POETREE

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

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( Further commentary behind the cut )

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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?

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( Leave kudos behind the cut )

One of my favorite poetry formats is haikai (alternating verses of 5-7-5 and 7-7), or more specifically haikai no renga, which today is known more simply as renku. It is a form of collaborative Japanese linked verse poetry; the more well known form (in English) haiku comes from taking the first verse of a haikai in isolation. I like haikai because I usually write them in collaboration with one or more other poets (with some exceptions), and the strict syllable count for each verse limits its length, making it more likely someone else will take the time to respond.

Since I joined Dreamwidth, I've worked on three different haiku/haikai-related projects. The first is a set of threads over at dw_codesharing where I offer an invitation code to anyone willing to write a haiku about why they want to join Dreamwidth; I also write a haiku in return that plays off whatever themes and imagery the first haiku introduces. You can find the original thread at the second codes wanted post and a followup thread on the current codes wanted post (#3); some of the exchanges are really lovely.

The second project is an offshoot of the first: a comm specifically for Dreamwidth-related haiku/haikai: dreamwidth_haikai. Of especial note there is alee_grrl's piece snow-tinged dreaming, which has some wonderful continuations in the comments; my piece Letters to the Dreaming World, which was featured in a dw_news post last September; and a series of pieces for the second three_weeks_for_dw (3W4DW) anniversary fest.

Today's poem is from the third project, the 2011 April Haiku/Haikai Fest that I hosted on my journal jjhunter. In celebration of National Poetry Month, I posted an original poem seed every day for a month and invited others to continue the poem in the comments. 'Blue' is from April 8th; blockquotes are verses written by alee_grrl while lines not in blockquotes were written by me.

Blue
color is pigment
here: a homemade pastel of
concentrated sky

cobalt and sapphire hued glass
spark-sunlight off mountain lakes

lapis lazuli
ocean on open ocean
clothes Mary richly

Speckled shells of powder blue peek
from the nest-a hint of spring.

Such color in hues
so varied words sometimes fail.
We try anyway

to catch the beauty before
us. So rich a world have we.

what butterfly net
can catch the blue of his eyes
swipe hue from berry

snatch more than camera can?
an artist's brush records most


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