Poetry Fishbowl Report for Tuesday, March 2, 2010
The March theme was "elements and elemental spirits," which people interpreted in many creative ways. The prompts were slow to start, but then picked up, and there were several early sales. I worked from 12:30 PM to 1:30 AM, so about 11 hours allowing for lunch and supper breaks. I finished 20 poems and started 1 that probably won't be finished for quite some time. Most of the poems were short or medium-short, a few medium-long, one long, and one unfinished epic. I wrote mostly free verse this month, though some of it had shaped verses -- tercets and quatrains, ascending or descending lines, etc. I wrote one shape poem, a rare form for me, and the epic has intricate infrastructure. Some poems came from single prompts, while others combined prompts; a few prompts led to multiple poems.
A total of 16 people sent prompts. Three cheers for new prompter/new donor technomage! That earned you folks an extra freebie poem. There were 60 comments, including mine.
Read Some Poetry!
The following poems from the March 2010 Poetry Fishbowl have been posted:
" The Attraction of Opposites"
" Casting the Circle of Words"
" Digging for Roots"
" The Door in the Sky"
" The Elemental Symbiotes"
" The Elements of Wisdom"
" Firewheel"
" folded wings"
" kū shiki"
" This Hidden Light"
" Light and Wind and Fire"
" The Orphaned Elements"
" The Song of the Elements"
" The Transformation of Elements"
Buy Some Poetry!
If you plan to sponsor some poetry but haven't made up your mind yet, read the list of unsold poems, which includes the title, length, price, and the original thumbnail description for the poems still available.
Regarding the shape poem, "Creativity," it would benefit from being animated. I posted a discussion about this, which has attracted attention from ericatrandom. Two people have already expressed interest in cosponsoring this. It's not priced yet because my usual system doesn't apply to a poem that isn't written in lines! I'll keep you updated on developments.
Regarding the epic poem, "A Periodic Table of Elementals," I spent a sizable chunk of late Tuesday night just figuring out the infrastructure. I wrote the first two verses, Hydrogen and Helium. I'm waffling a bit on price, because writing this is a lot harder than my usual $.50/line poetry; but it's already going to be insanely expensive if I finish it, so I'm hesitant to request $1/line. But I thought the idea of describing all the scientific elements as elemental spirits was just so cool, I had to try it. I have posted a second discussion about this poem.
All of the currently sponsored poems have been posted. Copies of the unsold poems have been sent backchannel to their respective prompters. Later there will be a generally sponsored poetry poll and a donor perk-post. I did get around to making an icon-sized donor badge, which I will put in the perk-post so that donors can save it for their use. (EDIT 3/4/10: The donor perk-post is now up.) The March donors include: ellenmillion, technomage, wcg, dianavilliers, minor_architect, marina_bonomi, and dreamwriteremmy. Yay, yay! Thank you so much.
If you haven't already heard about this, winners have been announced for the Art, Fiction, Other Project and Poetry, Patron categories of the Rose and Bay Awards. I am delighted to report that the Poetry Fishbowl WON the Poetry category! You folks are a wonderful and enthusiastic audience; I couldn't have done this without you. Thank you all for your support.
The Poetry Fishbowl project also has a permanent landing page.