[Newspoetry] newsparty

[gillespie william k]

John,

It works all kinds of different ways. Collaborative writing does. An
Exquisite Corpse was originally, I believe, a surrealist drawing game
whereby a piece of paper was folded, one surrealist would draw a picture,
and then fold it over so only the edge was visible. Working from that edge
(and unable to see the whole drawing), the next surrealist would continue
the drawing. The results were guaranteed to be, if not surreal, at least
not representational of any one thing.

I am loosening the term here to include a writing game in which people
take turns writing and are only able to see the last few words of the text
they are writing the continuation of.

In the case of this poem, no such blinders were applied - we just passed a
little computer around and took turns. I came uup with the newsparty
prompt because I thought it would be stimulating - an imaginary party with
famous people mixing with friends.

Then I took the liberty of going back through the text, fixing spelling,
adding touches to the story, smoothing it, and giving it an ending.

And that is how the newsparty came to be, and only one of many ways to
write collaboratively. For another example, see
http://www.unknownhypertext.com or just keep reading the Newspoetry email
list. It's great to watch poems happen in response to one another, and
writing about the news provides a context that is unusual enough to shake
most poets' solitary habits, a context that can bring writers together
separately apart from their normal selves. Something like that.

My email client is acting funny so please accept my typos as evidence of
my sincerity.

William


On Tue, 4 Dec 2001, John Wason wrote:

> At 04:38 PM 12/03/2001 -0600, William Gillespie wrote:
>
> >This was sitting on my computer, it's a group prose poem from a November
> >meeting at which newspoets gathered to examine the mainstream media...
> >
> >Exquisite Corpse written by, in order of appearance (although some
> >people wrote more than once):
> >William Gillespie, Mike Lehman, Dirk Stratton, Maiko Covington, Anne
> >Bargar, Joe Futrelle, Bob Porter
>
> I'd like to know how this WORKS.  How specifically do you compose a "group"
> newspoem?  I suppose there's more than one permissible method....  :)
>
> Oh, and who's Kord?
>
> John
>