• Send out a request on Twitter for participants.
• Create a Google Document.
• Find an image from Flickr (Make sure to pick one from the Creative Commons)
• Wait.
• Wait some more.
• Start to write.
• Leave your poem as a comment on the original page.

Well, we were at it again. This time we decided to use an Etherpad:

Cut and paste this link to view the photo, and then work together to create a poem inspired by the image. This is live and we can see each other create. Don’t be afraid to type over the work of others. Click “unnamed” on the right, to add your name and choose a color. Open the chat to chat with the group. Here is what it looked like:

We had about eight people show up. I don’t think the final product is what is important, but more so the process. It is interesting to see how attached we become to our own language. The connections through words, ideas, and imagery is what makes this idea powerful.

While it may feel a bit forced at times, the idea that a group of people from around the world are working in real time to try and give expression to a shared reality is fascinating. After all isn’t this connection, this expression the purpose of art, language, are common humanity.

Maybe I am reading too much into this. Anyway come join us next time:

MeltedSearching
They sent me here
Siberia
Nothing
nothing.
I asked for pain
They gave me blue
Nothing but blue

The ceiling is moving
Another evaporated horizon
no moon, no sun
There’s a rhyme somewhere
maybe irony
Would it be a sin to laugh out loud?
I’m thinking of jumping
above and beneath the glass
lifeless.
What is life?
Ice.

her soft voice singing
postcards
songs about postcards
funny
would she even read it?

Or would it be pinned by a butterfly magnet
to her popsicle-stained fridge?
their tiny fingers
long gone

Fridge.
This place is ice, no warmth, no red,
Blue. Nothing but blue
periphery
Frigid blue – frozen loins push forth no new life here.

I stretch out my tongue
Seeking wind
Something to cut, or freeze
To feel
Something
Like the rip of the tongue from the metal flag pole
torn flesh so tender
and the rest gone

The bottle empty. Fire going out.
Does it matter?
Nothing can taste warm here.
Tongue is useless.

but begs to speak, to sing, to be heard
to connect.
frozen flesh forcing meaning
where none should be.

Scream at the sky, lunatic!
Drown your puny voice in this everlasting lake.

But then I feel
I yearn
to drink?
to pee?
ruled by the body
my eyes deceive

her eyes deceive
more failed tissue
how do you expect to experience
with nothing more than
blood, muscle, and bone.
eyes, tongues, useless
out here, in there.
you are everyone, everywhere.
I am in you let me out.

the bottle lies
it always does
I’ll drown in a sentence
in a lake of Curacao
in the land of Vodka, czars,and Lenin’s ghost
his dreams lost too
in this blur

Baikal is not big enough to encompass these lies.
What lies beneath? Lies.
They sent me here.

• Send out a request on Twitter for participants.
• Create a Google Document.
• Find an image from Flickr (Make sure to pick one from the Creative Commons)
• Wait.
• Wait some more.
• Start to write.
• Leave your poem as a comment on the original page.

Ideas for next time:

• Set a time limit
• Take a screencast of the process so as to watch the “growth” of the poem
• Look at something like Etherpad.

Here is the image and the poem:

Cerulean Tide

a wall of day
and a door to night
creaking hinges
keeping time
footsteps
shuffle
in and out

this is where we met,
the smell of brine and barnacles
moving the sea, slaves to the moon
and desire

warm smoke escaping from a door
in flux soon to close
forever, or so we thought

our eyes consumed, engaged, divorced
time peeling another layer
pushing us together
awash in the sound of
laughter and a distant snare drum

touch gave meaning
memories embrace
did we?
if we choose to believe, we did

this is not ours to keep
never was
but what is left?
closed door, new season
but still, the blue
and blue and stillness blur

choice led us here then
and again
choice parts us after we give
“I want to fall in love with a living poem,”
you said.

another couple in
another out

I laughed and kissed your serious brow
learned the tangles of your hair, left alone too long
waiting for someone to know you
your only desire
for someone to know you

this place will be different tomorrow
in the light
we will see the decay
if we choose

what is the scale for measuring moments?
I say pain
you look away and take a drag on your cigarette
can’t help but disappoint you

your eyes have moved on
I wonder if you will ever be happy
Or if you will discover there’s no such thing

will you come back?
the wall was green, yellow, eggplant
your letter will say.

will your memories lie?
it was blue
it was dark.
we’ll never really know.

The poem is average at best, but it is the process of creation we are concerned with here over product. More thoughts on collaborative art soon.

Later I received a Tweet from @jhawtin telling me about the sonnet she wrote. Here it is:

A wall of daylight met a door of night.
Creaking hinges kept time with our journey,
the drift of lazy footsteps, left and right,
wrapped in smoke and shadow, a comedy.

Awash in laughter, haze and amber pints,
eyes engaged then slipped across the hecklers.
We watched the distant snare drum catch the light.
Crowds moved on. In comfy chairs we rested.

We stayed here under summer’s scudding skies.
Photos captured tangle haired embraces,
the buoys and bikes and lobster pots you liked,
colours rich with time and salty laces.

A season ends, the colours change, and leave.
A smile still sees you here, our dark retreat.

Leave her comments on her blog, Cranky Mango.

First, I have a shikayat, a complaint against anyone reading this. Currently only two people are commenting on this blog. I put a lot of work but I guess it’s going to waste. The amazing two people I’m talking about are Mr.R and Julia. Thank you both. I would probably give up if it wasn’t for you. So those of you reading comment and you two amazing people keep on commenting and please send my blog link to anyone you know. Why? Well I don’t are if they think it’s a blog by a wired girl who has an average life. Even if they think so I don’t care just get them to mention that they came; by comment.

I wrote her the following post as advice to a young writer. I think our exchange demonstrates how much writers, no matter what age want to make connections. When I had a classroom, I found it very difficult to make blogging engaging for most of my students. I was stuck in the “blog as filing cabinet for homework” stage with most of my students.

Now that I am out of the classroom and interacting with students on a purely cyber level I am realizing that not all students are ready to connect and communicate. I have assembled a small group of students from around the world and the trait they all have in common is that they understand the power of writing; they realize that it is their most powerful tool to communicate their expanding vision of the world. I am not referring to writing as a solely textual experience, but rather writing as a way to use any tool necessary to communicate and connect. To be effective bloggers must first understand the power of writing on a personal level. They must first be writers. You cannot force students to start a blog and expect them to fall in love with writing.

Leila’s post shows that although, she is not sure exactly what it is she wants to say, she wants someone to listen and respond. This is the first step in the development of a writer. It is the more experienced writer or teacher’s role to teach students that they must first find out what they want to say, show them the most effective way to say it, and then to simply write, without need for reciprocation. Once the young writer realizes the power writing has for them as human beings, they will write freely and obsessively. It is at this stage that blogging works best.

It is difficult for the writer’s ego to relinquish the need for an audience. I don’t know about many of you, but I am still learning these lessons myself. It must be pretty difficult for someone new to the game. We writers are sitting on the fence of needing to write to stay sane and wanting to communicate every experience we have with a larger audience. A blog is a great tool for any student who has come to this realization. For others it is simply another assignment or homework assignment they could careless about.