The MPS is a venue for Masonic Poets and Poetry. What that means is that poems should reflect something at least tangentally related to Freemasonry, and/or should be by a Mason or member of one of their appendent bodies, such as Eastern Star or DeMolay. We stretch that a bit to include some patriotic or inspirational poems, as well as prayers, toasts, and even humorous lists. But plainly prose offerings, such as jokes, short stories, or pithy sayings would be best placed with your local lodge websites; they're always looking for material. The exception is articles about poetry or poets. Those we welcome.
Also include your own bios. This can be as little or as detailed as you want, but try to keep it reasonable. Birthdate, year and lodge raised, family, occupation, offices and accomplishments, eddress or personal website, and so on. We envision this site still being around a century from now, long after all of us are dust. And just as no information can often be found about some of these poets from a century ago, we wouldn't want future archivists to wonder about who these people were who wrote today's poems. A "website" of a century in the future will probably be as different from the current website as this is from a collection of papyrus scrolls; but the text will still be there, and we need to feed it in today, while we're still alive to tell our own stories.
When sending submissions in, please do not send them in MSWord or WordPerfect formats. Owen uses an older computer which tends to crash if he tries to open a .doc file created with too new a version. And if it's opened in a plain-text reader, a .doc file will fill it with 80% unusable formatting garbage, while at the same time all formatting will be lost.
The best way is to simply include the text of your poem in the body of an e-mail message, but text (.txt), HTML (.htm) or rich text format (.rtf) attachments are acceptable. Send them to Owen, and with a backup copy to Jerry, at owenkl@anti-spam@nmmasons.org & gleighton@anti-spam@midmaine.com. Delete the "@anti-spam before you press the send button!
The next best is to use the form below. You could compose a poem right there, but for something you'll still be proud of years from now, we urge you to write it on your own, think about it and polish it, and then cut and paste the final draft result into the submission form.
Owen has the often helpful but sometimes annoying habit of editing submissions: correcting spelling, adjusting format, revising punctuation. Be sure to look at your poem once it's online, to make sure any redacting he may have done is acceptable. He's usually pretty mellow about restoring any changes he made. But please don't use this as an excuse for sloppy spelling or grammer, either. Proper English is greatly appreciated.