What Strofia is
A poetry library that asks the reader for nothing, and a place where a poet can host their work without losing it.
Actually open
No sign-up, no paywall, no reading limit, no cut halfway through a poem to make you subscribe. A text that already belongs to everyone cannot be read in instalments.
Checked, not copied
Every poem arrives with its source and with the date that frees it. The internet is full of poems wrongly attributed and worse transcribed; sorting that out is precisely what a library is for.
With room for the living
The public domain is the heart of it, but not all of it. A poet writing today can host their work here under their own name, assigning us no rights, with the exit door always open.
Frequently asked
What people ask before trusting a poetry site.
It's free and there's no catch. Public-domain poems cost nothing in rights, and the site is static and cheap to serve. If costs ever arrive that we can't absorb, we'll say so openly before changing anything.
From the author's date of death and the term of protection that applies, which varies by country. We only publish work whose term has clearly lapsed in the jurisdictions that matter to us, or which the author has expressly given. When in doubt, it doesn't go up.
Write to us and tell us which line, and which edition says otherwise. Errors in poetry propagate for centuries, and a bad transcription changes the poem; fixing them is part of the work, not a nuisance.
Tell us and we'll take it down while we check. We would rather be without a poem for a while than have it published without the right to.
A page of your own, under your name, next to the poems that probably taught you to write — and no contract. The work stays yours and you can withdraw it whenever you like. For now, joining is by email; author accounts will come when there are readers to justify them.