One-Way Collaboration

I've been thinking a lot about collaboration recently, first inspired by Black Tongue Review, an online journal of collaboration between poets and visual artists. Happily an artist friend recently invited me to collaborate with her in just this manner, so we are just getting started in that endeavor, and I'm really excited about it.

Collaboration is something I've been interested in trying, but haven't had anyone to ask (or haven't really had enough nerve to ask, to be more honest), so I was delighted to be invited by someone else.  In the meantime, I've noticed that for the person who wants to try collaboration but has some reason to hesitate, there are opportunities for one-sided collaborations, which can serve as training grounds, confidence boosters, and ways to see if collaboration would be something you would be interested in, without the risk of disappointing a partner, or being disappointed by a partner, or being unhappy with loss of total control over the creative process. Ideas for one-sided collaborations include responding to someone else's work, as in ekphrastic poetry, or working with someone else's prompt. These one-way collaborations don't have the give-and-take and interaction of the true collaboration, but as an experiment, they can be a good way to see if working with another artist might be something you are truly interested in.

Here are a few opportunities for one-way collaboration:

1) Submit to Black Tongue Review. You submit an already completed poem and they find an artist to respond to it. I'm not sure if the artist will contact you for any real collaboration or discussion, but if not, just noting your response to someone else's visual interpretation of your poem might tell you if you would be keen to do a two-way collaboration with someone else.

2) 3Elements Review is now accepting submissions for their inaugural issue. All submissions must include three elements. This issue's three elements are: "processions, tandem bicycle, ache". Try writing something for this review, thereby sort of collaborating with the editors and more distantly with any other writer whose work will be featured in the issue. Accepting someone else's constraint is a tiny non-invasive collaboration, a good baby step for someone venturing into this arena. (Thanks to CRWOPPS-B for the heads-up on this new journal.)

3) Although it's too late to join this year, another one-and-a-half-sided collaboration is the August Poetry Postcard Fest (I should have told you about this earlier, but almost didn't get in myself, as another blogger's last minute reminder is what got me in just under the wire of the deadline this year). In this project, you send a postcard with an original poem responding to the postcard image to 31 people (one a day for the month of August) and receive such postcards from 31 people. That's how it goes to being one-and-a-half-sided, by also receiving postcards and poems which may influence the ones you send out after that. In the past, this project has emphasized trying to respond to poems you receive in the next ones sent out; I didn't see anything about that in the guidelines this year, but it can be an inevitable result for certain kinds of writers, and if you are interested in dipping your toe into the collaboration pool, you could constrain yourself to having to respond to a received postcard in the next one you send out, thereby invoking a less-than-two-sided collaboration.

It's too late to do this project this year, but you could organize and exchange of postcards with a poet friend or friends on your own, or you could simply write consciously in response to others' work as a tiny foray into the area of collaboration

4) Erasure is another one-way collaboration idea, working with someone else's text and erasing it into your own. Any kind of work beginning with someone else's text and/or art can be thought of as one-way collaboration, a groundbreaking way to progress towards more traditional collaboration.

How to Join CRWOPPS

I've mentioned before the usefulness of the CRWOPPS-B List (Creative Writers Opportunities List). Today CRWOPPS-B moderator Allison Joseph has posted the following instructions for joining the list as well as accessing the postings without joining. I've posted that information below. Enjoy.

******************************

Dear Subscribers:
Please feel free to pass on the instructions to join the list to other writers that you know.
If they do not want to join, but just wish to see the postings, tell them to bookmark
http://groups. yahoo.com/ group/CRWROPPS- B/

Instructions for joining the Creative Writers Opportunities List:

To join the group, send a blank e-mail message to

crwropps-b-subscrib e@yahoogroups. com

You will receive a return email with further instructions.
(Check your spam folder if you don't see the email right away).

Or visit
http://groups. yahoo.com/ group/CRWROPPS- B/

and click on "Join This Group" tab. Follow on-screen instructions
to complete sign-up.

Allison Joseph, Moderator
Creative Writers Opportunities List

Children of Immigrants, Submit!

From the CRWOPPS-B Yahoo List,

Call for submissions: Were you born in the U.S. and raised by immigrant mother/father/ grandparents? The anthology, Two-Countries: Sons and Daughters of Immigrant Parents, (working title) seeks poems, personal essays and flash memoir on this subject. Editor is a prize-winning poet raised by a U.S.-born father and an immigrant mother from El Salvador. Simultaneous submissions and previously published work acceptable. Please submit no more than four poems, two essays (1,400 word limit) or two flash memoir essays (750 word limit) to <twocountriesanthology(at)gmail. com> (replace (at) with @ when sending email).

1 More Post-Pub. Book Award

Here's a post-publication book award that I missed in my post on the subject back in April.

This one is available in a rotation of three genres, one per year (and for 2012 it's poetry). It's for a first book, and part of the prize is to give a reading. See the details below (which I borrowed from the CRWOPPS-B Yahoo Group; follow the link to find out how to join this group if you don't already belong):

Drake University Emerging Writer Award

The Drake University Writers & Critics Series is accepting submissions for its third annual Drake University Emerging Writer Award. The faculty and students of Drake University's English Department select one outstanding first book from among the entries, and the author receives an honorarium of $1000 plus travel and lodging expenses to read at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

Each year, the award rotates among genres (short fiction, literary nonfiction, and poetry). We are currently accepting submissions of first books of poetry for consideration for the Drake University Emerging Writer Reading, which will be held during the first week of April 2012. Entries may be submitted by the author or the publisher, and must include a copy of the book; a cover letter that includes a brief biography, contact information for the author, and a statement affirming that this is his/her first book-length publication; a self-addressed stamped envelope; and a $15.00 entry fee payable to "Drake University." Entries must be postmarked by November 15, 2011. Materials postmarked after November 15 will not be considered. Entries will not be returned and will become the property of the Drake University English Department.

The winner will be notified by February 1, 2011. All entrants will be notified of the results by February 15, 2011.

This year, the award is open to single-author first books of poetry only. Authors must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents and must agree to attend and participate in the reading at Drake University in April 2012 to receive the award. The following are ineligible for the awards: 1) authors who have published more than one book of poetry through independent, university, or commercial publishers; 2) entries from vanity presses and self-published books; 3) current students and employees of Drake University.

Send all materials to:

Drake University Emerging Writer Award
c/o Nancy Reincke, Writers and Critics Series
English Department, Howard Hall
Drake University
2507 University Ave
Des Moines, IA 50311

For questions about the award or the series, please e-mail:
mailto:
<nancy.reincke( at)drake. edu> (replace (at) with @)

Polish Poets, Submit!

The call for submissions listed below is from the Creative Writers Opportunities List (CRWOPPS-B) at Yahoo Groups, which you really must join if you don't already belong. It's an almost daily list of calls for submissions, job openings, book contests, etc., for creative writers. Search at Yahoo Groups for this list, and then request to join. So very worth your time.

Today they have five listings and one is for writers (not just poets) of Polish background, as stated below:

For an anthology of Polish/American authors, the editors (John Guzlowski and John Minczeski) seek quality poetry, short fiction and creative non-fiction, not necessarily on a Polish theme, from writers with a Polish background. The anthology will update Concert at Chopin’s House, a Collection of Polish/American Writing, published by New Rivers Press in 1988. Payment, 1 copy. Please respond by January 31, 2012 by Word or RTF attachment to:
<Polish.Anthology( at)gmail. com> (replace (at) with @ in sending e-mail)