You have done it on your own the craft of poetry garnering your words identifying your voice never mixing metaphors unless you mean to accenting with alliteration tackling subjects from waxing lyrical about nature to sounding the clarion calls to activism in a world gone mad…
Now, why not try the delights of collaboration… a dance á deux a menage á trois an orgy of poesie with multiple poets if you will bat stanzas back and forth ekphrast a painting or photograph by a friend why do it on your own when you can do it together become a collaborator…
Ten months ago, our very own Melissa Lemay, started an online journal of collaborative poetry, Collaborature so why not head over there and have a gander at all the exciting poems that have been submitted and then reach out to another poet to have a go at collaboration…
Since January this year, my friend Melissa Lemay, has been publishing her online journal Collaborature. As the name implies, it is a place for collaborative writing and other forms of creativity to thrive. You can find out more about Collaborature and how to submit work here.
Melissa also interviews some of her contributors and I was recently the subject of just such an interview. Amongst the many things we talked about, was our own collaborative project in which we are writing an epic saga called Shipmates. It was inspired by “The Golden Gate”, a novel by Vikram Seth, written entirely in sonnet form in the 1970s. He, in turn, was inspired by Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin”, though I only found that out well into the project. We don’t know how far this project will carry on – it will publish in chapters, mostly around seven sonnets each, every two weeks. There follows, the first two verses of Chapter 1…
Shipmates
Whale Struck and Love Struck
1:1 Mid-ocean is a lonely place But some seek there to sail The Pacific is the greatest space But not to run into a whale As Kate found snoozing in her bunk She woke to find her whole world sunk With barely time to don Mae West And swim out leaving all the rest Before her precious yacht and home Dove downwards to Pacific deep Kate left ringed with flotsam and foam She searches but finds nought to keep Some way off the whale’s spout she espies And though a tough cookie, Kate just cries…
1:2 Alas, the salt, it dries her skin And oil it overcompensates Causing blotches, discoloration And what of it if true love waits O’er yonder past the waterspout? She thinks perhaps a whale to mount Could be an achievable task Should she calculate around the blast Choose wisely time to take the reins Lest end up shot to Port of Spain Though, admittedly wouldn’t be so bad A holiday in the Caribbean Kate snaps back to reality In just the nick of time to see…
