Poetry Fishbowl Open!: ysabetwordsmith

Poetry Fishbowl Open!

The Poetry Fishbowl is now CLOSED. Thank you for your time and attention.

Starting now, the Poetry Fishbowl is open! Today's theme is "precious metals and gems." I will be checking this page periodically throughout the day. When people make suggestions, I'll pick some and weave them together into a poem ... and then another ... and so on. I'm hoping to get a lot of ideas and a lot of poems.

Watch for the linkbacks perk to go live. Click to read "Confusion to the Enemy" (The Clockwork War, 10 verses) or notify

dreamwriteremmy of linkbacks to reveal more verses.

What Is a Poetry Fishbowl?

Writing is usually considered a solitary pursuit. One exception to this is a fascinating exercise called a "fishbowl." This has various forms, but all of them basically involve some kind of writing in public, usually with interaction between author and audience. A famous example is Harlan Ellison's series of "stories under glass" in which he sits in a bookstore window and writes a new story based on an idea that someone gives him. Writing classes sometimes include a version where students watch each other write, often with students calling out suggestions which are chalked up on the blackboard for those writing to use as inspiration.

In this online version of a Poetry Fishbowl, I begin by setting a theme; today's theme is "precious metals and gems." I invite people to suggest characters, settings, and other things relating to that theme. Then I use those prompts as inspiration for writing poems.

Cyberfunded Creativity

I'm practicing cyberfunded creativity. If you enjoy what I'm doing and want to see more of it, please feed the Bard. The following options are currently available:

1) Sponsor the Fishbowl -- Here is a PayPal button for donations. There is no specific requirement, but $1 is the minimum recommended size for PayPal transactions since they take a cut from every one. You can also donate via check or money order sent by postal mail. If you make a donation and tell me about it, I promise to use one of your prompts. Anonymous donations are perfectly welcome, just won't get that perk. General donations will be tallied, and at the end of the fishbowl I’ll post a list of eligible poems based on the total funding; then the audience can vote on which they want to see posted.

2) Swim, Fishie, Swim! -- A new feature in conjunction with fishbowl sponsorship is this progress meter showing the amount donated. There are multiple perks, the top one being a half-price poetry sale on one series when donations reach $300.

$130 raised, $170 to top goal

3) Buy It Now! -- Gakked from various e-auction sites, this feature allows you to sponsor a specific poem. If you don't want to wait for some editor to buy and publish my poem so you can read it, well, now you don't have to. Sponsoring a poem means that I will immediately post it on my blog for everyone to see, with the name of the sponsor (or another dedicate) if you wish; plus you get a nonexclusive publication right, so you can post it on your own blog or elsewhere as long as you keep the credits intact. You'll need to tell me the title of the poem you want to sponsor. I'm basing the prices on length, and they're comparable to what I typically make selling poetry to magazines (semi-pro rates according to Duotrope's Digest).

0-10 lines: $5
11-25 lines: $10
26-40 lines: $15
41-60 lines: $20
Poems over 60 lines, or with very intricate structure, fall into custom pricing.

4) Commission a scrapbook page. I can render a chosen poem in hardcopy format, on colorful paper, using archival materials for background and any embellishments. This will be suitable for framing or for adding to a scrapbook. Commission details are here. See latest photos of sample scrapbooked poems: "Sample Scrapbooked Poems 1-24-11"

5) Spread the word. Echo or link to this post on your LiveJournal, other blog, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, or any other social network. Useful Twitter hashtags include #poetryfishbowl and #promptcall. Encourage people to come here and participate in the fishbowl. If you have room for it, including your own prompt will give your readers an idea of what the prompts should look like; ideally, update later to include the thumbnail of the poem I write, and a link to the poem if it gets published. If there is at least one new prompter or donor, I will post an extra freebie poem.

Linkback perk: I have a spare series poem available, and each linkback will reveal a verse of the poem. One person can do multiple links if they're on different services, like Dreamwidth or Twitter, rather than all on LiveJournal.

dreamwriteremmy has volunteered to post the verses this month, so you'll need to notify her of your linkbacks in a comment to her post, in order for them to count. "Confusion to the Enemy" belongs to The Clockwork War series and has 10 verses.

Additional Notes

1) I customarily post replies to prompt posts telling people which of their prompts I'm using, with a brief description of the resulting poem(s). If you want to know what's available, watch for those "thumbnails."

2) You don't have to pay me to see a poem based on a prompt that you gave me. I try to send copies of poems to people, mostly using the LJ message function. (Anonymous prompters will miss this perk unless you give me your eddress.) These are for-your-eyes-only, though, not for sharing.

3) Sponsors of the Poetry Fishbowl in general, or of specific poems, will gain access to an extra post in appreciation of their generosity.  While you're on the Donors list, you can view all of the custom-locked posts in that category. Click the "donors" tag to read the archive of those. I've also posted a list of other donor perks there. I customarily leave donor names on the list for two months, so you'll get to see the perk-post from this month and next.

4) After the Poetry Fishbowl concludes, I will post a list of unsold poems and their prices, to make it easier for folks to see what they might want to sponsor.

5) If donations total $100 by Friday evening then you get a free $15 poem; $150 gets you a free $20 poem; and $200 gets you a free epic, posted after the Poetry Fishbowl. These will usually be series poems if I have them; otherwise I may offer non-series poems or series poems in a different size.  If donations reach $250, you get one step toward a bonus fishbowl; three of these activates the perk, and they don't have to be three months in a row. Everyone will get to vote on which series, and give prompts during the extra fishbowl, although it may be a half-day rather than a whole day. If donations reach $300, you get a half-price sale for one week in one series. Everyone will get to vote on which series to feature in the sale, out of those with extra poems available.

Feed the Fish!
Now's your chance to participate in the creative process by posting ideas for me to write about. Today's theme is "precious metals and gems."  I'll be soliciting ideas for miners, artisans, people who wear or use fine artifacts, jewelry, money, cursed treasures, technological devices such as lasers or computer chips that incorporate expensive materials, fabrications and fakes, other artifacts, gold rushes and wars, claim jumping, gold digging, jewel heists, conflicts driven by a desire for precious things, mines, mansions, jewelry stores, smithies, museums, lost tombs, pirate islands, social issues, and poetic forms in particular. But anything is welcome, really. If you manage to recommend a form that I don't recognize, I will probably pounce on it and ask you for its rules. I do have the first edition of Lewis Turco's The Book of Forms which covers most common and many obscure forms.

I'll post at least one of the fishbowl poems here so you-all can enjoy it. (Remember, you get an extra freebie poem if someone new posts a prompt or makes a donation, and additional perks at $100-$300 in donations. Linkbacks reveal verses of "Confusion to the Enemy.") The rest of the poems will go into my archive for magazine submission.

ellenmillion

June 5 2012, 17:40:11 UTC 9 years ago

New comment

Do time crystals count as gems? :P

'jewels are just rocks'

A gemstone fad.

Poem

ysabetwordsmith

June 5 2012, 18:29:10 UTC 9 years ago

Yes, time crystals count as gems! I couldn't resist writing about their dangerous beauty. The result is "The Girl Who Wanted Too Much," a Duurludirj poem about when the first barrier fell and united Stone Island with the majority of Tooth Island. It's a cautionary tale about greed.

70 lines, Buy It Now = $35

minor_architect

June 5 2012, 17:41:58 UTC 9 years ago

I was born in August, so my birthstone is the peridot. I've always thought its color was interesting but not particularly so. Then I found out you can mine it here on Earth...or get it from meteorites!

From the article Identification of Extraterrestrial Peridot by Trace Elements by Andy H. Shen, et al.: "Peridot is the gemquality green variety of olivine, an important mineral found in ultramafic igneous rocks such as dunite and in mafic rocks such as basalt. . . Olivine is believed to be one of the major minerals in the earth’s mantle and in many rocky planets and smaller bodies in the solar system. Pallasite is a rare type of stony iron meteorite that contains gemquality crystalline olivine in an iron-nickel matrix. It is believed to have formed in asteroids composed of an iron-nickel core and a silicate mantle (Dodd, 1981). The olivine crystals can be extracted from some of these meteorites to make beautiful—although typically small—faceted gems (Koivula et al., 1993a,b, 1994)."

Now I love my birthstone because, you know, it's found in space rocks! How cool is that? :D

June 5 2012, 18:50:18 UTC 9 years ago

I've seen extraterrestrial peridot, though it was sadly outside my price range. From this I got the free-verse poem "The Jewels That Fall from the Sky," comparing the versions from earth and sky.

15 lines, Buy It Now = $10

siege

June 5 2012, 17:42:57 UTC 9 years ago

quicksilver touch

A gem of an idea

The significance of diamonds in Eastern cultures (specifically, three diamonds to the Japanese, but there seem to be more associations I've seen here and there)

Stars as literal gems embedded in physical "heavenly spheres" -- and what material are these spheres made of?

Gemstone names, and their meanings. Bonus if they're also the names of living people (and thus might have behavioral meanings included).

The significance of silver to dragons (and why do they hoard stuff in the first place?)

Allotropy and its significance in gemstone formation

The Alaskan and Californian gold rushes

Blood diamonds

Why do men toil for gold when their families need food on the plate?

What is more precious than metal or gems?

June 5 2012, 20:25:04 UTC 9 years ago

From the prompt about stars as gems, I wrote the free-verse poem "The Ceiling of Her Sky." It belongs to the series Path of the Paladins and features Shahana and Ari discussing cosmology and fallen stars. I've known for a while that this setting had a "solid" sky like that, and this seemed like a good opportunity to describe it.

44 lines, Buy It Now = $20

janetmiles

June 5 2012, 17:54:32 UTC 9 years ago

"Silence is golden. Duct tape is silver." (seen on a bumper sticker or a t-shirt, I think)

"Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold." (song I learned in Girl Scouts)

"Being an irritant is no badge of honor in itself: A grain of sand in an oyster is an irritant that produces a pearl. A mosquito on a human is an irritant that produces itching welts and malaria before it gets swatted into oblivion. Apparently, no one explained to you the difference between storming the Bastille and pissing in the punchbowl." -- Andy Walton (emphasis mine, to point out the gem)

Alternate birthstones

That's all I can think of at the moment.

June 5 2012, 20:55:47 UTC 9 years ago

The prompt about irritants reminded me of the Láadan word for nonpearl. This led to the free-verse poem "Of Pearls and Nonpearls," about how things turn out differently depending on the type of attention paid to them.

15 lines, Buy It Now = $10

jenny_evergreen

June 5 2012, 18:15:25 UTC 9 years ago

I have always been fascinated by hematite. The "blueberries" found on Mars by Opportunity turned out to be hematite! Polished hematite, to me, always looks rather like a solid version of Mercury.

As a lover of the color green, I have to mention malachite.

June 5 2012, 20:57:22 UTC 9 years ago

From this I got "Strange Fruit," posted as today's freebie:
http://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/2337774.html

marina_bonomi

June 5 2012, 18:40:35 UTC 9 years ago

My two favorites: amber and jade, I've always felt them to be 'magical' in some way and I see the one as a sort of guardian spirit of ancient Europe (thanks to the Amber Road http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Road) and the other as the guardian spirit of ancient China.

June 6 2012, 03:09:31 UTC 9 years ago

I love amber and jade. This got me thinking about Steamsmith science, leading to the free-verse poem "An Amazing Carriage of Amber and Jade." Maryam Smith delves into the iconic materials of East and West in hopes of building an engine that will work (without blowing up).

141 lines, Buy It Now = $141

Deleted comment

June 5 2012, 21:28:58 UTC 9 years ago

The prompt "Damascus Steel" became the title of a free-verse poem about the features of this historic swordmaking technique.

21 lines, Buy It Now = $10

siliconshaman

June 5 2012, 19:04:11 UTC 9 years ago

What is precious depends on circumstance, certain iron ores were more valuable than gold in Japan at one time. [because they made the best swords.]

Hmmm... now there's an idea. A master swordsmith and his daughter, a jewel beyond price!

catsittingstill

June 5 2012, 21:51:09 UTC 9 years ago

Maybe the master swordsmith herself is the jewel beyond price.

9 years ago

kelkyag

June 5 2012, 19:24:10 UTC 9 years ago

Lapis lazuli

Rare earth magnets

Radioactive minerals

Diving for oysters or abalone

Crown jewels

A lost engagement ring

Applications of atomic batteries

June 5 2012, 22:21:45 UTC 9 years ago

From the prompt about atomic batteries came the free-verse poem "Nuclear Empowerment." It describes tiny, beneficial applications of nuclear energy.

7 lines, Buy It Now = $5

rix_scaedu

June 5 2012, 19:34:54 UTC 9 years ago

Base metals and industrial gems made more valuable by need.

Dwarves.

June 5 2012, 23:10:18 UTC 9 years ago

From the prompt about base metals I got the free-verse poem "Feudal Chemistry." It points out which metals do the real work in technology.

11 lines, Buy It Now = $10

Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match...

stonetalker

June 5 2012, 20:15:35 UTC 9 years ago

How about the jeweler or silversmith being the matchmaker, trying to find the prefect match between stones and precious metals?

Re: Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match...

June 5 2012, 22:37:22 UTC 9 years ago

From the jeweler prompt I got the free-verse poem "The Matchsmith's Challenge." It describes the finicky tastes of gems in relation to metal settings -- and one example of a metal set within a mineral.

18 lines, Buy It Now = $10

June 5 2012, 21:49:49 UTC 9 years ago

DW user Night_mare left a prompt over on my DW account, so I wrote a poem based on that...

The prompt about quenching in blood inspired the free-verse poem "Swords of a Singular Age." This is very dark fantasy about how different types of blood can affect a sword's temper and how that eventually went terribly, horribly wrong.

34 lines, Buy It Now = $15

June 5 2012, 21:50:38 UTC 9 years ago

What about a poem about the way that different gems are related chemically? Like diamond and quartz look a lot alike but are chemically quite different, while sapphire and ruby are (if I remember correctly) chemically largely the same, and given different colors by, basically, impurities.

This might combine well with your steampunk series, actually.

June 5 2012, 22:59:56 UTC 9 years ago

Thought I'd mention that I linked this page and _Strange Fruit_ in my LJ/DW here.

Thank you!

Re: Thank you!

wyld_dandelyon

June 5 2012, 23:47:16 UTC 9 years ago

Bloodstone and Onyx

Jade and Amber

An alien who produces crystalline gems much like we produce kidney stones.

June 6 2012, 03:59:36 UTC 9 years ago

See above description of "An Amazing Carriage of Amber and Jade."

mdlbear

June 6 2012, 01:05:26 UTC 9 years ago

My stillborn middle daughter's name was Amethyst Rose. Her younger sister is Emerald.

The ancient Greeks believed that if you drank out of an amethyst cup you wouldn't get drunk.

I'm also fond of jade and garnets.

June 6 2012, 05:06:44 UTC 9 years ago

The prompt about amethyst inspired the free-verse poem "The Myth of Amethystos." A young woman turns to stone to escape a lustful god.

20 lines, Buy It Now = $10

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