I'm sure several of you saw my post about The Sword and the Pen, Volume II. One of the ideas put forth in that post was that I could start a smaller poetry project (ie not started and overseen by the Council) for quicker results.

Well, this won't necessarily be fast, but it will be fun.

Renna and I just got done brainstorming, and here's the gist of it:

Tentatively titled 'Fires of a Thousand Worlds'.
This project will be open until November 30th.
We'll be using Google Drive to organize everything (so one of us will need your Google-account-related email to add you).
Any poems that are speculative in nature (meaning Fantasy, SF, mythological, post-apoc, etc.) will be accepted.
Humorous poems will also gladly be accepted!
When finished, this work will be published through CreateSpace and should hopefully be available for purchase (both pbk and ebook formats) by Christmas of this year.
The profits will be divided (exactly how is still up in the air) among the contributors every six months (it will be a big help if you have a PayPal account. )


What we need:
At least ten participants, each of whom will be willing to submit a multiplicity of poems.
And among those, we need someone who can help us edit.
And someone to design/create the cover.

If you're interested, let one of us know! If you want clarification or have a point to bring up, please PLEASE post it. We want to hear from you.

Well, what if there are just poems that don't fit either genre?

How do you mean? (I should clarify, when I say F and SF I also speaketh of poems simply set within your spec fic world)

We could perhaps do general poems, and have a section for those.

I can help edit -- especially if the editing that needs doing needs doing when school is not in session.

Are you open to people sending a small number of poems (even only one or two)? Although I see how your payment plan would be hindered by that. Perhaps they could agree to not accept any of the proceeds?

Great!!

If you're cool with that; sure, you can volunteer to submit and not receive proceeds.

Honestly, though, I think you could probably write several poems over the course of the five months or so. You don't have to submit everything at once.

As for your poll, I can see the layout working either way. It's probably something you don't have to worry about until much later in the process of writing and publishing anyway, so I say wait and see what kinds of poems you get. Then, the poems may suggest the perfect layout (it could even be argued that the poems themselves are most suited for making that particular decision).

Okay.

No, I don't think I'll be submitting, since I'm not much of a poet. However, I do have one poem in my head that might fit the bill (not strictly fantasy, but it could be seen as such), and I like to keep my options open.

*posting so this'll show up in her forum posts when it gets new replies*

This sounds quite interesting to me

We'll see how much time I have to think about this over the rest of the summer, I might be able to come up with some content. Also, I'm currently helping out with the cover and interior for Jaynin's short story and poem anthology and I'd be more than excited to be involved with another book design project.

Since we'd be dividing the profit, I'd probably ask (initially) for a little more to cover whatever time I'd put into designing (but that would be a one-time thing).


Ps. I also headed up the Editorial team for the anthology and could help you get organized there

Fantastic!

Of course. I was planning on that (once we figure out exactly how that'll be divided. )

Doubly fantastic!

Sounds like fun.

Are we going to market it and refer to it as a HW poetry book, or just a collaborative poetry book, since it's sort of...out of canon?

And I can help with editing.

Shall I PM you my email so you can add me to the doc, Jak?

And I think it would be nice to allow general poems that are not specific to contemporary or really any other genre, just poems.

And what if we just mixed them all up instead of putting them into categories? That way the general poems, if they are allowed, would homogenize slightly with the other ones, and the book would be a bit less...rag-bag-ish, maybe?

And what about spec fic poetry that isn't necessarily fantasy or sci-fi? Like...apocalyptic. Or...fairy-talish or mythological (though that could be called fantasy, in a way). Or...Atlantean? Would those be accepted?

And I think I could submit what you would call a multiplicity of poems. I'm prolific when I make time for it.

I am interested. My ability to write poetry goes in cycles, so I can't guarantee how much I'll be able to come up with, but I'm interested. Please add me! [email protected]

I would decide right now, before you start accepting submissions, whether or not you're allowing poems that are not spec-fic. All spec-fic poems would be a marketing element. If you only have spec-fic poems, you'll be marketing yourself as a spec-fic poetry collection. If you allow general poems, especially in any quantity, then you're a general poetry collection and that's what you need to market yourself as. Decide carefully which is better for the project.

I'd personally vote spec-fic only, and I'd be strict about that. General poetry collections are very common. Spec-fic poetry collections are more unique, which gives you a nice marketing edge. Besides, we already did a general poetry collection. Also your title is very suitable for spec-fic. I'd say spec-fic and only spec-fic. But it's your project, so you need to make that call.

Irregardless, cupcakes to you for heading up a project!

If we do go just spec-fic, would drabbles be allowed? I'd like to do a drabble.

This sounds like an amazing idea! I concur with it being sci-fi and fantasy poems. I like those best anyways.

I'm definitely interested in this.

I'll try to sift through my fairly-extensive archive of poems to find any specifically spec-fic genre pieces, but that may take awhile.

And I can try to help edit. (I have to admit that nearly everything in the Poetry subforum of the Fireside here is so egregiously ... alien ... to my mostly-Elizabethan-trained ear that I don't even know where to start trying to help someone improve something. But I digress.) I wouldn't want to be "the editor", though.

I'm putting my own collection (which is still in the fairly early stages yet) together using TeX, for which there are a couple of pretty nice packages for typesetting poetry collections. I'd be quite willing to make my TeX skills (such as they are ... I'm still a fairly raw beginner ) available for the project.

(My Google Account is listed in my profile here, by the way.)


There's precedent, since The Sword and Pen (sadly before my time) included them. But I'd argue to restrict this collection to poetry as such, and drabbles, while similar in some ways to restrictive forms of poetry, are (unless also written in a verse form) clearly prose.

Most drabbles do have some sort of poetic format anyway, it's just not a necessity. Anyhow, they're more to the point of poetry since they only mean to capture a picture.

Like I said ...

Drabbles are quite often "poetry" in the more general sense of the word, but in general they are clearly prose, not verse. (And "the point of poetry" isn't necessarily "to capture a picture"; the task of poetry is to convey that for which prose will not suffice, which is often largely imagery, but need not be. Hymns, for example, are poems ...)

As a reader, if I pick up a volume of poetry, I'm disappointed if it's entirely or even mostly free-verse rather than structured poetry (and even more so if it's built around tricks with indentation, punctuation, and the like, instead of words crafted in a way that carries through when read aloud). But if I encountered drabbles, "Hemingways," "flash" fiction, or other prose forms would make me feel the book's cover, blurb, "front matter," and such were false advertising unless they specifically called it a collection of poetry and drabbles (or whatever). So if those in command of this project decide to include quasi-poetical-prose forms, I'll live with it (agitating for explicitly listing this additional content on the cover or in the blurb and in the introduction), but as long as we're calling it a poetry collection we ought to be (as Aubrey said about the other half of the specification, "spec-fic") strict about that guideline.

That's a good point about marketing it as a "poetry collection" but including things other than what is commonly considered poetry, but it's up to the project organizers to decide whether it's strictly poems or if other types of fiction will be permitted, so let's wait for their verdict.

*dances around* So many people are interested!! YAY!

*cough* Anyway. Let me address y'all's questions.



It'll just be a collaborative poetry book; since it's not technically under the oversight of the Council, I don't want to market it as being 'Holy Worlds'.


Fabulous! Yes, please do.





I need to talk to Teddy about this. I'm honestly still up in the air, and she has the ability to pull me back down to the ground.



Interesting point. I actually have a new idea on how the poems will be arranged, but I want to talk it out with Teddy before I post anything definite in that regard.


Those are still spec-fic, so I would say we'd accept those. (I'll go fix the introductory post to make it clear).



Also fabulous!



(I'm not going to get all the other quotes together for this point. Y'all know what you said. )

On this point, I'm not sure. It's something I think we'll consider.... And get back with you.

It's great to hear from y'all!

I said:


Sifting through that archive actually took me only half an hour or so, if that. Out of the over 200 poems I've posted on my blog in the last three or four years, I've drawn 17 that I think might fit here. Most of them are in my Google Docs already (and I uploaded the one that wasn't), so should I put them in the "Submitted" subfolder of the "Fires of a Thousand Worlds" folder, or what? (One of the 17 is my "Celebratory Toast," over which the dedicatee---when did you add the military rank, by the way?---has an additional veto if she likes.)

Yes, please put them in the 'Submitted' Folder. If you want, you can even start a subfolder with your name on it to make it even more organized.

*laughs* I was feeling frivolous one day, and also in a military drama mood, and so decided to do the unthinkable and change my username to something silly. It's been up for a month or two, I think.

Anyway, it's nice of you to consider me, but I would be most happy if you submitted it.

Done.

I decided years ago not to republish poems written for someone (which at that point just meant "birthday sonnets") without their dedicatees' permission; since this poem was originally presented in public (on my blog), it seemed best to just mention this in public here.

Okay, I talked with Renna, and we've decided that

1) This collection will be exclusively speculative poetry

and

B) We're not going to permit drabbles (sorry, Kitra ) Longer narrative poems, however, would certainly be welcome!

Something I had unreasonably assumed went without saying: For anything except correcting typos (and maybe even then) in a Google Doc, please use the "comment" feature (press control-alt-M, or command-alt-M on a Mac) rather than writing into the document; among numerous advantages, the creator of the Doc will (by default) receive an email notification of this, while he or she will only know about "edits" if he or she happens to look at Google Drive.


I have one somewhat lengthy poem that might match that description and many readers might call spec-fic. Unfortunately, I don't think it's much good. (It's an attempt to cast some of the ideas of Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry into Spenserian allegory, and was my final project for my college British Literature I course a few years back.)

So THAT'S how you do it! I tried, but I couldn't find the button nor the hotkeys. Thanks for telling me.

I doubt I'll be able to submit anything then. I can give words poetic imagery, but my rhythms and rhymes refuse to be anything but absurd, so I probably won't have anything left to contribute.

Who said anything about poetry having to rhyme? None of my submissions do, and in fact of the 200-some-odd poems I've posted on my blog over the past few years I'd fairly confidently guess that no more than five had deliberate rhymes. To my mind, meter is far more important than rhyme to how a poem sounds, and even that isn't necessarily something you have to make into a constraint.

Anyone who's reading my submissions: Those Docs came from my habit, for a while, of using Google Docs as a sort of mirror of the poetry section of my blog, so the "Comments?" link at the bottom of each directed readers who happened on the Docs rather than the blog posts to make any comments on the blog posts.I suppose that I should probably trim that boilerplate down a bit.

And either recent changes to Google Docs/Drive or something about these particular Docs has made a liar out of me about comments and email notifications, since I haven't received any such notifications. Sigh.

Kingjon is right, Kitra; poems don't need to rhyme. For heavens' sake, look at my poems and you'll be able to count the number of actual rhyming poems on one hand. And the same goes for if you go through the Word document of every single poem I've written ever. Not many rhyming poems. So you're free to write a non-rhyming poem or two.

Kingjon: yeah, it might be that Google made some recent changes. I know they completely re-did G+, so it wouldn't surprise me if they re-did other aspects as well.

Ooo...kay....... * nervous smile * Um, so I was looking through the poetry that I have already written, since some of it would definitely work for this project when it comes to genre...and the more I read it the more I wondered whether you guys will want me to contribute.... To – put it – one way, I write weird poetry. It has meaning, but sometimes the meaning is a bit difficult to make out on first perusal. At least I'm guessing it is, I haven't shown it to many people. * scratches head * Should I just put it in my folder anyway and just see what y'all think, or do you think it won't match what you are wanting?

Hey, esoteric is good. A lot of poetry is esoteric.

Go ahead and stick it in there. If it's absolute rubbish, we'll tell you.

Oh, go right ahead, Rwebhu! I'm sure it won't be that bad. I mean, I was and am terrified about putting any of my poems in my folder where people can see it. So you're not alone in that regard.

But I'm sure your poems'll be just fine.

OK. Will do....

So are we supposed to comment on each other's submissions?

I would love to be a part of this! I love writing poetry, though I'm not sure I have very many that would count as spec-fic.

Yes, if you have something to say, advice to offer, or criticism to make.



Glad to hear you'll be joining.

*bumps post*

Just reminding everyone that we still have several months to submit stuff.

And... if anyone else is interested in joining, let Renna or I know!

*nods* Yep, what Joel said!

I am posting another.

Some things have come up in my life that require me to withdraw my offer to help out in editing. Sorry guys.

Aww, darn. That's OK, Mark; we'll just have to find a replacement. Or clone you.

*laughs*

How has this project been going for you, guys?

Well, it seems everybody's more or less forgotten about it. We've got five people signed up, other than myself, but only three have uploaded poems. So... yeah. I don't know if this will actually work out.

Thanks for checking up on us, Steph!

Aw! Well keep plugging away at it. You may want to broaden what kind of submissions are allowed if you don't have enough with just poems. You may have more interest then?

Keep poking people as well, they may forget so you have to keep reminding them. It's a good experience to be working on your poetry anyway, even if it doesn't happen quite yet. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help. I tend to write songs more than poetry, sadly, otherwise I'd join you!

I'd be interested, you need my email?

Aodhan! Glad to see you around! Yeah, we need your email; and you should probably send it to Jakorosin. The last time I tried to add someone into a Google Drive thingamajig, I failed miserably. XD

Good to see you too! XD. OK!

So you're wanting Sci-Fi or Fantasy (along those lines) poetry and not general poetry correct?

Correctamundo.

Great, thanks!