Seeing as this is my very first review for TWR, I thought I would pick something that just by title could be randy and naughty and exciting. “Love Across Borders” was submitted under the “artistic” category, so I was afraid it might really be a business weblog about trafficking under-aged foreign girls into arranged marriages and destinies of woe. Ooooh! Potentially scary and not safe for work weblog for me to review!
Instead, I find that it is a navel-gazing Emo blog of poetry. It is set up to be a “community,” but the only poster is the ubiquitous Shaun, who has posted every single poem and news announcement. His little thumbnail avatar picture is on every single page, about eighty thousand times. This is Shaun’s blog of poetry.
The header tag of the website describes Love Across Borders (easily abbreviated to LAB) as “open community publishing for poets through forums; features the works of amateur and professional poets, tagging, and books.” The “About LAB-P” page states that “Love Across Borders is an international community that seeks to host and promote open art and discussion in a community of caring people. You can share words in our Share Forums.”
Indeed, we are encouraged to post into the forums and share our thoughts and ideas. We are encouraged to search poetry by genre, or type. Unfortunately, all the searches return Shaun’s poems, and the forums and books tab announce that the page cannot be found… but list out the press releases about Community Publishing and LAB’s mission.
To be fair, it appears the site was launched in late April 2007, so the fact that Shaun is alone in his poetry posting is a little sad. I sure hope other poets will join him and post their poems about “dieing” too.
The site design itself is not very artistic. It is an obvious cookie-cutter blog template, with google ads and ridiculously huge navigation bar hogging up the screen “above the fold” as it were. The meat of the site, the poems, are all down the screen on the page and one must scroll to read the double-spaced free-form “poety” goodness below.
Don’t get me wrong — I was an English major in college with a minor concentration in Irish dramatic arts and poetry. I enjoy poetry very much. This isn’t a community blog though. Yes, yes… the launch was in April 2007, and perhaps we should give it more time so other poets can join in. Perhaps this review will encourage others to join… but I think not. Shaun should drop the whole “Community Publishing” and “Love Across Borders” labeling and philosophy of the site and get honest and re-brand the blog as “Shaun’s Blog Of Poems,” and be honest about it. The site is all Shaun. All the time. So it needs to be recreated in that image. With that change, with that honesty, the blog shows a little more potential. And I think I’d rather see it set up as such. In conclusion, I give Love Across Borders a 1.5 rating NULL