The April theme was "mad science." Amusingly, this month's surprise guest theme was eastereggs. A bunch of the poems had little bits of popular culture, history, mythology, or other allusions hidden within them. Several folks sent me messages about that, having spotted one or another of the eastereggs in the published poems or backchannel copies. Hee!
Regrettably LiveJournal was dysfunctional or erratic during much of the day. This slowed down the prompts and greatly cut down on the number of comments (47). I actually
echoed the fishbowl on Dreamwidth, so some activity happened over there too. I worked from 11:30 AM to 2:00 AM, so about 12 hours 30 minutes, allowing for breaks. The poems ran long: there were no shorts, only two medium-short, lots of medium-long and epics, and one long. I wrote 17 poems. Almost all were free verse, with a couple of forms. Some poems stacked a lot of prompts together, although others derived from a single prompt.
A total of 19 people sent prompts. Two of these were new,
stryckand
meeksp. Welcome! Thanks to them, there's a second freebie poem.
Also, the new perk worked! Donations reached the $150 goal. The
perk poll selected Monster House to get the free serial poem. Donors have been invited to offer a prompt for that.
Read Some Poetry!
The following poems from the March 2011 Poetry Fishbowl have been posted:
"
Anomalies of Mind and Time" (a Torn World poem)
"
Dancing to the Beat"
"
Dust and Shadows"
"
Learning Curves"
"
Science on the Chopping Block"
"
Science, Unfair" (a Monster House poem)
"
the two alchemists" (an Origami Mage poem)
"
Where They're Coming From"
Thanks to the general poll and another donation, you can now read the complete epic poems "
Paper, Scissors, Stone" (a Monster House poem) and "
The Truth in the Tower" (a Fiorenza poem).
Buy Some Poetry!
If you plan to sponsor some poetry but haven't made up your mind yet, read the list of
unsold poems from April. That includes the title, length, price, and the original thumbnail description for the poems still available.
Sponsored poems have all been posted. Copies of other poems have been sent backchannel to their respective prompters. The April perk-post for donors is about
madness and sanity.
Donors for April include
eseme,
the_vulture,
laffingkat,
janetmiles,
marina_bonomi, and
kelkyag. Thank you all for your support. You are all awesome!
There is also a poll open regarding
line numbers in epic poems. Please take a look at that and share your thoughts.
The Poetry Fishbowl project also has a permanent
landing page.