Several years ago, a couple of other poets and I wanted to collaborate on something. We weren't sure whether we'd be writing a play in verse, a series of linked poems - but we knew we wanted to write something together that would be more than the sum of our individual contributions.
I had just begun to step into the blog world and I was immersed (though I hadn't as yet started this blog). There were also so many journals beginning to accept work electronically and the possibilities seemed to multiply every time I looked.
So I suggested that we write a poem together that used the hypertextual nature of writing online. It was a basic kind of exercise in that kind of writing and the resultant poem - which used hyperlinks to strange, wonderful sites (or so it seemed to us at the time) - was rubbish and I'm glad we never placed it anywhere or I'd still be squirming.
All the same, I spent a long time thinking of collaborative work, the carefully designed serendipity of the links and thought how fantastic it could be if such a poem were written.
Turns out it can happen after all. Spiral Orb is where it does. This is how they describe themselves:
[Oh and I have a poem in Spiral Orb 3]. I'm not going to say which line leads to my poem. Go read the whole thing. I insist.
I had just begun to step into the blog world and I was immersed (though I hadn't as yet started this blog). There were also so many journals beginning to accept work electronically and the possibilities seemed to multiply every time I looked.
So I suggested that we write a poem together that used the hypertextual nature of writing online. It was a basic kind of exercise in that kind of writing and the resultant poem - which used hyperlinks to strange, wonderful sites (or so it seemed to us at the time) - was rubbish and I'm glad we never placed it anywhere or I'd still be squirming.
All the same, I spent a long time thinking of collaborative work, the carefully designed serendipity of the links and thought how fantastic it could be if such a poem were written.
Turns out it can happen after all. Spiral Orb is where it does. This is how they describe themselves:
Spiral Orb is an experiment in juxtaposition, interrelationships, and intertextuality—a cross-pollination. This opening poem composts fragments from each of the pieces in Spiral Orb Three. Standing also as the table of contents, each line is embedded with a hyperlink to its original poem. Once at each poem, you will find links to the other poems in Spiral Orb Three.Oh yes. This is what that poem could have been.
[Oh and I have a poem in Spiral Orb 3]. I'm not going to say which line leads to my poem. Go read the whole thing. I insist.
