Ways of Seeing / A Series of Poetic Experiments / Launch
Every idea has to start somewhere...
If you follow me on either Instagram or BlueSky, this afternoon you will have seen me post the three graphics you'll also find in this post. This is going to be a part of what this website will become in October, a project that will form a whole year's worth of stuff that is NOT disposable content, but that IS me doing my best to give back to the poetry community using something tangible.
Other people do themes and general concepts. I am the Queen of the Ultra-Specific Prompt. It makes things hard, and I am here to attempt to get people to move specifically out of comfort zones and into interesting spaces where they may surprise themselves with their ability to create. This is my task. I am here to make you do some work and there will be a reward.
AN ACTUAL CASH REWARD.
Because it IS that specific, and people need time to work on their stuff, you now have TWELVE DAYS before the submission window opens. After that, it's 15 days and then we're closed again. The prompts here are both quite broad and VERY narrow. Ten lines is asking a lot of editing skills. Describing a Thing without actually calling it what it is is also a Thing.
It also may be I've simply made this too hard and no-one enters, which we've sensibly catered for in the next slide:
We will (assuming 21 people enter) announce the Shortlisted Ten Poems on October 2oth, with the successful concept subverter being announced the same day Prompt Two goes live on November 2nd. That means one more prompt this year after this one, and three more in 2027 which will get us to June next year where we'll be looking at how things have gone and resetting the experiment.
That's all you really need for now, I think. Go have some thoughts on whether this is worth £20 or not. Maybe play with some ideas.
I'll be back next week with more details, and how this plays into my ideas for this site starting at the end of September :D
