So many options to search and there’s a tracker to encourage reading.
I absolutely love the selection of poets the app has and really enjoy having instant access to so many poems at anytime on my phone!
I've tried contacting the app developers of this app twice through their app support page and have been ignored both times. I am visually impaired but I'm a paying subscriber and I wanted to ask them to please include font size accessibility options for those of us who need it so we can increase the font size to comfortably read the poems and have a better user experience. Maybe their app support page isn't working but I couldn't find any other way to contact them so I'm resorting to a bad review. This is a nice app but I can't give it more than 2 stars since it's not user friendly for me and my feedback has gone ignored. I'd love to rate it higher if more accessibility features are added in the future, but if not I won't be resubscribing once my subscription expires.
EDIT: I’ve changed my rating from 2 to 4 stars since someone finally responded and said they’re working on a new app version with accessibility features. So just waiting for that for now :)
I've tried contacting the app developers of this app twice through their app support page and have been ignored both times. I am visually impaired but I'm a paying subscriber and I wanted to ask them to please include font size accessibility options for those of us who need it so we can increase the font size to comfortably read the poems and have a better user experience. Maybe their app support page isn't working but I couldn't find any other way to contact them so I'm resorting to a bad review. This is a nice app but I can't give it more than 2 stars since it's not user friendly for me and my feedback has gone ignored. I'd love to rate it higher if more accessibility features are added in the future, but if not I won't be resubscribing once my subscription expires.
This app is full of uniquely beautiful writings I love to read for inspiration and I love writing them in my personal journal I save quotes and poems etc I choose to keep for when I start my blog I can share them with others and keep its beauty going in hopes they can and will inspire more out there
I enjoy the reading experience provided by this app. I’ve tried a few poetry apps and they’re often filled with random poetry seemingly submitted by users, or are cluttered and hard to use. This app is simple and focuses on the poetry. I don’t mind paying to support an enjoyable experience and the additional info provided.
That being said I would love more representation from authors of color. There are mostly African American and a few Japanese poets here, but they pale in comparison to the amount of poems by white people. You can read all the poems by BIPOC in a few hours while the white poetry goes on for days.
Additionally most of the poems featured by black authors are about race, in the same way that my university courses focused on blackness and black literature being about slavery and race. I don’t blame the app developer for this as the (predominantly white) scholarship on black authors really tends to hyperfocus on the work where they address oppression, and then tends to focus on the oppression topic to the exclusion of the other things they’re doing in their work. Black poets do write about other things, including the poets currently in the app, but I don’t see those poems represented in the app (unless I am mistaken). It’s common for white-led scholarship to primarily elevate the BIPOC pieces that address racism, but disappointing as a fan of these poets.
It’s not that BIPOC poets don’t address racial themes in their work - they do! But they do also write about other things. Even when they do write about race and racism, there is more nuance to their different approaches (which often contradict and disagree with each other) and unfortunately white scholars tend to ignore that, as if all poetry about racism is saying the same thing. Additionally, white scholarship tends to narrow these poet’s contributions to JUST the themes of race, while celebrating other white author’s skilled use of nature, rhythm, and imagery etc. So we get a world where most BIPOC authors poetry that is easily accessible is only poetry about oppression, and their craft isn’t discussed. As a fan and a black person, it makes for a bleak reading experience 😆 BIPOC poets deserve to be covered from more than the basic “black people wrote about racism and that was their major contribution to poetry” angle that is commonly found.
Would love to see changes made and additional poems by latinx and other BIPOC-Americans added. I might even suggest finding some BIPOC poetry fans to ask for their takes. Even when black folks do write about oppression, we’re saying and doing more than just “racism exists and here’s a poem about the experience of it” in the same way that white poets writing about heartbreak are saying and doing more than just “I’m sad and my heart is broken.” Again, this is not a criticism of the app developer, as this is the standard and common approach to BIPOC poetry, but there is an opportunity for this app go beyond the common “POC only write about racism” and “we highlight the exoticism of their poetry rather than their skill and craft” that you can find anywhere as part of token efforts to be “diverse.”
Thanks again for the app, hoping to see more poems over time!
literally all the content is locked behind a paywall
Developer Response
Hi there, thanks for the feedback :)
This is quite a common approach for a lot of apps in the App Store. I am personally very keen to avoid monetising the app using any form of ads, as I don't feel like they go very well with poetry.
While the option to support the app is through a paid plan, it is one of the cheapest plans that Apple allow developers to use.
Sorry the app wasn't what you were looking for!I understand that you need to make money to maintain things, but every single poem is locked.
If your going to make an app with 0 free content then make that clear so no one waist their time.
I can understand a one time fee but the fact that you’re trying to make people pay a monthly subscription for poetry that is in the PUBLIC DOMAIN makes your motive clear. You’re just using public domain literature to make a quick buck.
Developer Response
Hi there, thanks for the feedback :)
The app now includes poems that aren't just in the public domain. While some of the poems in the app can be found online, I personally found that poetry websites often had large ads, which detracted from the poems themselves. This is one of the main reasons I decided to build my own app, with one of the main features being a distraction-free design.
Aside from the poems, that are also collections, seasonal playlists and poet bios, all of which I create myself. This takes constant time, as there's a lot of poetry in the world :)
Sorry the app wasn't what you were looking for!description’s in the title. I had to delete and redownload the app.
Developer Response
Hi there, this bug has now been fixed, thanks for reporting it!
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