The Sideways Door has closed

I've decided to close The Sideways Door.

Even up to the time I wrote the column at the end of January, I had no idea I meant to, so soon. I had said in an earlier column that the month in which I get no responses is the month in which the Sideways Door will close.

As it happened, I didn't wait for that disaster. 

I don't have one reason why; just a state of mind that makes it difficult to produce words and a general fatigue will thinking up prompts. It seemed like the right time - to leave when people will miss something.

So this door's closed, but you know what they say about doors and windows. Thanks to all those who wrote, shared, read and enjoyed (I hope) the columns and the poetry.

The Sideways Door: January Prompt Column

The first column of the new year and I thought I'd make it, you know, epic. The prompt is to write an epic simile into the poem. Read the column here.

I'm actually excited to see what people will come up with, so please write, submit and let people know, yeah?

The Sideways Door: Decemeber Response Column

This month, being about shapes and concrete poems and poems that rely hugely on formatting, I anticipated some work while putting up the column. I didn't realise it would take quite as long as it did but finally it's up.

Here it is.

That's it from me for this year. I'll see you all on the other side. Be good! (And have a happy end of year.)

The Sideways Door: December Prompt

Gosh we're almost done with this year, aren't we? Tail-end and what a wagging tail it is.

Speaking of tail-ends, I've said this on this blog before - and I suppose it's a kind of spatial synaesthesia - but things that normally don't have shape can be given one by the imagination. 

So that's what this month's Sideways Door prompt is: poems about shape and form.

Though what's really occupying my mind is the Chennai (and TN) floods.

That's for another post, though.

The Sideways Door: November Response Column

This month, The Sideways Door had a disappointing crop of precisely one submission. And it's not even the first time this has happened. I have said in my latest column that TSD will close when there are no submissions in any given month. 

But I wonder whether I should wait to have that particular ignominy come to pass, or if I should just close the door on my way out in a month of my choosing.

Watch this space; I'll let you know when I know.

Fwiw, here's the column.

The Sideways Door: November Prompt

This month, I dusted off a prompt I'd written but never sent it. I guess now I'm in the mood to read poems with myth at their heart.

Here's the prompt.

I also discovered last week, while curating the @genderlogindia handle and posting poems by women poets, that I may have got the name for my poetry column from a poem by Ursula le Guin without realising it. That is to say, I didn't quote it when I wrote my first column more than a year ago, when I spent a little time talking about doors on their sides.

Oh well.

So. Please write and send in poems. This month I'm allowing 40 line poems.

The Sideways Door: October Response

Yes, I seem to be changing it up here by posting this column all by it's lonesome. Actually, I never do post the column here, do I? I just link to it. 

Here.

*

From today for the coming week, I will be curating the @genderlogindia handle on twitter. So heads-up!

The Sideways Door: October Prompt, September Response

I'm at all certain why I arrange these posts this way, with this month's prompt and last month's response all in one column, but whatever.

Here's October's prompt column, in which I am fascinated by pebbles and by what Syrian sculptor, Nizar Ali Badr has made of them.

September had a thin crop of submissions - one, to be absolutely truthful. I thought people would want to give life advice in pithy sentences but apparently not. You'd think, in an age where were celebrate the 140 characters allotted to us, we'd be pros at the aphorism.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this month.

The Sideways Door: August Response & September Prompt

Thought I'd wait until August blew over. 

Here's my response to August's villanelle submissions.

And this month, I rewrote my entire column at the last minute, changing the prompt entirely. Yup. I thought short and sweet was the answer to the tribulations of the last two interminable months.

Here's September's prompt.

Get working!

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A thing I've noticed (since they've begun tracking this stuff at The Daily O) is that more people share the prompts on Facebook than they do on Twitter. I wonder why. I mean, of course I wonder, because I'm not on FB and twitter is where I tend to hang out. And all kinds of stuff gets shared on twitter, so I wonder why the prompts don't.

Not important.

**

I've been reading a bunch of stuff and staying offline and it feels good. Yesterday I called precisely two friends after ages and it struck me as odd later that I apologised to my virtual world for not being around, but it took real effort to do the same thing when I tried it on my present-right-here friends. 

The Sideways Door: August prompt, July response

Oh hello, blog.

The Sideways Door for August is now up. I kind of drag Dr. Seuss in there and I am not sorry at all.

Last month's response column went up ages ago and I don't know where my head was at, I seem to have forgotten to post links here.

The Sideways Door July Prompt

I wrote this month's column and then realise I'd left out Serafini. So I had that put in. It's a strange time of the month and year. Naturally the prompt reflects that.

Here is is: All kinds of strangeness. Am looking forward to entries this month.

I also forgot to link to the June's response column, so that's here.

The Sideways Door June Prompt

Better late than never - counting today, there's 10 days left.

Here.

Yes, I continue to be fascinated by borrowing, conversing and writing back.

The Sideways Door & Scroll V

Having mush for brains in the middle of this heatwave means that I forget to post things when they're out.

The Sideways Door's May response was up a few days ago. You can find it here.

I have been writing a series on poetry for Scroll and the penultimate column is up today.

How to write new ones is the real question. I'd rather fill a bathtub with ice and hide in it, rather like Tom Cruise (aargh!) in Minority Report.

The Sideways Door: May Prompt

Perhaps I am sick of sitting in one place using just the tips of my fingers. Or I'm fed up of driving and driving in this heat, doing tasks rather like a worker ant, with no tangible result. Whatever the reason, this month's prompt comes out of that sense of wanting to reconnect with using one's hands.

Here it is: 'The sweetest dream that labor knows'. 

(I have been itching to correct the spelling of the word 'labor' here and on Daily O but since it's a quotation, I'm leaving it.)

Catching up with April: Links to columns

The last two weeks of April were hellish. Two friends died within the space of a few days. Anxieties both specific and general tied in with what appeared to be disaster upon disaster made me want a cave rather badly.

It meant I was offline a lot and did not link to my columns as they appeared. 

So here - rather belatedly, especially now it's time for the next prompt already - are the two things that appeared while I was away.

The April response column at The Sideways Door, in which I wrote about the poems people wrote when they woke up from a deep sleep.

And Part III of my series for Scroll on what makes me write poetry. Or something.

I'm hoping May will be better than April was, but not holding out too many hopes. At any rate, not having watched Avengers, I have Thoughts on what I think the film is, and if I am not too traumatised by this week, I may even air them.

The Sideways Door April Prompt

April has a reputation, probably deserved, for being the cruellest month. And since it's being cruel to me, I don't see why I shouldn't pass that particular parcel of delights on to people reading The Sideways Door.

Here is this month's prompt.

Delay in April's Sideways Door

This month's prompt at The Sideways Door will be delayed by a couple of days.

There's usually a lot of formatting to be done because it's poetry, and that takes time. There are people on leave and the column will go up, therefore, on Monday.

(That's tomorrow).

The Sideways Door: March Response Column

I won't say I was disappointed by this month's submissions, precisely. But you know that feeling when you've waited and waited for a letter and it arrives, but it isn't all you'd hoped it would be?

That.

Here's the column. I wanted a one word title but apparently that is not possible - or at least, not advisable. So it's a bunch of words containing the one word I wanted. Eh.

The Sideways Door: March Prompt Column

This month, with vacations a scarce month away, I am thinking of letters and so this month's prompt column calls for a letter poem.

It takes a line from one my most favourite poems, Primo Levi's ;To My Friends' and you can find it here: 'Stamped by everyone.'

As I was writing this column, I discovered that a poem I had chosen and was quoting in full, by a young girl, was in fact a response to a prompt and so took the entire first stanza from the original. But I was sent this poem without also being told this crucial piece of information. 

Naturally, while I've used that kind of teaching tool in class, I couldn't include a result in a column like this. I might still post that poem separately at some point because even with its similarities to the original, it was still quite good.

The Difficult Deed | Return

I was travelling for almost all of February and have been unable to put up posts linking to columns, deadlines and such.

In February, the prompt seems to have done most people in; I had one submission to The Sideways Door and my response column, The Difficult Deed, has been up for a week now. 

In a few days I will have to come up with another prompt. But I won't think of that just now.

Instead, I want to say how happy I am to return to a rainy, cloudy and cool Hyderabad. It finally feels like home. Spring is the best time and here in Hyderabad, despite the rising temperatures of the last few weeks, spring feels the most personal - the jerul's new leaves have sprung and are brushing at my window. The tabibuia are in bloom and if I look, no doubt I will see a swarm of bees buzzing around the flowers. The bare branches of the frangipani are now little bouquets. And this morning, on the ride back from the station in a auto that had no headlights, I smelled the rain before I saw it dotting the windshield.

So much relief.

If I post about the readings at all, it will be only after a few days' respite.