your plan and your contribution status. Free members have none, Reader+ gets 10 a month and Poet+ gets 15. Members who earn contribution status get a quota even without a paid plan: Contributor 5 a month, Literature Envoy 8. The two do not stack — whichever is higher applies. You can see what is left on the "My contribution and badges" screen in your member area.
No. Whatever you have not used expires at the end of the month and a fresh quota opens on the first. That is deliberate: leaves you could hoard and spend in bulk would soon be nothing more than ordinary likes.
To poems, writings, comments, poet pages, clubs, club posts, translations and scribbles. Only one leaf per item; you cannot leave a leaf on your own poem, your own piece, your own comment or a poet page you manage. You can take a leaf back, and the quota is refunded.
Leaves are not for sale; a paid plan raises your monthly quota, but the leaf itself is never turned into money. Awards use a weighted score rather than the raw count: a leaf from a Literature Envoy counts 3, from a Contributor 2, from everyone else 1. That way a mark from a reader the community trusts carries more meaning. Leaf swapping and leaves piling onto a single target are flagged by a weekly check.
Community, privacy and my account
A new member's first three comments and first dictionary answer go through an editor. After that your comments are published immediately.
Use the block button on their profile, or change your message and friend request settings under Privacy and security in your member area. A blocked member can neither message you nor send a friend request.
The profile picture is shown as a square, so an image of at least 512×512 pixels is enough. The cover sits above your profile as a wide banner, so it should be close to a 4:1 ratio — 1600×400 pixels is ideal. Both can be JPG or PNG (2 MB at most for the picture, 4 MB for the cover) and are converted to WebP and scaled down after upload, so you can upload a large photo straight from your phone. If the size does not match, no trouble: when the ratio of the image you pick differs from the target, the cropping tool opens by itself — you drag and resize the frame, and only that area is used when you save. If the ratio already fits, the tool stays closed and you can open it yourself with the "Open the cropping tool" link. Poet images work the same way; the details are in the question under Writing as a poet.
Yes. Under Privacy and security you can take your profile out of the member directory and hide your last seen time, friend list, follow list and activity separately.
It does if your profile is public: the page says how many likes the poem has received and shows the pictures of the members who liked it most recently. If you would rather not appear there, closing your profile under Privacy and Security is enough — your like still counts, only your picture and name are left out. A green ring around a picture means that member is on the site right now; if you have turned your last-seen setting off, that ring is never drawn for you, even while you are online.
You can do both yourself: the My Data screen in your member area downloads every record we hold about you as a single file, and closes your account from the same place. Closing takes effect immediately — we erase your name, e-mail and contact details, while your comments and contributions stay on anonymously. Invoice records the law requires us to keep are held for the legal period. If anything goes wrong, write to us from the contact page.
Contribution point table
This table is open to non-members too, because the answer to "why is this person featured" has to be visible: a reputation score kept hidden reads as favouritism. The points are the same for everyone and are not left to editorial discretion.
What earns points
- Comment featured by an editor +40
- Dictionary answer featured +30
- Comment reached 50 likes +20
- Dictionary answer reached 50 likes +20
- Collection reached 25 followers +15
- Translation received 10 golden leaves +12
- Club topic took off +10
- A plan was gifted to another member (at most 1 times a day) +10
- Comment reached 10 likes +8
- Dictionary answer reached 10 likes +8
- Poem translation published (at most 3 times a day) +6
- New poet discovered (at most 5 times a day) +5
- A collection reached 5 followers +5
- Line annotation published (at most 5 times a day) +4
- A poet name translation was published (at most 3 times a day) +4
- Report upheld (at most 3 times a day) +3
- Dictionary answer published (at most 5 times a day) +3
- Response link published (at most 5 times a day) +3
- A scribble reached 10 likes +3
- Comment published (at most 5 times a day) +2
- A scribble was written (at most 3 times a day) +1
What lowers points
- Comment marked as spam -40
- Comment hidden -15
- Report dismissed -5
- Points are time-weighted: every contribution falls to half its value in 180 days, so today’s work comes before the past.
- The total never falls below zero; penalty entries stay in the ledger but do not turn the score negative.
- Contribution points cannot be bought. The single exception is gifting a plan to another member, and even that counts once a day.
- 250 points for Contributor · 600 points for Literature Envoy
- Passing the threshold does not grant the status on its own: account age and penalty history are considered too, and an editor makes the decision.
You can follow your own score entry by entry on the "My contribution and badges" screen in the member area.