Sunday, July 19, 2009

Daily Keywords with Martyn Conterio and Danielle Booth: A Joint Poetry Venture

My dear friend Martyn, who lives in London, finally shared a stanza from one of his poems with me. It happened to be about the first time we met face-to-face, as we'd previously known each other through a Myspace literature forum of awesomeness called The Fiction Files, and he flew to Venice to meet me and experience the Biennale. It was a lovely time; we got on great, wandered about, chased hordes of Japanese tourists in a bizarre attempt to make a short film via digital camera video about the resurrection of dead philosophers descending upon the sinking city,

Anyway.

Martyn's a writer; I'm a writer. He writes poetry; I write poetry, though not as often as I'd like to force upon myself. Martyn never lets me read anything, even though he's been published. I'd like to write much more frequently and keep in closer touch with my friend, and suddenly--in an IM conversation with him, he properly pissed and me on a 4-day run of avoiding sleep almost entirely--I thought of something.

A joint poetry writing project wherein we send one another daily keywords or concepts, picked using whichever method we choose, with or without specific stipulations as to context, usage, etc--a launching pad to drive the both of us into the daily practice of poetry composition. I am sure the results will produce a lot of useless swill, but the focus, the repetition, and the discipline will help the both of us to hone our poetic senses and that both of us are producing will drive each of us to fulfill the commitment.

I've been assigned my first keyword, no stipulations: resistance

Results to follow.

No comments: