Zara founded an online poetry community in July 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, as a way to connect creatives in a time where connection was becoming increasingly difficult.
Within the next year, this community grew to 10k+, and Zara started to look for an avenue to grow beyond the confines of Instagram – a medium that was never truly designed for poetry.
It was then that the idea of a poetry magazine struck. There seemed to be a disconnect between traditional print publishing and the new world of digital publishing, and no-one seemed to have found a way to bridge it. With this in mind, Zara created Free the Verse: an online platform designed exclusively to showcase the best original poetry from around the world.
Since the publication of Issue 01 in 2022, Free the Verse has reached a readership of 100,000+ poets and has published over a hundred writers.
In the spring of 2023, Free the Verse launched their first poetry competition as part of their strategy to become economically self-sufficient and, ultimately, to compensate all writers published on their platform.
With a prize of $100, the competition is open to an international audience of poets who may write on any theme they choose.
In time, there will be more competitions, ideally sponsored by literary organisations, which will be themed and can engage with more specific types of poetry and an even more diverse audience. This is just the beginning!