Poetry Stunt Leading Up To Oct 1st Reading

Here's what I propose: a Spontaneous Poetry chapbook.

Between now and Sept 22nd, I will take on 12 challenges for spontaneous poetry. That will leave a week to get the results printed as a chapbook, before my "feature" reading on Thursday October 1st in Columbus, GA. I won't be aiming for slick or pretty. This will be a "cheap" book that draws its energy from speed and uninhibited creativity. I might even include scans of some of the original handwritten pages. I also might include some of the earlier spontaneous poems.

I won't be printing very many copies of this thing. I'd say no more than 125 or 150. I'll be publishing this as a Brick Road Poetry Press book with the logo and our company info. I'm not too concerned about an ISPN or barcode. Mainly I see this as a poetry stunt, nothing more, nothing less.

As for challenges/prompts, anything goes: random words, strange topic, specific form, an image, a question, a first line, phrase that must be used, a reference that must be included, etc.

I will spend 45 - 60 minutes on each challenge. Maybe longer if time permits that same day. I will only solicit the challenge on the day I will tackle the challenge, so there will be no forethought.

If you are reading this and wish to be solicited for a prompt, shoot me an email at "the bearded poet at hot mail dot com" (eliminate the spaces and substitute @ for at).

Slight Slow Down

With the beginning of the school year, my life seems to be slowing down again a bit. What it means for me is that the whirlwind of summer (when my wife and I take our trips and try to enjoy the time that she’s home from her job as a media specialist) has come to an end, for the time being. We don’t have kids—just a rascally dog that keeps us hopping—so things get quieter for me during the school year. Also this summer was insane in terms of what I tried to pack into it: trip to Alaska, trip to Maine, launch of poetry press, and continued effort for Georgia Poetry Society.

In the next couple of blogs, I suspect I'll talk about my summer in some more depth. Just in photographs alone, I could easily blog hourly until the next millennium.

Here's another sample of the sights from Alaska:

Whew!

Where to begin? It’s been months since I wrote anything for this blog—with good reason! I’ve been to Alaska for an 11 day vacation. See the picture below. I’ve teamed up with Ron Self in starting our very own poetry press: Brick Road Poetry Press. Our start up entailed me typesetting, formatting, proofreading, and correcting the text. Also I laid out the cover and formatted that. Our first book is due out in about 2 weeks, entitled Dancing on the Rim by poet Clela Reed. I’m very proud of it already since I find Clela’s poetry to be top notch. This is not just another poetry collection. It’s one that rewards the reader the first time through and the tenth time through. On top of all that I’ve been working my normal day job at the church, and presiding over the Georgia Poetry Society. Recently I’ve been sinking a lot of time into the pre-planning and publicity for our next quarterly meeting on July 25th. Whew! There’s good reason why I feel like I’ve got three full-time jobs.

I also want to put out a big thanks to Jerri Beck, Robert Boliek, Suzanne Coker, Jim Ferguson, Irene Latham, and Barry Marks, The Big Table Poets, for coming from Birmingham to Columbus, GA for our first Thursday of the month poetry reading on July 2nd. Their presentation was outstanding! I can’t wait to read their new collection EINSTEIN AT THE ODEON CAFÉ.