FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

If you are not violating the copyright of the Poet then you do not need to ask them permission.
Example: Printing one copy for a speech does not require permission. However, you should always mention the author and Family Friend Poems as the Publisher.

To request permission: Send a email to the poet at: permissions@familyfriendpoems.com. We will not respond to you. We will forward your request to the poet; at that point the poet can respond to you directly if they choose.

Keep in mind than in many cases the email address we have on file for the poet will be several years old and no longer active, if that is the case then we will not be able to help you and you will not receive any response from anyone. If we are unable to help you, you might want to try searching the poet's name on Google or elsewhere.

Example (Please use this example):

Subject: Poem Permission Request

Dear [Poet's name],

I found your poem, "[poem title]" located on Family Friend Poems over here:
[Put URL of poem (Link to poem) here: https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/example-poem-url ]


I would like your permission to use your poem in the following manner:
[What you intend to do with the poem]

[For commercially use:
How will you compensate the poet?
Example: Free copy of the book.]
[For noncommercial/personal use:
Guarantee the poets name, copyright and Family Friend Poems as the Publisher will be printed together with the poem ]

You may respond by emailing me at [Your email]

Thank You,
[your name, organization]
[Your contact information, email, phone number]

If you do get permission to use the poem, we ask that you cite Family Friend Poems as the Publisher.

Poets, people are trying to get in touch with you, please Login to your Account with the email address you used when submitting your poem to update your email address! If you don't have access to the email account you used when submitting your poem then contact us and include in the message the old email address you think you may have used.

Here's how it works:

• The review process can take an extremely long time, especially for your first submission. This is due to the large number of new poems submitted every day as well as the average quality of most of the poems submitted.
• We rely on Crowdsourcing to find popular poems. Our visitors rate pending poems on our review page. These ratings help us find the popular poems for our Editors to review.
• Most poems are never reviewed by our Editors. Depending on factors such as if the author has already had poems published by us, the number of votes and the ratings, your poem may be reviewed by our Editors. (Hint! If your name is on the Top Reviewer Leaderboard that may help).
• If your poem is published. We will notify you by email ONLY if your poem's status is changed from pending to published.

Poems displayed on the Family Friend Poems website have been submitted to us through the Submit Poem Form

The copyright of all poems submitted and published on this website belongs to the individual authors. US and international copyright laws apply to all poems published on Family Friend Poems. By submitting a poem to Family Friend Poems, the poet has only agreed that their poems can be published on a nonexclusive basis by Family Friend Poems, not by you! However, you can request permission from the poet to use their poem, see above: How do I request Permission to use a poem?

To the best of our knowledge, all poems submitted and published on Family Friend Poems have been submitted by the poets themselves. If you believe your poem has been published on this site without your permission, you or your legal representatives should contact us using our Contact Form and ask us to remove the specific poem from the site, this will be done immediately. Please include the URL on Family Friend Poems where the poem is posted, the URL where you originally posted the poem, as well as other relevant information proving the poem is yours.

The publishing rights for all the other material on this website belongs to Family Friend Poems. These materials cannot be used without permission from Family Friend Poems.

Want to learn more? Explore Copyright basics from the United States Copyright Office.

Everything besides user submitted content.

Not without permission. To request permission Contact Us. To request permission from a poet to use their poem, see above: How do I request Permission to use a poem? How to contact a Poet?

The following answer is not written by a lawyer and should not be taken as legal advice.

The copyright of the poem belongs to the author. The author granted Family Friend Poems the non-exclusive rights to publish their poem on our website. The author did not grant anyone who reads the poem the rights to publish the poem on Facebook, therefore, posting an entire poem on Facebook without the author's permission is violating the author's copyright. However, if you only publish a short excerpt of the poem with a link back to the page where you found the poem then it is very likely that you are are not violating anyone's copyright. Read about fair use.

Want to learn more? Explore Copyright basics from the United States Copyright Office.

Family Friend Poems has a rating system in place and each and every vote for every poem is recorded in our database. We depend on your feedback through rating poems you like as well as for poems which are average or bad.

• We make an assumption. If you are touched by a poem and someone else is touched by the same poem, they are likely to enjoy other poems which you rate highly. By tracking the poems which you rate highly, we can recommend "Related Poems" to you and others. To do this we need you to rate the poems you read. Thank you!
• Votes are used to choose the Poems of the Day and Week.
• Poems are displayed sorted by the poem with the highest average rating.
• Readers choose which poem to read based on the previous visitors rating.
• A poem could get pushed back to page 15 and never read again if it has 1 vote and a 1 out of 5 rating. Your votes do count.

It may not have been reviewed yet. See above: What is the Review Process? Are all submitted poems published?

If it has been reviewed there are many reasons why we choose not to publish poems. The mission of Family Friend Poems is to publish poems that touch our visitors. Your poem may not be what we are looking for.

Other common reasons include:

• The poem did not meet our quality standards.
• The poem met our standards, but we have already published many popular poems about that topic.
• It was a great poem, but it has already been published elsewhere on the Internet.
• Spelling, Grammar and other issues which would take too much time to correct.
• We don't publish poems that promote self-harm.

• It may not have been reviewed yet.
• If you submit a comment such as "Great Poem!", it will not be published, for the very simple reason that it does not add anything of value to the webpage.
• Another common reason comments are not published is spelling, grammar and other errors which would take far too much time to correct.
• You submitted a poem instead of a story. Poems should be submitted using our Submit Poem Form or posted on our Poetry Forum

Use our Poem Search Engine ....or navigate with our Category menu

Poems are organized by Category and then Subcategory.

Use the menu found on the right-side (or bottom on Mobile) of every page to select a main category of poems (Family Poems, Love Poems, Sad Poems etc....)

Expanding the menu by clicking on the plus symbol will cause the menu to open up and display a list of subcategories.

For example if you click on Family Poems, then you will go the Family Poems home page (https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poems/family).

The list of subcategories under Family Poems will list, in alphabetical order, all subcategories of Family Poems (Brother Poems, Mother Poems, Sister Poems, etc.)

Please do not ask us for help in finding a specific poem. If searching for it brings up nothing, we won't be able to help you.

Our Editors might make changes or enhancements to the poem before publishing it. Changes include spelling, grammar, modifications to stanzas, and small word changes to help with the flow of a poem. Our Editors work to present a polished piece of work that will be enjoyed by a wide audience.