poetree

somnolentblue (preamble) & jjhunter (curation), with grateful thanks to Hagar, kaberett, jelazakazone, and lauramcewan for their contributions

Hi! Welcome to day four of the

pt_lightning tie-in week at

poetree!

Today we wanted to give you a glimpse into the collaborative process. We invited fanwork creators who have participated in podficcer-writer collaborations before to reflect about their experiences by responding to the following questions. Below, in their own words, are their accounts of collaborating: why they chose to try it, what it was like to do, how they did it, and what advice they have for people venturing into a collaboration for the first time.

If you'd like to share your own experiences, please feel encouraged to speak up in the comments!

N.B. Emphasis added to a non-exhaustive sampling of awesome quotes throughout. —J.J.

( 1: Why do you collaborate with a writer or podficcer? What do you enjoy about the process? How do you find it different than your creative process when you're not collaborating? )

( 2: Could you share one or two of your favorite experiences while collaborating? )

( 3: In your experience, what's unique about a collaboration between a podficcer and a writer? What kinds of different (and overlapping!) expertise can they bring to the table, and how can they enrich each other's creative process? )

( 4: What tools or processes do you find useful for collaboration? Are there any in particular you would recommend to people collaborating in podficcer-writer partnerships? )

( 5: What one thing would you tell people embarking on a podficcer-writer collaborative project for the first time? )

You can explore more reflections on writer-podficcer collaborative processes in the comments of the pod_together 2011 wrap-up post and the pod-aware posts linked at the Author/Podficcer Relationship Round-Up (2011) and the Collaboration! Round-Up (2012).

kaberett

jjhunter and I both deal with ghosts at this time of year, I think; certainly I do. We've been sharing some of them with each other, and this is what emerged.

a curious thing, this—
a seed that does not drop until
fire hath eaten up the underbrush of certainties

There is no hopelessnessin loving you.
Precision, yes, and care, delicacy.
Awareness of your absence, bittersweet, and yet:

you don't trail lonely echoes in your wake
or scatter ghosts of leaves, however crisp

your absence cuts rather like vinegar
and pickled thus everything is flavor
almost too intense to bear

your shadow stretches out before me:
still your light casts my life into relief

jjhunter

Society members by code numbers: 9 – ardyforshort; 16 – fyreharper; 24 – J.J. the Pointed Verse of Reasoned Debate; 28 – firecat; 29 – untonuggan; 34 – okrablossom; 35 – Pau Amma; 40 – bookblather; and 41 – primeideal.

"There's something intimate about secrecy. When someone glances about and lowers their voice, you instinctively lean in. Whatever it is that the two of you discuss, your soft-voiced conversation creates a illusion of a private space, one set apart from the crowded world outside.

"Let's create such a space here [...]" Thus begins the Covert Collaboration Challenge, "a little experiment in secrecy as a recipe for intimacy". Over the course of a week, myself and my eight fellow Society members wrote two original sonnets; the majority of the lines in each were written with only one to two preceding lines for reference, and in the case of the second sonnet, the prompt ("spontaneous musicals, or What if life was more like theater?'").

==

METAMORPHIC UNDERSTANDING

( full text of the 'Shakespearean' sonnet behind the cut )

==

HELLO, TROLLEY

( full text of the 'loose Petrarchean' sonnet behind the cut )

===
All are welcome to comment and discuss. Society members, was this experiment successful in fostering intimacy? Do you have any favorite exchanges or quotes you'd like to share from our Top Secret discussion threads?

jjhunter

For myself, the pleasure and the difficulty of collaborative poetry are both rooted in the same place: the loss of control. In the following poem, the first that

untonuggan wrote with me for our LizJJ Jam, I think that learning curve is most readily apparent. The haikai format lends itself to alternating authorship by stanza; I wrote the initial seed and all the subsequent 5-7-5 stanzas, while Liz took the 7-7 stanzas. Please take a moment to read the poem itself, and then see below for further commentary.

pacific kitchen

peel your clementines
like compass stars, and your trash
will bloom orange suns

silver and gold diadems
abandoned, tarnish and fade

while plastic wrappers
float on distant seas, tawdry
immortality

amidst glass lures, forgotten
in the ocean's lulling waves

the global local
the distant piscine choking
on our convenience

---

( Further commentary behind the cut )

---

Some starting places for discussion:

If this poem was written by three writers instead of two, and you were the third writer, what alternative third stanza might you write in place of 'while plastic wrappers...', etc.? Where do you think the new poem might go from there?

Does this feel like a cohesive poem, or a collection of disparate images? Are there particular key words or concepts that link two or more stanzas together?

Have you ever participated in writing haikai or other collaborative poetry yourself? How is it different from writing poetry on your own?

---

( Leave kudos behind the cut )

untonuggan

Apologies for the service delay! Those of you who guessed that I started the last poem, sacrificia, were correct!

This next poem was started from the last line first, switching off lines. I *may* have added two lines here and there as I got overwhelmed by the creative impulse, but it sorted itself out. If you've never written a poem backwards, I highly recommend it as a format. If you've never written a poem backwards with another person, I recommend that as well.

You are welcome to steal our first/last line: "and all that for a ha'penny" - or come up with something of your own. We'd love to see the output of your creative endeavors sometime, particularly at the Sunday Picnic! I dare you...

===

that time you nicked my penny for your plots

at first the day ballooned with sharp words, but
I couldn't win against your mock solemnity

we laughed through the ferris wheel
circling around each others' hands,
until the sun's last cheerful hurrah saw us

finished at the fair, exhausted and spent
fingers sticky with cotton candy --
and all that for a ha'penny.

===

Poll #12636

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 9

View Respondents

I would like to leave kudos for this poem

View Answers

Yes
7 (100.0%)

No
0 (0.0%)

I'm thinking of writing a backwards poem for the Sunday Picnic!

View Answers

Yes
1 (11.1%)

Maybe So
5 (55.6%)

Nope
0 (0.0%)

Some other time perhaps
3 (33.3%)

Every poll needs a duck!
4 (44.4%)

untonuggan

Can I just say that I think my new favorite thing is collaborative poetry writing? I am so glad

jjhunter invited me to co-host this week with her, because it meant we had three heady days of dashing forth lines of poetry.

This poem evolved almost exactly a 24 hour period from start to title. As we were nearing our deadline, each poet contributed a larger chunk of lines than in previous poems (3-5ish), sometimes stopping mid-line to let the other poet finish the thought. The theme was "artistic creation", the form free-form.

One of the things I really enjoyed about writing this particular pell-mell poem was the way we played with melding words. For example, in one exchange jjhunter ended with the word "quick", to which I added "-ening" thus changing the direction of the poem. I love that jjhunter just ran with it, and the synergy created there gave the poem a greater depth to its central theme and ultimately (I'm guessing, since jjhunter chose the title) helped lead to the choice in title.

Without further ado, here's the poem...

sacrificia

Room thunderswept, mind electrocuted,
the ideas swell-and-fade in currents and eddies,
elusive and overpowering. Sometimes
soulwrenchingly lost in the pell-mell tang
of creative synergy when one thread drops
and the others race on, electric in their mania
quickening, a first stirring of creation
or is it triplets quintuplets septuplets
surely one or two will be sacrificed in the birth
of a novel, a love poem, an heirloom quilt
kill your darlings stitched into institutional
whizzing, into the seasons and the harvest king
myth and mistaken and mapping nature
onto humanity as if a muse could be caught
tamped down, distilled into an essence
displayed on a dignified gallery wall
when all all is pursuit, the wild hunt
and beware those who get swept up in it
for there is no perfect art

Poll #12614 sacrificia poll

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 6

View Respondents

I would like to leave kudos on this poem

View Answers

Yes
6 (100.0%)

No
0 (0.0%)

Who do you think started this poem? Answer revealed tomorrow!

View Answers

jjhunter started it!
0 (0.0%)

lizcommotion started it!
3 (100.0%)

jjhunter

This week returning Poetry Hosts

untonuggan and myself (

jjhunter) will be co-Hosting a week on poetry we wrote together during our recent 'LizJJ Jam'. Each poem is the fruit of a distinct email chain where the first email establishes format (if any), opening line(s), and loose 'standards' for swapping our digital pen back and forth as the poem evolves. We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we enjoyed writing them!

ragdoll poetry

stitched from each poet's muse, handsewn smile recites ragdoll poetry
this arm drawn from a faded childhood dress worn
sepia with adventure, that one from summer skin
burnished smooth with coaxing snails out their front door holes
memories ragged around the edges, smudged by fingers
mucky from ink pens and filching chocolate chip cookies
the way you say hello in my voice, my diction echoed in yours
wordshop duality into one poem, one ragged edge joined to ragged heart

---

Poll #12598 Kudos?

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 6

View Respondents

I would like to leave kudos on this post

View Answers

Yes
6 (100.0%)