Behind the Curtain: 24-Hour Prep
Time draws nigh!
I am writing a bunch of new work for this year's 24-hour show. I usually have enough between 24-hour features to cover the first and last hours, which are traditionally when I guarantee I will be performing my own work. I usually sneak about an hour or so in the middle somewhere as well. The difference this year is that the middle time isn't being covered by a packaged deal, like the year I read all of my new chapbook, Watering Hole: Juke Joint Poems, or last year when I read the super-long prose poem "The Gospel of Smoke" (based on a novel I'd written). This year it's just another hour-long feature of varied work, just like the other two original hours.
So I felt a little tight and I've been addressing that by working on new poems. Some finished, some not so much. Yet.
Coming up with the number of new poems I SHOULD have for an extra hour of free range work was easy. I settled on twelve, since if they came in around 2-3 minutes each that would get me an easy 40 minutes worth of material based on the way I perform. Knowing some of the pieces would come in longer just meant I would be able to flex them around the other hours, which was also good, since I could put a little sprinkle here and there for folks who know what's up at the beginning and end. Sprinkle a little new, baby. Keep me interested.
Last week I finished two poems the day of the slam. Well, I finished one and I wrote one. Well, what I mean to say is I finished one I had already kind of been kicking around ("Horror"), but then wrote another one from scratch that day ("Chris Brown: The GMA Remix"). So the second one wasn't in the pile of original pieces I've been carrying around like Denzel Washington in The Book of Eli. Seriously: you haven't seen me in public the last few weeks without seeing me holding a stack of papers rolled up like I'm about to whip a dog. That's the stuff I'm working on for this coming weekend. It started out as 12, but well, we'll see what happens. It all kind of...ballooned a little. I feel comfortable enough with where I am in that stack to talk about it now. Before this point it was all what I was GOING to do, not what I'd DONE. That what-I'm-going-to-write shit is for cats who ain't writing. Since I'm over that hump to some extent, let's rap.
I've got a few really long poems I've been plugging away at. One of them is done, the other two almost done (like, will-have-their-first-drafts-today-done). They are respectively about video game arcades, Livingston Avenue, and hamburgers.
If you actually follow my work you know I've liked the long form for a while now. And no, I don't mean the poems I do in slams that catch a time penalty. Those aren't long form poems per se (though compared to many poems they would be); they're just performed in such a way that they sometimes take longer than 3 minutes to share. Whatever. Anyhow, these pieces are seriously long. I hesitate to use the word "epic" because the epic form implies certain lengths and themes, but these are poems clocking in page counts near or in double digits, depending on how you break and print them. I have them in performance script as they come out, so the page count is under what they will be later when I edit them for future consumption and platforms. My poems naturally have long lines (I used to have Louise help me break them up for print jobs years ago) so they tend to come in at double the length of a lot of the average poets' stuff when broken for print. What can I say? I got stuff to talk about.
So some of the new stuff will be like taking a leisurely, rambling stroll through the country. Bring a picnic basket.
Some of the new stuff is of typical length, some shorter, but largely all of the new stuff is fun. I'm trying to have one ready for the slam on Wednesday. We'll see. I finished one that I really wanted to do for the slam but it's well over three minutes. And while I don't need any more points to make the Grand Slam, that don't mean I want to give 'em up for free. So I probably won't do that poem even though it's really perfect for the slam in terms of topic and tone.
I got one that's supposed to be a series of poems about the god Pan and how much he hates modern music, but I'm kind of behind the 8-ball on that one. Lot of research, not a lot of poetry. So that one may have to wait until after the 24-hour reading. We'll see. I've performed a poetry miracle or two in my day.
So: there's a peek behind the curtain of the upcoming 24-hour reading. I'll be posting something here every day until it goes down on Saturday, so I hope you check back.
Me? I got some (more) poems to write, son.
I am writing a bunch of new work for this year's 24-hour show. I usually have enough between 24-hour features to cover the first and last hours, which are traditionally when I guarantee I will be performing my own work. I usually sneak about an hour or so in the middle somewhere as well. The difference this year is that the middle time isn't being covered by a packaged deal, like the year I read all of my new chapbook, Watering Hole: Juke Joint Poems, or last year when I read the super-long prose poem "The Gospel of Smoke" (based on a novel I'd written). This year it's just another hour-long feature of varied work, just like the other two original hours.
So I felt a little tight and I've been addressing that by working on new poems. Some finished, some not so much. Yet.
Coming up with the number of new poems I SHOULD have for an extra hour of free range work was easy. I settled on twelve, since if they came in around 2-3 minutes each that would get me an easy 40 minutes worth of material based on the way I perform. Knowing some of the pieces would come in longer just meant I would be able to flex them around the other hours, which was also good, since I could put a little sprinkle here and there for folks who know what's up at the beginning and end. Sprinkle a little new, baby. Keep me interested.
Last week I finished two poems the day of the slam. Well, I finished one and I wrote one. Well, what I mean to say is I finished one I had already kind of been kicking around ("Horror"), but then wrote another one from scratch that day ("Chris Brown: The GMA Remix"). So the second one wasn't in the pile of original pieces I've been carrying around like Denzel Washington in The Book of Eli. Seriously: you haven't seen me in public the last few weeks without seeing me holding a stack of papers rolled up like I'm about to whip a dog. That's the stuff I'm working on for this coming weekend. It started out as 12, but well, we'll see what happens. It all kind of...ballooned a little. I feel comfortable enough with where I am in that stack to talk about it now. Before this point it was all what I was GOING to do, not what I'd DONE. That what-I'm-going-to-write shit is for cats who ain't writing. Since I'm over that hump to some extent, let's rap.
I've got a few really long poems I've been plugging away at. One of them is done, the other two almost done (like, will-have-their-first-drafts-today-done). They are respectively about video game arcades, Livingston Avenue, and hamburgers.
If you actually follow my work you know I've liked the long form for a while now. And no, I don't mean the poems I do in slams that catch a time penalty. Those aren't long form poems per se (though compared to many poems they would be); they're just performed in such a way that they sometimes take longer than 3 minutes to share. Whatever. Anyhow, these pieces are seriously long. I hesitate to use the word "epic" because the epic form implies certain lengths and themes, but these are poems clocking in page counts near or in double digits, depending on how you break and print them. I have them in performance script as they come out, so the page count is under what they will be later when I edit them for future consumption and platforms. My poems naturally have long lines (I used to have Louise help me break them up for print jobs years ago) so they tend to come in at double the length of a lot of the average poets' stuff when broken for print. What can I say? I got stuff to talk about.
So some of the new stuff will be like taking a leisurely, rambling stroll through the country. Bring a picnic basket.
Some of the new stuff is of typical length, some shorter, but largely all of the new stuff is fun. I'm trying to have one ready for the slam on Wednesday. We'll see. I finished one that I really wanted to do for the slam but it's well over three minutes. And while I don't need any more points to make the Grand Slam, that don't mean I want to give 'em up for free. So I probably won't do that poem even though it's really perfect for the slam in terms of topic and tone.
I got one that's supposed to be a series of poems about the god Pan and how much he hates modern music, but I'm kind of behind the 8-ball on that one. Lot of research, not a lot of poetry. So that one may have to wait until after the 24-hour reading. We'll see. I've performed a poetry miracle or two in my day.
So: there's a peek behind the curtain of the upcoming 24-hour reading. I'll be posting something here every day until it goes down on Saturday, so I hope you check back.
Me? I got some (more) poems to write, son.