Storyteller
At some point in the month, I always start falling back to sleep before writing anything… then waking up and writing at whatever time it happens to be. This happens to everyone. Just keep writing if it does.
This one was more like a 5:15 poem.
Alas sleep has kidnapped
my night at least
I’m well fed
you have great waking skills
tumbling waiting for
alarm the sound of
shapes calling
shapes breaking morning
to father the day
I decided to share this 3:15 Experiment poem not because its one of my favourites or for its fine literary quality, but because it is such 3:15 language… that and I don’t remember writing it!
I remember writing, I recall my hand moving by some force, but I don’t recall any of these words (and some I’ve had to interpret as they were illegible), where they came from, or to what they were referring – other than the fact that my husband went bike-camping on Mayne Island and saw views of islands.
This is something that continually fascinates me about the experiment, that I could actually physically write, but not be conscious while doing it.
August, 8, 2009
Vancouver, BC
I have frozen in this
finite heat. the islands,
the islands have mass and must wait.
temptation. the islands have both the
call and response. we were there.
come.
Witnesses may always refuse –
then we’re stuck hungrily
hiring the land.
I started on land & ended on air
I swallowed the clues
ingested as my own DNA
The island lines up
my timing near-perfect
Bring her in. Bring them
all in.
time for a game
a test of time.
milquetoast
The pieces are mulled over
the den gone. Civilized votes any
confidence
a circular witness : a time beast
The water comes. The room is
occupied. We have the presence
of salt to slow them down.
And eyes on the backs
of our heads.
My favourite thing about it is the random word “milquetoast” that appears in the middle of the poem. In my journal I had started a new page and written that at the top, then drew a line underneath it.
You can still JOIN in the madness… there are 20 days left to participate in the 3:15 Experiment.
HOW TO DO THE 3:15 EXPERIMENT:
* Begin at 3:15 AM on August 1st (so set your alarms on JULY 31) . Continue each day until August 31.
* You may write any length, style, form, content, voice, rhythm, etc.
* DO NOT EDIT your work. This is raw stuff, baby. That’s part of the experiment. You are welcome to edit, collage, break apart the poems later for whatever purpose you choose, but please SHARE THE RAW STUFF with the rest of the group here or on the website once the experiment is over.
* (Optional) Do not read what you have written until the month is over, except to skim the work to make sure everything is legible.
TIPS: Do not use a felt tip pen unless you don’t care about ink stains on your bed. Many a poet has fallen asleep in the middle of writing. If you can help it, don’t even get out of bed! The point is to ride that dream state, that precarious point between sleeping and waking and sleeping.
(This is the first year I have broken the “optional” rule and shared poems during the month. )
This year was a first in all my years of participating in The 3:15 Experiment… I spent the wee hours of the first day of the experiment in the hostpital. Nothing serious, but I didn’t get back home until 2:30 AM, so had just gotten to bed when 3:15 AM hit:
August 1, 2009
3:15 AM Vancouver, BC
Awake at 3:15 this is not
how I wanted to start how I
wanted to feel infected
3 hours in the emergency room
for a box of penicillin. the bent ear
the booby-trapped chair. two
nonagenarians. one forgetful
and the other deaf. she told
the same stories every hour he
couldn’t hear so he repeated them
every hour every our repeated
what island, dear? How many
times have we gone to Cuba?
What is that sport our grandson plays?
That’s how I’d like my taxes spent.
Lousy Americans did wrong by Cuba.
our cat should have been in the
hospital – he had heat stroke
and child protection services took
Sally Anne away. screaming.
Bipolar lies kidnapped possessions
waiting room after hours a
midnight ride.
You can still join the Experiment. Feel free to JUMP IN at any time…
August is a fine time to work your creative mojo. Everyone’s doing it! And they’re doing it in the form of challenges and experiments. Below are a few that I recommend.
Please let me know if there are any more out there in the coming month/s and I’ll add them to the list.
Anyone who follows my blog with any regularity knows that I participate in the annual 3:15 Experiment every year. Basically, a shifting menagerie of poets (and prose writers, actually) wakes up at 3:15 AM EACH morning during the month of August and writes. Our goal is to write while riding a 1/2 dream state. Magic happens. We have a Facebook Group now. Join us.
Started by Paul Nelson and Lana Ayers, the Postcard Poetry Fest challenges you to send 31 postcard poems, one for each day of August. They START it NOW if you’d like to participate… and I’m not sure you still can, but you can go to their website or FACEBOOK group and ask.
The rules say that on July 27th (tomorrow!), you write an original poem right on a postcard and mail it to the person on the list below your name. Starting on August 1st, ideally in response to a card YOU receive, keep writing a poem a day on a postcard and mailing it to successive folks on the list until you’ve sent out 31 postcards. I’ve never participated but some year I think I’ll write my 3:15 poems on postcards. That would be fun.
10 shorts in 10 days
This is a little invention of my friend Tod McCoy and myself. It happens irregularly (whenever we feel like lighting a fire under our butts). We write either 10 short films or 10 pieces of micro fiction in 10 days. This August we’re writing short scripts. Anyone out there is welcome to join us. There is no official website and no official place to post them, although if you’d like to post them on your blog and send us a link, that’d be swell.
We’re starting on AUGUST 10 and running until August 19. The rules are simple: Write a short script (or story) per day. Badda bing, badda boom. In the past our short scripts have run about 3-6 pages (in standard format). If you wonder what I mean by micro fiction, check out any one of my 56 Flavours stories, most of which were written during a 10 day challenge.
This contest has been running for 30 years. It wins. I’ve only participated once, but had a blast doing it. Some day I’ll dig out the novel and rewrite it. It happens over Labour Day weekend (Sept 5-7 this year). They also have a Facebook page. If you want to officially participate, and for a chance at fame and fortune, you have to register, which involves $50. If you just want the challenge of trying something new and don’t care about official registration, I suggest forming a group and holing up somewhere in a 24 hour coffee shop together. Oh, yeah, the object is to write a novel in 3 days.
The 2009 experiment is almost here. I’m feeling nostalgic. I’m posting one of my faves from experiments gone by…
Join the 3:15 Experiment Facebook Group to stay in the hypnagogic loop.
from August 3, 2002
Seattle, WA
cherry blossom midnight
sneaking spoons in the
dark hollow cherished
far too many words to
not describe my heart-break
it breaks itself you know
it erases its own glee
tumbling like laundry lists
believe that memory
believe that gesture
don’t believe your eyes
touch is like grapefruit
round and sensitive
the eyes two
vulnerable moments
of now
my god doesn’t like
traffic lights
or marshmallows
my god knows something
about picket lines
and visits to the dentist
I want more of less
much more of less
dwindling down into a single
current of sleep
not darkness something
lucid and malleable
perhaps I am not a poet after all
perhaps I am a
mailbox
There is no solution
to
this mathematics
My comrades in collaboration and I have a poem up on Quarrtsiluni:
What a great word “qarrtsiluni.” Apparently it’s an Iñupiaq word that means “sitting together in the darkness, waiting for something to burst.”
We’re still working on an audio collab to go with it. We’ve all made recordings of us reading the poem (we’re in different cities) and are playing around with it in our spare minutes.