2012 Collins Poetry Residency: April 25th Prompt and Question

Wednesday, April 25

April 25th Prompt and Question

In honor of the Community Poetry reading tonight (a celebration to say "thank you" to all the poets and writers in the are - and showcase the poetry of those who were published on this blog) and to continue the theme of revision, today's prompt focuses on the speaking or performance of a poem.

Find an old poem (or write a new one) and write above your lines all the places that you want to pause to breathe. A fun symbol that can be used to denote a breath break is a caesura ( || ) which denotes, in music and poetry, a complete pause and was used heavily in Old English poetry. After you have have places to pause, decide on the rhythm that the pieces of the rest of your poem should take. Are there certain lines you want to read quickly? Are there other lines which should be spoken slowly to allow the listener time to absorb the information you're presenting? Finally, decide on a tone in which you'd like to deliver your lines. Does your poem demand to be spoken with a smile? Does it want to find its life in tears? Each poem has a character to it - revising poems with this idea in mind will help you to find the poem's voice. Happy writing!

Today's question is also inspired by the question of performance and poetry. Simply put:

What is the place of poetry?

Should poetry be performed or written for performance? Should it be written so that, as one teacher stated, the reader can "swim through" the poem? Is it more ideally a mix of both? In short, this becomes a question of where poetry belongs. Does it belong to the public, or does it belong to the individual? Is it neither? Or both?

Regardless of this question's answer, be sure to check out the Community Poetry Reading which starts at 7:00 tonight at the Midwest Writing Center located on the 3rd floor at the Bucktown Center for the Arts at 225 E. 2nd Street Davenport, IA. It's a great chance to hear some awesome poetry inspired and written by the community! Hope to see you there

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2012 Residency Events

Andrew Ziegler on ArtTalks [click to listen]

Poetry Slam
Rozz-Tox
Sunday, April 29
7 p.m. ~ Open mic
8 p.m. ~ Poetry slam

Performance Poetry Jam
Bettendorf Public Library
Tuesday, April 3, 6:30-8:30 pm
This performance poetry jam will focus on the spoken word and performance in performance poetry. Various techniques to modulate voice to convey tone and emotion will be explored. Verbal techniques will include inflection, pace, volume, and inference as derived from the sound of a performance. Gestures and other nonverbal presentation will also be explored. Poets will be encouraged to simply get up and put feeling into their words. Those interested in the spoken word, whether it be performance poetry, theatre, debate, forensics, or other public speaking are encouraged to participate.

Performance Poetry Jam
Black Hawk College Outreach
Wednesday, April 4, 9:30-11:30 am

Performance Poetry Seminar
Bettendorf Public Library
Tuesday, April 17, 6:30-8:30 pm
This performance poetry seminar will focus on poetry writing for performance. Although a performance can make a poem intriguing, all great poems start with great writing. The writing influences the content of a performance poem and how that content conveys or detracts from a poem’s clarity and impact. Sound techniques such as assonance, alliteration, rhyme, and rhythm will also be touched on, with the primary focus on the concept of a poem within a performance style.

Community Poetry Reading
Midwest Writing Center
Wednesday, April 25, 7 p.m.
All poets published in the online poetry journal throughout the 2012 Collins Poetry Residency are invited to participate in a public reading of their poems. There is no charge for this event and the public is welcome.

Call for Submissions ~ closed April 10

Poetry began with the force of the big bang and has echoed ever since in the crashing waves, in the tree branches which bow to the wind, and eventually in the beat which echoes off our ribs and into a doctor’s stethoscope. Poetry amplifies the echoes of images in our lives into sounds that mean something. These sounds say things about us, about life, about each other, and we, in turn, cast off our own echoes or, alternatively, reflect the sounds to create our own echoes. In either case, the sound waves wash over us, or we can’t help but be absorbed into them. We can’t help but listen to each other.

Poetry, before we took the time to write it down, was stored instead in our memories. Poetry, before we learned to read, was spread by way of voice. Word of mouth kept the stories of our ancestors alive. Today, our stories are sometimes more fractured, personal pieces of individual lives. They are echoes of our experiences, yet they still contain a grain of our cultural identity. Poems are stories in specific that speak to everyone. Poems are whispers in our lives that are amplified with the instrument of a pen, yet sometimes this is not loud enough. Sometimes the sound of our voice simply dies without ever reaching anyone’s ears. After all, poetry is considered to be very quiet. It is thought of as just a fading whisper. But it can be loud. It can be powerful. It can be heard. Sometimes the echo just needs to be transmuted into a new sound wave again. This is where the poetry blog comes in.

An echo is simply a reflection of sound. It bounces off of nearly anything. It is no surprise that this energy eventually fades, eventually dies. Yet, there must be a source for the echo; there must be the sound. The initial sonic energy spreads, and often we hear only the echo after the original has died. Additionally, the louder the sound, the stronger the echo, the more energy it has to “live.”

It is this focus on the echo that serves as your prompt for the Collins Poetry Residency online poetry journal. Submissions will be accepted through March 15. Submissions should be emailed along with an optional context statement (no more than 2-3 sentences), name, and a brief poet bio to echoes.poetry.blog@gmail.com. Submissions must be original and previously unpublished.