“28 Days of Unreason, Day 29…”
– Jilly & Co.
Frog and hare on edge,
Foxtail sways, old pond’s shadows –
Jump or not to jump?
[You’re Next! – 7 Syllables]
[7 – syllables]
[Repeat 5/7/5 7/7]
Administration, Thoughts, Plots, Plans &tc:
OK, this is my attempt at a group Renga, part of Jilly’s September Casting Bricks Challenge. Some background and basics on how I think this might work are here.
The “theme” or prompt is the quote on top.
This collaboration is 2+ person Renga in a lightly traditional 5/7/5, 7/7 (repeat) format. Target of 12 stanzas. By lightly, I mean no need to stick with the specifications for Renga that go down to the line level (although nobody would stop you). Feel free to use nature as a springboard (or not), use season words if so inspired. Let’s go for the most interesting, completed poem more than worry about anything else until we get better at it. Down the road we can try for tighter rules, fewer rules, or no rules, or all in combination at once!
Jilly, Charley, Madaket and I will do a test run of the above challenge to shake out how this will all work using blogging tools. But if people are interested, sign up in the comments below and either we can kick off the same theme/starter lines in a new Renga with others, or we can start something new, or invent your own. I suspect that it will take a bit of coordination and planning between the authors to kick one of these off, so let’s use the comments to sort all that out, then launch the actual collaboration post.
Here is the basic theory of operation: writers will copy their next stanza in the comments. Probably best to include the line you are pivoting from. Then the “owner” of the post will move them up to the top, so there is a nicely formatted version when done.
If anybody has other ideas or experience with all of this, please don’t be shy. We have no idea what we are doing, which is really great. Uncertainty at its best.
qbit 