Saturday, December 31, 2016

Jeffree Skewes Plan for Project 52

My plan for Project 52 is in two parts, involving two differently themed projects.

I aim to continue developing and honing the material I contributed to project 365+1 during August, 2016. 
My 365+1 titled Silk on the Road stint is an unfolding project I have been developing in various forms such as paintings, poetry and essays. More recently I am moved to committing this series of writing and artwork towards a future published manuscript and/or book. 

Poetry is a great fit for a writing, visual artist like me to sketch out texts that may develop into wider narratives with supporting pictures and graphics.

Silk on the Road sign posts my idea of a journey that takes place during an inexact time across the imaginary lands I've been conjuring to part-mimic those of the fabled Silk Road (although please think magic-realism with many historical and geographical liberties) in order to form a more lucid narrative.

In Silk on the Road, I unveil stories that emerge from my own persistent memories which seem like a dream-time amalgam of historical and contemporary influences (including writers and adventure diarist eg Aurel Stein c 1906 and others).

For Project 52, I imagine completing enough pieces to tell the story of a journey, intertwine art, spiritual awakenings and adventure etc... with a completed weekly-piece to essentially form 'steps' or chapters that flesh-out a coherent poetic narrative which I could (with help) hopefully fine-tune the final draft suitable for publishing. For example, I could create/release a first-draft on a Sunday, working/responding on it all week and finalise it by the following Saturday and release the next one on the following Sunday.

Silk on the Road unfolds personal stories as if they all are experienced on a journey. This perhaps well-worn 'road story' theme poses metaphorically and perhaps also predictably as the big picture of 'the journey of life '. In this way, personal events can be seen taking place on some allegorical mountain pass, desert, sea or mystical land that I can hopefully craft well enough to be universally interpreted and understood.

I will be including my own artworks with each piece with the intention they accompany the selected poem in the future publication. Responses and comments are also welcome here too.

I hope and trust fellow 52ers, if inclined would make comments and/or offer any guidance.


The other important part for me in Project 52 is to leave enough space and time toward its 'end' to commence the next-in-line artistic project I've already titled 1909. In it, I intend to somehow tell the story of a special and marvelous meeting place and it's frequenting characters set at the birth of modern art. The poems, texts and narratives for 1909 may be librettos, but who know?

I'm really looking forward to participating in Project 52.

Here's hoping for a productive creative and enjoyable 2017 for everyone.

Week One stuff to do for Kerri's project.

This week I'll be recording the 20 poems for Karen Kun who is translating, and hopefully mastering that little exercise, while also pulling some threads together with the final printing of all the Project 366 poems.

I forsee the second week being about choosing some patterns and setting things aside for redraft.

Kerri Shying's Project for the Project 52

I've gone from zero to 1000 it seems, and after the success of my NSW grant app and the other Pocketbook manuscript I have been cooking up, I seem to have two manuscripts on the go this year.
The Pocketbook is challenging given distance and language, but very thrilling for me and my family. It gives me an opportunity to visit some places important to my heritage, internally and externally.

I have a lot of physical organising to do. This is uphill because of my disability but I have taken some steps to try to build in support and resilience - I have my regular carers in place and so forth.

My funded book is called " Walking in the tall weeds; poems and stories" and it is more focussed in the Wiradjuri/Chinese experiences of the central west and inner-city of my childhood. It is a more travelling talking book. It doesn't yet have a publisher so I am being careful not to blather all that work around the internet. ( see I learned one thing)

My work habits have never been defined at all by an institution; although I have done a fair bit of research - I am generally a field worker in hidden populations so we keep our notes pasted to the inside of our hats.  I am quite reliant on those who know to help me find the way.

I do have some funded work with marginalised writers at the moment - a fortnightly group who meets for peer support - that ends in May with a reading and so forth. This will give me some more time. I am not sure if I will aim to exhibit art again in a mixed show or do a solo show this year- it seems that would be a bit too much work for me.  This last year I had Debby Doesn't do it for Free and the ARIN but this can take a rest.

So ....... making it so I have a chair to sit down on and a room I can get into, with files I can access, seems a good place to start. I have enlisted some help with this. So here is my start of what this year looks like. I need to have my first 60 pages ready by Feb. I like to get things up in reasonable time as my illness can come and take a month out of me - out of the blue. I also am recording work and doing performances for the first time.

EEEEEKKK.



Friday, December 30, 2016

establishing some basic rules/patterns for the Project 52 blog

The basic commitment (ill health or other catastrophe excepted) is to post weekly work that is towards a book m/s or performance or exhibition. There's nothing to stop people posting daily (or hourly, or however often), but by joining we commit to posting weekly.

I propose that Project 52 has no facebook presence at all. I see this as a more or less private activity - a much more intimate community of practice than Project 366 was (and will still be for a while). I do think though that using fb messaging for the group is convenient (though if someone can think of something better that would be good).

I think it's important to reduce the public profile because as work travels towards publication we want to minimise the risk of being told work can't be accepted because it's already published. I think this wasn't much of a risk with 366 because most of what we were doing was pretty drafty. But in Project 52 our aim is to make publishable work, so it's really a different story. The less people who see things at this stage, the better.

There are roughly a dozen of us in Project 52 at this point, with maybe one or two or three more invitations that might be responded to. I think this is quite a practical group size. Remembering that our objective is for all participants to give feedback (as desired) to all the others, it's important to keep the numbers down, so that the work of being a community of practice is actually practical. 

Accordingly, I propose that we only expand the group if we can see a new party who would really benefit from and really contribute to the project. I specifically suggest we not join up people simply on the basis that they think they could manage a poem a week. This is not what Project 52 is about.

Reading everyone's metablog feedback for 366 I think it's fair to say that for those of us who made the whole year (touch wood) it was a much bigger (and more important, more rewarding) part of our lives than we had imagined from the outset. So I'm interested to set Project 52 up with the best opportunity to satisfy and to inspire everyone involved.

We're taking on this commitment (to ourselves and to each other) because there's something we believe in here.

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I note also at the outset, that possibly we need to solve some communication issues, because if anyone's not using fb messaging then that could be an issue for letting people know what's happening or needs to happen.  I've made quite a few of you admins to the blog so people can bring their tech competence to solving problems that may arise and making things nicer, smoother. If anyone else wants to be admin please just let me know


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Note that I'm going to pause a while before starting a conversation in poetry (which I think yr all in, from memory)... so as to not overwhelm and to not confuse people... i.e. let's get 52 going first, orright?


Rachael Mead's plan for Project 52

This year will see my primary creative focus move away from poetry to short fiction.  Since I'm no stranger to lengthy fallow periods, I've been worried that the switch to prose will mean that I stop writing poetry altogether while I finish the first draft of my short story collection.  Committing to Project 52 and writing a poem a week will be my means of ensuring I don't drop my poetry practice while being creatively focussed elsewhere.

Themes? Just an attempt to branch out and explore means of poetic expression without always looking through an ecological lens. Who am I kidding? There will be ecopoems. If I become stuck (when not if, I suspect) I'm intending to use Jordie Albiston's The Weekly Poem for inspiration.

I'm not expecting much - all I want to achieve this year is a disciplined poetic practice.  Hopefully, the commitment to producing a poem a week will keep me observing the world with a poetic eye and sustaining this gaze will benefit all my creative work in 2017.

I'm very much looking forward to reading everyone's work. Good luck!  

Thursday, December 29, 2016

Chrysogonus Siddha's plan for Project 52

My plan is to shape up the poems for my upcoming book, tentatively titled "Encounters: Never Random". (Of course, I could also use suggestions for the title as well). The idea is to revisit (and repost) the poems from my contribution in Project 366 and look for more detailed feedback.

I also plan to post the series of poems based on Sekar Macapat, a Javanese song cycle representing the phases in life. While I have posted some of these in Project 366, they will be posted in order here. Feedbacks for each of the poem and the series as a whole is pretty much appreciated. The aim is to create strong individual poems as well as a strong set of poems. 

Magdalena Ball plan for Project 52

I have a new book coming out in Jan (Unmaking Atoms, through Ginninderra Press), but the idea of pressing forward with new writing is very appealing and takes a lot of the pressure off promotion.  Through the last 3 months of 2016 I’ve written about half a new manuscript (some of which took place on Project 365+1), and I’d like to continue producing new material to develop the second half of the book as well as tidying up/ revising the existing material into a series of themes (chapters) in readiness for submission.  I’m hoping to weave through the work some characters and settings that repeat and change throughout the poems so there’s an overarching theme to the book that unites all of the poems (not quite sure what that is yet though).  I really also like the idea of developing an ancillary performance series from that material - maybe some musical/spoken word recordings with visuals for YouTube or travelling performance/exhibition if I can find a willing artist to work with.

All this is off-the-cuff so the plan may evolved and change, but here are a few rough themes (none completely distinct):

- Memoir poems
- Astropoems (maybe some sci fi too - not sure if that’s a separate theme)
- Apocalypse poems
- Eco poems
- Response poems (poems to other poems, ekphrastic, redaction, current events, etc - some of this might derive from the Conversations project)
- poems about death and all his friends

I’m very open to collaboration or ideas so anyone who wants to play or break a few moulds, please don’t hesitate to hit me up.  I’m open to feedback of any kind - in any form - all welcome.  Thank you!


Myron's Plan for 2017

I'm not much of a planner really. Maybe I need to change that in 2017?
My idea is to read through all the poems I wrote in 2016 and to shape a manuscript
out of the best of them.

I envisage much tinkering, revisions, additions and subtractions.

Any kind of feedback would be welcome. Perceptions, weak spots, strengths and suggestions always help me. Sometimes my poems speak to me, sometimes they reject me, so I would be grateful if anybody could help me look at my poetry in a different way.

Thanks for 2016, I look forward to 2017.

Cheers,
Myron.

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Burke - My aim for Project 52

My plan would be to contribute to my collection-in-progress, much of which stems from the 2016 Project. In compiling the ms so far I have noticed some of the weak poems I submitted needed a tweak or two to make them acceptable. I don't have a publisher - but I believe the work comes first, publishing second.

Saturday, December 24, 2016

Béatrice Machet Whishes and plan for project 52



Béatrice Machet
Whishes and plan for project 52

I’ve started a poetry collection which title is, at the moment, ploughing one’s own self—se labourer l’être. My aim is to be published by Paul Stubbs (Black Herald Press). This bilingual collection will use corrected drafts I posted through Project 365+1, but not only. Since I’m involved in that “movement” people in France call “poésie sonore”, I’m tempted by recording a few soundtracks to perform these poems when I’m on stage. I don’t know if there are means to let you hear these sound montages, but if so and if you were interested in, just let me know!
Thus I may post poems, even different versions of them (under the same title) that I’m not very happy with to discuss issues and get feedbacks, in order to figure out some ways to improve; to the extent that improvement is possible!
I launched “chapters” or rather parts such as 

-Something series
-Temptation series
-Beams series
-Back to temptation series
-Back to remembrance series

So the aim is not to get applauses but to get unstuck when I find no means to explore further what I’ve written … and sometimes just a word, a tip, another angle of looking at the poem will do the trick! I’m already very thankful to those whose attention and skills and talent can put me on the right tracks!

Sunday, December 18, 2016

Kit Kelen plan for Project 52



Kit Kelen plan for Project 52

What I plan to do is work through my Project 366 material to develop a set of theme-based files, that might develop (or be combined) into book m/ss or chapbook m/ss, or something else. I want to keep my options open by having different possible destinations (and possibly different versions of) for work as it develops.

I also intend to keep going with Project 366, to accompany those yet to finish, if they want to reach the magic number and to work through my big 366 file till I've had a fair crack at the material in there. Currently (5.12.16), having just uploaded Post 340, I'm on page 546 of 928 pages in that file. In other words I have 546 pages of posted drafts and another 382 pages of rough notes to work through (with probably a fair bit of duplication and earlier versions and so on in there, but nevertheless, a lot to still process).

Here is the list of thematic files, I am thinking to have to start with for sorting the material as I revise for Project 52:

- a field guide to Australian clouds (oz eco material)
- ataraxia (garden-focussed philosophy)
- godsbother (theological)
- the philosophy of table tennis (theological/cosmological)
- ekphrastics (on paintings and painting as practice)
- Gong Bei Pillow Book (smut and generally rude business)
- Welcome to the Temple of Mammon (Macao poems)
- escaliwagulator (for kids)
- after them (responses to other poets)
- animals (poems with animals in them)
- political poems
- performance poems
- dreambook
- little poems
- drug poems (allsorts)
- collection of 366 stanza fragments

15 files is a bit scary, but by allowing the one draft to go in a few different directions, hopefully one allows it to breathe freely.

Naturally, I am not restricting my work in 2017 to simply playing with what I started on 366 in 2016, so I imagine adding a lot as I go and also borrowing from elsewhere among works drafted before now.

Looking at the task/s ahead like this, I now see that Project 12 for 2018 makes perfect sense, at least for me. It might be a matter of one m/s per month... or something like that.

Monday, December 5, 2016

Posting Project 52 plans by the end of December


Project 52 Plan

Ahead of getting to blogging for Project 52 properly underway in the first week of January, 2017, it would be good if participants could let each other know what they're planning to do – how they are planning to make use of this forum, and what kind of feedback they would like to receive.

Saturday, December 3, 2016

the first post


Project 52

Project 52 is a weekly blog activity in 2017. I derives from 2016's Project 366 (aka Project365+1). Its purpose is to provide an on-line community of practice for poets and artists who wish – over the year – to develop materials for publication, exhibition or performance. Those materials may come from drafts in Project 366 or from elsewhere. Participants from the outset nominate and describe their project/s and let the others know what kinds of feedback are desired (and/or not desired!). Because this community aims specifically to produce works for publication elsewhere (through processes of drafting and feedback), it will not have the kind of public performance presence Project 366 had. (So for example, there will not be a fb presence.)