In the past when I’ve done this poetry
project, I had always composed them initially in a notebook. What
I’ve done is simple, I will write anywhere from 2 to 10 poems in my
notebook that are either the same poem, the same title, or the same
thread. Once that’s done, some time later, I’ll go back to them, edit
them by either finding the piece that works the best, or by combining
some parts of several poems into a single one. This usually happens
on the computer.
I put the individual poems into a
folder and sometimes I’ll title the folder with the intention of
making a chapbook. Sometime I’ll make the chapbook. When I make the
chapbook, it is digital, it always stays digital. I’ve never once
printed a chapbook. I consider the project completed and I move one.
Over the last several years, I do this in September between a photo
project in August and Inktober in October.
But this year, I decided to skip the
computer outright.
So, this is how skills build on one
another. Writing poetry is one thing. And interestingly, the poetry
was the secondary outcome of the project. The first thing, was to do
something unplugged. And the next thing, was that I was determined to
make a final product.
In this day of slick digital tools, I
decided to go very lofi.
I decided to make a single copy of a
poetry chapbook, one unique copy with no back ups.
I got out my trusty Smith and Corona
Skywriter. I have had this particular typewriter for a decade, and I
have never really used it. I loaded it up with a new ribbon some
years ago. My cousin provided me with correction tape. I thought
about hierarchy on pages, and I got a set of rubber stamps for the
titles. This was going to be very lofi.
The last time I used a typewriter for
my writing was in the summer of 2000. I was in a cabin in the coast
mountain range of Oregon. I did not have electricity in the cabin,
and I was looking at very long nights. That was 23 years ago and
things have changed.
The process began in the composition
notebook, and when it came time to rewrite the poems, I would have to
rewrite them the way I wanted them to be and then I would type them.
I wanted the final outcome to be 30 poems, or in a way, one poem a
day for the month of September.