Click the feather button in the header (on a phone, choose Write a Poem from the menu), or choose Compose a poem on your profile's Poems tab, to open the composer, write your poem, add a title and at least one category, choose who can see it, and click Publish Now. Full walkthrough: How to publish your first poem →
No. The editor has a toolbar for everything — no code required. In fact the editor doesn't accept pasted HTML; you just type and use the formatting buttons.
The toolbar gives you bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, text alignment, bulleted and numbered lists, indentation, a blockquote, a few text sizes, and a choice of six fonts. Your line breaks and stanza spacing are preserved exactly as you type them. GS Pro adds an expanded set — more curated fonts, text and highlight color, a decorative Drop Cap, and an emoji picker. More in the publishing walkthrough →
Poems can be up to 50,000 characters — there is no minimum, so even a one-line poem counts. Titles can be up to 200 characters and the optional backstory up to 500.
Use the Privacy dropdown in the composer to choose Public (anyone), Followers Only, or Private (only people with the link). New poems default to Public, and you can change a poem's visibility any time by editing it. Full guide: Understanding poem visibility →
Every poem takes one to three categories (its themes) and, optionally, one poetic form — both chosen from curated lists rather than free-form hashtags. The first category you pick is your main one and matters most for discovery. Full guide: Tagging, categories, and forms →
Pick the one closest to the poem's center. Pain is for hurt of any kind, physical or emotional: chronic illness, injury, trauma, an ache that lingers. Broken Heart is pain from love: rejection, betrayal, a relationship ending. Loss is about something gone, a person, a dream, a time of life. Mourning is grieving someone who has died. A poem can take up to three, so a poem about a parent's long illness and death might be Mourning (main) plus Pain. See every category and what it means →
Yes. In the composer, use Poem Photo Banner (optional): drag in a photo, browse for one, or click Or pick from your albums. JPG, PNG or WEBP, up to 10 MB, and at least 965 × 300 pixels (2000 × 800 looks best). Once it's set, drag it to choose exactly how it's framed. The banner runs across the top of your poem, and it's also the picture on your poem's card in the More from row under your other poems. It's optional: a poem without one gets a card in its category's color instead.
In the composer, choose "Save Draft" instead of "Publish Now." Drafts are private and visible only to you under My Poems → Drafts. Full walkthrough: Drafts and saving your work →
Yes. Open the poem from My Poems, click the pencil (Edit Poem), make your changes, and click Publish Now to save them live. You can change anything — text, title, categories, banner, or visibility — or send the poem back to drafts while you rework it. More on editing a published poem →
Yes. Open the poem and click the trash button (Delete Poem). Deleting is a sensitive action, so you'll be asked to quickly re-verify it's you first. It's permanent and removes the poem's comments, likes, and read counts — even if you re-post the same text later. Why some actions ask you to re-verify →
A backstory is the story behind a poem: where it came from, or what you were living through when you wrote it. Add it in the composer under Backstory (Optional), and set Year Written if you like. On the poem page, readers see a strip above the poem with BACKSTORY, the year, and the story's first sentence. Read the story opens the whole thing, signed with your first name.
Under the title you'll see when the poem was published, the year it was written (if the poet added one), its categories and form, and any collections it's in. Below that come the backstory, the SoulCast player when there's a voice reading, and the poem itself. Beside it (or below it on a phone): the Like & Share card, Ratings & Feedback, and ways to support the poet. Then the comments, and a More from row with more of the poet's work. Full tour: Reading a poem page →
Yes. In My Poems, tick the poems you want (or tick the box at the top to select them all). A bar appears where you can add them to or remove them from a collection, change their visibility, publish drafts or move poems to drafts, turn comments on or off, or delete them.
Focus Mode shows a poem on its own, without anything around it, so you can just read. Click Focus Mode in the corner of any poem, or press the F key. Press Esc or click Exit Focus Mode to come back. Inside Focus Mode you can also change the text size, and flip the sun/moon switch to read on a light or dark page. Your choice is remembered on that device.
OnStage helps you read your own poem on stage from your phone, without touching it. The poem scrolls while you speak and waits when you pause, and the next four lines are always on screen. Open one of your poems and tap the green OnStage button next to Focus Mode. OnStage is a GS Pro feature; members without it see the button with a small crown and a preview. Full guide: OnStage: Perform with a little less stress →
No. OnStage only measures how loud the microphone is, on your device, so it can tell that you are speaking. It never records, saves, uploads or listens for words, and the microphone turns off when you close OnStage. If you would rather not use the microphone at all, choose Use tap to scroll instead: each tap moves the poem one line.
Yes. On a computer OnStage opens as a full window with a live preview, bigger text and keyboard keys: Space pauses, the arrow keys move a line, + and - change the pace, T changes the text size and Esc closes. For a reading on Zoom or a recording, set Current line to Top of screen so the line you are reading sits right under your webcam.
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