I’m trying to publish…
I'm trying to publish the poems I'm writing right now, but it's driving me a little crazy that I can't put them up here for you to read, especially when, as today, I've written something that I like, and which is also very timely. So I'm going to send them out to my little readers' list instead; it's a private mailing list, and if I'm remembering my copyright correctly, doesn't count as publication. If you're interested in reading what I'm writing these days, I remind you, you can.
It’s not quite a copyright issue per se–more a question of how individual editors define “publication” for the purposes of determining whether a given work is a reprint or not.
IIrc, a certain sf author who sends out his stories to a mailing list that has paid subscribers (unlike yours) once asked half a dozen different editors whether they considered that to be publication or not, and got multiple different answers.