And we’re almost ready to go. I spent this morning going through submissions and we seem to have a rather splendid and varied programme for you coming up, starting on May 1st. There will be free verse and rhymes, along with a triolet and a villanelle, and the whole spectrum of humour will be explored, including one or two of the dodgier fringes.

The standard of submissions was remarkably high and I had no problem in filling the schedule. It will, of course, be interesting to see if the readership of the site agree with me, and I shall be watching the star ratings with interest.

I hope that all the poets I suggested tweaks to will forgive my impudence. I did feel rather like Robert Webb’s character here at times:

See you all on Sunday.

Well, this is all very gratifying. We’ve been in business for less than a week and we already have a substantial number of excellent submissions. So here’s the plan. I’m going to start publishing poems on May 1st. On present form, it looks like we can afford to be a bit more ambitious than my original idea of a weekly poem and go for a daily poem instead. Some time next week I’ll take a look at what we’ve got and start sending out acceptances and rejections, before deciding on a running order.

One thing that has come up is the question of whether your editor is permitted to publish any of his own stuff here. I wasn’t intending to do so, because conventionally editors don’t do that. However, one or two people on Twitter suggested that I might put one or two up, just to give an idea of the kind of thing I’m looking for. I’d be interested to read anyone’s views on this.

Put the date in your diaries, anyway: Spilling Cocoa will go live on Sunday May 1st. Get ready with your Twitters and Facebooks!

And in the meantime, if there’s anything you fancy submitting, get in there now while there’s still room.

A week or so ago I wrote a poem –  the first one I’d written for over a year, as it happens. Like most of my poems, it had a vaguely humorous slant, although – initially at least – it didn’t rhyme or have any sort of regular metre. Then I took a look at it and thought that a spot of rhyme and metre wouldn’t actually go amiss, and I came up with something that I felt worked pretty well. I could read that out in one of the local folk clubs where I sometimes bag a floor spot and it would probably get a few laughs.

But first, I thought it would be nice to get it published somewhere. I like having stuff published by someone else, because it means that I’ve managed to smuggle it past a gatekeeper. I know it’s not just me who thinks it has merit.

However, I struggled to think who might publish this one. The late, much-lamented Every Day Poets would certainly have given it consideration. The Pygmy Giant might also have taken a look, but they’re not taking poetry any more. But I couldn’t really think of anyone else.

Round about the same time, I was watching in admiration as Brian Bilston’s Unbound campaign was roaring to its triumphant end and I wondered which poetry magazine might have published his stuff. I’m not claiming any parity of talent, by the way – BB is, quite frankly, a God among poets. The only thing we have remotely in common is that (I think) we both prioritise humour in our work.

At this point, I was going to go off on a rant about how poetry (and, probably, the whole literary establishment) has a problem with humour, but I realised that I was going to end up exposing myself to endless arguments about the nature of comedy (“What about so-and-so? We published a comic poem by him once” “Well, I didn’t think it was funny”) and I had a life to get on with.

So.

TL;DR I’ve set up this new site as a place to publish humorous poetry. Read the guidelines and send me your best stuff. Then tell the whole world about it. This is just the beginning.

Jonathan Pinnock (ed)