busyI have a spare series poem available, "Carrying the Sea and the Sky" (A Conflagration of Dragons, 20 verses). I need a volunteer to host the linkback poem.
If you're interested, mark the date on your calendar, and please hold actual prompts until the "Poetry Fishbowl Open" post next week. (If you're not available that day, or you live in a time zone that makes it hard to reach me, you can leave advance prompts.) Meanwhile, if you want to help with promotion, please feel free to link back here or repost this on your blog.
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.
I'm going to host a Poetry Fishbowl on my blog on Tuesday, March 5. I'll be soliciting ideas for thematic characters, objects, plots, settings, and poetic forms in particular. Chances are I'll spend a good chunk of the day, from afternoon to evening or more, alternating between this site and doing stuff offline so my back doesn't weld itself to the chair.
Perks: I will post at least one of the resulting fishbowl poems on the blog for everyone to enjoy, and an extra one if there's at least one new prompter or donor. The rest will be available for audience members to buy, and whatever's left over will go into my archive for magazine submission.
If donations total $100 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, there will be a half-price sale in one of my poetic series.
I want to promote linkbacks pointing people to the "Fishbowl Open" post on Tuesday. I have a spare series poem available, and each linkback will reveal a verse of "Carrying the Sea and the Sky" (A Conflagration of Dragons). One person can do multiple links if they're on different services, like Dreamwidth or Twitter, rather than all on LiveJournal.
(See the complete list of current perks.)
If you enjoy my poetry -- or if you just love poetry in general, or want to promote interest in houses and homes -- please mark the fishbowl date on your calendar. Drop by and give me some ideas, comment on the posted poetry, encourage people to come look, whatever tickles your fancy. I hope to see you then!
February 27 2013, 03:30:46 UTC 8 years ago
I'll need to send prompts ahead. I start a new job on the Monday, and I'm not sure yet how lax they are with their internet policies.
Okay...
February 27 2013, 04:14:37 UTC 8 years ago
Congratulations on the new job! I hope it works out well for you.
February 28 2013, 00:09:23 UTC 8 years ago
There's a parable about a woman stricken with grief asking the Buddha to resurrect her dead son, and he asked her to find him a mustard seed from a house where nobody has ever died - and of course, she couldn't, death's part of life, etc, etc.
This gets me thinking a little about the Dene tradition of torching houses in which someone's died - I figure it's a form of disease control - and about Britain and how old Britain is compared to the USA. If you live in York or Manchester or London there's a very good chance that you are living where people were born and did their business and ate and screwed and defecated and died in the 1940s, 1800s, 1600s, 1200s, 1000s, 800s, 600s, earlier. Where I live now, the most anyone lived on the spot before 1840 or so is maybe a few Ohlone walked through.
This gets me thinking also of a chunk of someone else's life in my old apartment back in Seattle. During a makeout session in the kitchenette with a girlfriend she noticed that there was this big dent in the ceiling, exactly the size of a cork. I hadn't spotted it before. At some point someone opened a thing of champagne and it dinged the ceiling. Who were they, was it New Years or something else, when was that anyway? Stuff you notice.