get your poem on #33: with a plot twist*
*and the one wherein Deb and Dana refer to themselves in third person
For this week’s Get Your Poem On, Deb and Dana are throwing a wrench into the works. We know y’all like to come here to the Get Your Poem On post and, well, get. your. poem. on. Which makes perfect sense. However, in your rush to get your poem on, you might not exactly be reading the content of said post. Are we right? We thought so.
This week we have important things to report. Very big RWP developments, ones we want you to hear. So we are stopping the presses, so to speak. We’ve decided to close comments on the Get Your Poem On post until 10 a.m. CST Monday. That’s right. No linkey poem love until we open the floodgates wide.
In the meantime, please sit tight, and while you are sitting tight, please read this post. Do it. (Please.)
So, last week we reported on starting the Read Write Poem Twitter page and invited people to have the username and password to that page in case they wanted to post there as part of the RWP community. We got exactly zero responses to that request. But are we dissuaded by the lack of response? Heck no. We’ve simply chosen to change up how we will use the page, and we’d like to explain a little more about it.
What we’ve decided to do is use the RWP Twitter page to tell folks about developments on the RWP website (that would be here) and on our new Read Write Poem Facebook group (that would be there). More on the Facebook page later. For now, let’s focus on the Twitter page.
In addition to using the RWP Twitter page to make official announcements about the project, we also want to use it to help you all connect with one another in new and wonderful ways.
Why Twitter when we can all simply blog? Because Twitter is like group instant messaging. Rather than hoping one of your poetry pals will stop by to weigh in on a question you just posted or read a brilliant poem you just put on your blog, you can post a short note (oh, and the 140-character limit on Twitter ensures your notes will be short!) on Twitter and your “tweet,” along with the tweets of everyone you are “following,” will appear on your own Twitter page. (Or a desktop application if you’d like, or even your cell phone. Now, we realize all this fancy talk might be too much for the older Twitterers — read: Deb - 
)
Example: Dana “twittered” Deb into reading a great blog post of hers the other day, a post Deb might have missed if Dana had not twittered it.
Toward that end — communicating and poeming with each other — we would love for each and every one of you (but no pressure if you’re not into it) to sign up for your own Twitter account. (Just go over to Twitter and sign up. It’s easy peasy.)
The RWP Twitter page will “follow” all RWP participants who have Twitter accounts. That is, if you “follow” the RWP Twitter page. (We’ll only know you have your own Twitter page if you elect to follow us, then we’ll be notified that you’re following us and we can do the same for you.)
This will result in the RWP Twitter page having a big honkin’ list of RWP participants, so you all can go to our page and find other RWP Twitterers to follow.
This all sounds very complicated. But it’s not. Deb and Dana and Christine and several other RWPers are already twittering away. If they can do it, so can you. (And if this all seems very, very confusing, no worries: We are happy to take questions in the comments or through e-mail. Just ask.)
So do it. And then check back at noon Monday, when we will open comments on this post so you can Get Your Poem (and Twitter!) On.
* * *
About the no-pressure part. We mean it. The RWP website will continue to bring you the same great content you’ve gotten used to. That won’t change. But if you are interested in growing our connectedness as a poetry community, all we are saying is give Twitter a chance.
Loading ...
A few things:
1) GREAT idea regarding twitter, facebook, and community-building. I love it!
2) Shuffle Words was challenging but fruitful… good idea, Dana. I hope to try a few more ways of limiting word options soon, like the black-out poems.
3) Here’s my poem: Shuffle Words
Here’s mine!
Looking forward to reading your poems and Twitter-thoughts.
http://hummingbunny.wordpress.com/2008/06/29/random-words-poetry/
I have enough troubles keeping up with my blogs without Twitter et. all. It is a good idea to grow the poetry community beyond the weekly prompts and to have more connection choices. I choose a site that gave me random sentences and then used all the words and punctuation to create a poem that more or less makes sense.
Having a minor freak out about Twitter, etc. Twitter is a little testy ~ sometimes over capacity, sometimes “losing” tweets. But it’s better than talking to one another with tin cans and string! But seriously, it’s a cool communication device, even is it’s not perfect.
Here’s my ShuffleWords poem:
The one with no title that I would call Ark were I to title it
Damage I & II
Shuffle Words hit me right In the Eye
Hi, mine’s not exactly ShuffleWords but I did do it from a little list!
http://sewina.blogspot.com
Here’s one I wrote specifically for this prompt - based on newspaper headlines:
Thank god for animal stories
I’m pretty much maxed out on how much time I’m willing to spend with online communities, and I’m trying hard to avoid getting pulled into real-time or close-to-real time communication. I just cannot spare the time. So no Twitter for me, and I probably won’t be too active on the Facebook page either.
And here’s one I wrote shortly before the prompt based on the strange language often found in horoscopes:
scrambled horoscope
You can find my wordplay poems here:
http://havingwrit.blogspot.com/2008/06/wordplay-for-read-write-poem.html
I’ve included both a new one and some from 1999 when I was using magnetic poetry a lot, both at work and at home.
Meant to say - had a go with shufflewords but was frustrated by not being able to use repetition!
Mine.
http://www.gutenb0rg.com/shufflewords/?w=177
http://nibblepoems.wordpress.com
What a fun, challenging prompt! I used ShuffleWords for Two As One Tempered
I used Shufflewords for two short pieces…
http://durablepigments.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/rswp-33-wordplay-ii/
Twitter and Facebook may be great for expanding this community for people who use those tools for social networking but at this time I am not a facebook or twitter person. Maybe I just don’t get them. Maybe one day I will.
Anyway, I have two experimental poems but didn’t use the prompt’s experiment to use shufflewords. One poem I just posted is a found poem and a list poem kinda thing; the post previous is a 315 experiment poem.
http://artpredator.wordpress.com
Here is what I did for this prompt - I used lyrics to R.E.M.’s “Fables of the Reconstruction” to write:
The Artist
-Nicole
Oops, I think I messed up by putting in two urls:
Here is my shuffle poem:
http://nibblepoems.wordpress.com/poems/
I cleaned it up, typed it, added a few commas here and there, but didn’t add any words.
Here’s a tiny url of my link.
BTW, if we join twitter, does that make us twits? Hee hee.
oops…
http://tinyurl.com/593e4p
Here is my magnetic poetry for this week
from the palms of my hand, you stand tall
Thanks to sister AE’s link above, I discoved Magentic Poetry Online Kits, and made a fly-shaped poem with that.
[...] I was honored to have inspired the prompt at Read Write Poem this week with my “Blue Jeans” magnetic poem. You can find links to the other responses here. [...]
I still can’t understand were to post on twitter. Here is my shuffle words poem.
my poem
love bd
I’ve been told my link doesn’t work, so I’m trying again:
Poetry with Limits
Mother as Avian
I used magnetic poetry (bird themed) and my cookie sheet.
Twitter is confusing me. I can’t seem to find you guys…
I will look at the Twitter–but since it took me until this past week to get on Facebook, I may just have to find you all there! I played with the (rather addictive) ShuffleWords and share my haiku here:
http://cdeliascarpitti.blogspot.com/2008/07/words-lost-found-i-have-been-woman-lost.html
I am off to find you in the Internet wilds!
Love,
D.
Eek! I am going to Canada in 2 minutes, so I can’t read anyone else’s stuff until I get back. (Oh, how I want to stay here and read instead of crossing the border!) But I will read, read, read when I get back and am not so, as I told Deb, frazzle-de-dazzled.
I used ShuffleWords to create this untitled piece
http://www.magpiedays.com/2008/07/just-fence-me-in/
at the end of a post in which I meditate about the nature of sheep.
http://senzatema.livejournal.com/245429.html
had to use my other blog because some stupid log-in problem happened with the usual.
here’s mine shuffle poem
http://www.justwritingwords.com/2008/06/anybody.html
Two replies to this prompt (yay! finally, I wrote something!)
My ShuffleWords attempt is here:
http://hollyannam.blogspot.com/2008/07/among-them.html
And another “wordplay” in which I pieced together phrases from actual emails I have gotten over the past year:
http://hollyannam.blogspot.com/2008/07/dear-editor.html
[...] broken down and signed up for Twitter, after reading this post at Read Write Poem. I’ve avoided the site for a while, because I’m over 30 and it [...]
Not a twitter user, alas. And I haven’t managed to keep up with the official RWP prompts in a while; I’m traveling this summer in Jerusalem and my poetry time is limited!
But here’s this week’s poem, anyway, in case anyone is so inclined:
Red Heifer
http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2008/07/this-weeks-portion-red-heifer.html
Here’s my embarrasingly late post. (Blame the freelancing.)
http://9to5poet.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/big-near.jpg
Thank you for organizing the Twitter-ing. I’m already hooked!