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 "science & math." 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.

Click to read the linkback poem "A Strange and Gentle Contagion" (15 verses, The Bat Vampires).

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 "science & math." 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 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.

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, Digg, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, or any other social network.  Useful Twitter hashtags include #poetryfishbowl, #promptcall, and #crowdfunding. 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. Comment with a link to where you posted.  "A Strange and Gentle Contagion" belongs to The Bat Vampires series and has 15 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, there will be a half-price sale in one series to be selected in an audience poll.

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 "science and math." I'll be soliciting ideas for scientists, mathematicians, other geeks, people who need them, historic figures in STEM, posing questions, forming a hypothesis, doing experiments, breaking the glass ceiling, plot twists, labs, classrooms, other places where people do science/math, calculators, other math tools, microscopes, other science equipment, white coats, imposter syndrome, entertaining failures, experiments gone wrong, natural laws, inspiration, discoveries, inventions, mad science, the language with which God wrote the universe, "Eureka!" moments, "That's ... funny" moments, science/math jokes, 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 Lewis Turco's The New 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 "A Strange and Gentle Contagion.") The rest of the poems will go into my archive for magazine submission.

janetmiles

May 6 2014, 18:13:26 UTC 7 years ago

New comment

Ada Lovelace

πr². No, pie are round. Cornbread are square.

Is memorizing π to hundreds of digits akin to speaking the nine billion names of God?

Stephen Hawking

Silly Putty (tm) and/or Post-It Notes (tm)

Lab safety note: Hot glass looks exactly like cold glass.

Poem

ysabetwordsmith

May 6 2014, 18:52:18 UTC 7 years ago

Your prompt about pi inspired by the poem "In Which the Universe Was Written." It's written in unrhymed tercets. It explores the mathematical equations that define the physical universe, along with some scientific and spiritual implications.

36 lines, Buy It Now = $15

7 years ago

May 6 2014, 18:27:21 UTC 7 years ago

Shirley Barrette left a backchannel prompt which inspired the free-verse poem "A Nose for Trouble," about the great astronmer Tycho Brahe.

45 lines, Buy It Now = $20

ellenmillion

May 6 2014, 18:37:21 UTC 7 years ago

Oranaan makes a breakthrough
I'd also love to see Denel figuring something out that he misses...

Someone who thinks they are bad at math because they were bad at school math, being shown that they are actually quite good at it.

Day-to-day things that use math: cooking, building, personal finances.

When science fails...

May 6 2014, 19:21:27 UTC 7 years ago

Your everyday math prompt inspired the free-verse poem "Kitchen Equations." It talks about the hidden math in food.

25 lines, Buy It Now = $10

n-dimensional space(s)

my_partner_doug

May 6 2014, 19:01:23 UTC 7 years ago

Multiple dimensions, in multiple aspects: not so much the common SF/fantasy definition of "dimension" as meaning an alternate (accessible) universe, but more than 3 physical dimensions (including but not limited to 4D hypercubes); but also in a more abstract sense, in that computer arrays can be configured to any number of dimensions (within memory limits). What, if any, overlaps exist between those two concepts? Is Lisa Randall right when she posits that we live in a 3-dimensional ghetto in a 12-dimensional universe? Is Teflon really a more-than-3-dimensional object?

Re: n-dimensional space(s)

May 6 2014, 20:24:31 UTC 7 years ago

From this I got "Infinite Dimensions," today's freebie.

rix_scaedu

May 6 2014, 19:40:21 UTC 7 years ago

mad science meets pure maths.

scientific genius gone wrong

May 6 2014, 22:16:42 UTC 7 years ago

The pure math prompt inspired the free-verse poem "Purity and Madness." Mad scientists are a problem in nether-Europe. Maryam thinks of a way to minimize their damage potential by directing them into a less destructive field of study.

82 lines, Buy It Now = $82

Science Itself

ng_moonmoth

May 6 2014, 19:50:51 UTC 7 years ago

I'd like to see something about someone, preferably a scientist themself, who faces a crisis of conscience when they encounter yet another harmful claim, either not readily falsifiable or incompletely tested, made in the name of science for the sake of political or financial gain. As they come to realize that such claims are attacks on science itself, they must decide whether to commit themself and their reputation to the defense of the good name of science.

It need not end well, or even end at all. Please let your muse be your guide.

Re: Science Itself

May 7 2014, 04:18:56 UTC 7 years ago

From this I got the free-verse poem "An Equation for Conscience." Damask discovers an incident at the chemistry building, but it turns out to be a totally different kind of problem than expected.

168 lines, Buy It Now = $84

May 6 2014, 20:58:48 UTC 7 years ago

A Dreamwidth prompt inspired the free-verse poem "Math by Hand." It explores the way math expands across all the senses into things which can be felt, heard, smelled, or tasted instead of seen.

30 lines, Buy It Now = $15

May 6 2014, 21:27:41 UTC 7 years ago

A Dreamwidth prompt about zero inspired the free-verse poem "Zero Influence," describing the history and evolution of this number.

30 lines, Buy It Now = $15

siliconshaman

May 6 2014, 21:34:20 UTC 7 years ago

Math is described as the Universal Language... so what if it was the only language two people had in common?

Someone once made the observation that scientists are able to ignore any privation, even imminent death, provided they have something interesting to discuss... and the end of the world due to back-hole would be pretty interesting, scientifically speaking.

What if Newton had stuck with doing alchemy?

Hacking reality...

May 7 2014, 02:27:08 UTC 7 years ago

Newton led me to the free-verse poem "Of Alchemy and Quantum Physics," in which Schrodinger's Heroes find a tangle in the spacetime continuum.

41 lines, Buy It Now = $20

siege

May 6 2014, 21:42:45 UTC 7 years ago

Pi = 1/2 Tau, darnit.

The equation which defines skin conductance is similar to the equation which regulates neuronal conductance, since it's basically electrical conductance across an ion-transfer membrane.

Teleportation can be done in several ways.

Some people believe that if science can't describe it, it doesn't exist. But science needs a model before it can describe something, and models are made of math. But some things are hard to translate into mathematical functions.

May 7 2014, 03:01:10 UTC 7 years ago

Some of your prompts inspired the poem "Dreams of Glass and Magic." It's about a fantasy setting where magic works like computer code. The wizards are like programmers, everyone else like end users. Magic itself is imperceptible in the material world and only its effects can be seen. There can be different ways to do things, and it depends on knowing how both magic and science work.

53 lines, Buy It Now = $20

May 6 2014, 23:07:28 UTC 7 years ago

From a Dreamwidth prompt I got the free-verse poem "Hard and Soft Mindcandy," likening different sciences to types of sweet.

47 lines, Buy It Now = $20

Re: Poem

May 7 2014, 01:03:02 UTC 7 years ago

A Dreamwidth prompt about forgotten scientists inspired the free-verse poem "The Matilda Effect," describing how women's discoveries are falsely attributed to men.

37 lines, Buy It Now = $15

laffingkat

May 7 2014, 00:59:24 UTC 7 years ago

How about the math of poetry, or the poetry of math, or something about commonalities in the two ways of looking at the world?

May 7 2014, 01:42:56 UTC 7 years ago

Your prompt inspired the free-verse poem "Lines of Math and Verse." It explores the meeting point between math and poetry.

23 lines, Buy It Now = $10

laugh

May 7 2014, 01:23:22 UTC 7 years ago

A backchannel prompt from Anthony & Shirley Barrette led to the free-verse poem "Room at the Bottom." It details the accomplishments of Richard Feynman.

28 lines, Buy It Now = $15

May 7 2014, 01:54:33 UTC 7 years ago

A Dreamwidth prompt inspired the free-verse poem "Women's Inventions." Much that is concerned with home life would have been up to women to develop.

36 lines, Buy It Now = $15

wyld_dandelyon

May 7 2014, 03:42:08 UTC 7 years ago

Figuring all the angles in a mandala

Women and the sciences

Math anxiety

Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from science

Things that crawl and things that slither leave some kid's parents in a dither

I'd love to see something set at Hart's Farm or in the Monster House

May 7 2014, 04:56:27 UTC 7 years ago

Your request for Monster House inspired the free-verse poem "Dangerous Knowledge." The daughter of the house loves science and magic equally, so she gets to explore them both.

39 lines, Buy It Now = $15

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Poetry Fishbowl Open!

Autonomous Weapons

Physics Staircase

Epic Special Effects

Error

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n-dimensional space(s)

Re: n-dimensional space(s)

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Science Itself

Re: Science Itself

Re: Science Itself

Re: Science Itself

Poem

Poem

Poem

Poem

Poem

Re: Poem

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laugh

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Poem

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Autonomous Weapons

Physics Staircase

Epic Special Effects