2016 is not completely bad

I have to admit, it was pretty daunting when Kit asked me to join in Project 366. When he first initiated the project in January, he already extended the invitation to me. Seeing the list of names, however, gave me a chill of fear. Most of the names there I have known from working on their pocket books or several Anthologies that I designed. Who am I to try to sit together with them?

It was not until several months after the beginning of Project 366 that I started to join in. I translated several poems to Indonesian, with the initial skepticism whether people would appreciate the effort or not. The feedback that I received was pretty positive that it became a daily habit for me. If I have to recall those days, a day without a translation posted felt like a day wasted. The post became a mark of my successful working day, it gave me a sense of accomplishment for the day.

The translation process 'forced' me to read deeper on those poems and provided a way for me to learn more about poetry writing. I started to emulate some styles in my own writing - some experiments took place in my own poems. Some poems were changed in favour of these experimentations. Of course, some worked and some didn't.

When I posted my original work for the first time, it felt very scary. A question haunted my mind, "What if this poem is not up to the standard?"To my surprise, everybody was so welcoming. I became more motivated in writing more. I developed a self-imposed shame in those days I could not post a new poem. What was once seem like a chore had become a habit - a part of my day.

What was started as a fearful step grew into something else. The community felt (or feels) very warm and welcoming. Despite never met the other participants in person, I have developed a sense of kinship. Everyday, it was as if we are gathering in a big table for dinner and everybody told how their day was through poems. That's how I got to know everybody.....

All in all, I feel very honoured and glad to be a part of this wonderful project. While 2016 might be one of those bad years, Project 366 made me realised that the whole year was not completely horrible....

Lizz Murphy: In for the long haul

I know it’s been decided that we can keep going if we want to but some need to move on and so do I. I don’t have to be anywhere but it has been a struggle at times. (This was not a surprise.) I considered dropping out more than once in the second half, but somehow stayed on for the long haul. I’m amazed.

At the same time I feel quite emotional about the project ending and saying farewell – even to those I know personally (huh?). Not helped by some very moving parting poems by other contributors. It’s been a very special experience. I have loved being connected to this group of poets and artists and seeing so many new works in the fresh. It’s at times electric.

each adieu a ship’s siren

a slap of salt against the quay

the poets are departing

It’s also shown me that no matter how tough things get I can still be creating, that the pieces I feel are such a compromise are … authentic? ... and that it’s not that big a loss if I don’t get into the deeper research I’ve been interested in. I need to think less about what I’m hankering after and think more about what I’m actually achieving and to see that resulting work as still credible.

It has been an exhausting year (I have a carer’s role) and this took its toll. I wrote on my own blog in October: I have reached a stage where I don’t think I can haul another word out of me. But then I began drawing. Quite soon I introduced found text and began to feel very satisfied, because after all art & text is something else I’d been wanting to do more of. The pressure of the daily commitment made me get on with that welcome alternative. I enjoyed being in that zone – scribbling, smearing, molding, layering, shading.

Around the same time a mild sense of panic also set in. It’s as if everything now hinges on this project – all the writing I may ever do has to happen in the two months before it finishes. Not rational I know. I think those feelings were really in anticipation of continuing the writer’s daily life in this new year, without the daily deadline and the generous support of the group. So often a comment would warm the cockles of my heart and set me in a ‘yes I can (again)’ mood. I can’t thank you all enough.

Today's revelation is that the project has given me the will to keep writing - maybe without knowing it I had lost some of that.

About becoming a poet on 366 if that ain't too dramatic. Kerri Shying R

I started posting in July, having had the month of June to prepare myself. Thankfully I didn't take one second to google anyone. I never would have done it if I had.

I had seen Kit before at the launch of "A Slow Combusting Hymn" and loved the shed poem and his reading. I knew poets, I had a poem in an anthology, I won a little prize for one but I was a short fiction writer that was that. However, when the launch of his pocketbook was on at the Newcastle Poetry at the Pub, and Beth Spencer was introducing, I made this massive effort to get there and thus the invite.

It was terrifying and thrilling and my habit of sleeping with a notebook, the large piles of written over papers, all were exposed when Kit and Carol paid me a visit. I am told he still reels at my filing system ( large piles, everywhere).

The first week or so I was in a hotel, so that made it easier to grab a poem out of the air. Then it got harder. Then it got harder. I asked if I could outstay my month. The tempo of the six months in retrospect seems maddening fast. Of course, you could sift through all the coffee and grubbed up papers here and say it was years really, but it was increasingly difficult to not continue and then make decisions about REALLY continuing.

In the end poetry won. The praise was good. The no comments were also good, they told me which things needed to be redrafted, what was 'meh', or sometimes just what was internal to me and not yet ready to go fly. Another poet, the amazing Judy Johnson, was saying to me that daily writing makes drafts and this was a very pertinent comment. I need the drafts. I need the community to bounce them around on and not having a university, or a common space ( I have an isolating physical disability) to gather this electric common green was just my ticket in.
 Mwah!

Béatrice Machet (from the Chicago area, 2016 comes to its end)

Béatrice Machet (from the Chicago area, 2016 comes to its end)

Some insights and my testimony about the experience of Project 366 (Project 365+1)

 

I was in Lyon when Kit’s invitation popped up on my computer screen. It was something like ten days after New Year 2016 and I was treating myself with outings and art exhibitions and concerts … A period of time I also dedicated to meditation and reflection on what my life would become after the “Macao episode”. I was back to a French environment, so the idea of keeping in touch with the English language on a daily basis, not only through reading and translating, but also through writing, immediately appealed to me.  Not to mention that I was thrilled about discovering a bunch of people whose poetry I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to read without being introduced via the 366 blog. Apart from Kit, Chrysogonus, and Feï, all the other participants were absolutely unknown people, perfect strangers to my consciousness. Also, to be connected with visual artists was great. And the ritual of posting, reading, commenting, participating was one of the highlights of the day. A way of escaping the Franco-French artistic environment and to unfold other antennas, to stay plugged in a strange web where people were living part of their lives together though on different continents.  

So I just got myself started and posting a poem a day was a bit of a challenge when from time to time I had to cope with a hectic time table, and yet I almost managed to write each day a poem in English and come with a French version for it.

It was important for me to start directly writing in English. Translating my French stuff would have sounded weird I suppose. The momentum had to be in tune with the rhythm and peculiarities of the English language first. But as a non-native speaker, having my drafts read was an intimidating experience … luckily enough I’m not gifted with a high sense of competition while sharing means a lot to me! So shame never found me too much blushing!  (But I’m aware some poems showed flaws or their content sometimes was shallow … ) And I planned to "answer" other poet's poems ... but it rarely happened because I might be a too spontaneous kind of writer unless I'm too much an ego-centered person ... who knows ....!

I would have loved to make comments and spend more time on each posted poem. This was the main frustration I must confess… sometimes I just skipped through and scrolled down when more attention and more time would have been necessary in order to make substantial remarks and observation. In this regard, Project 52 seems to be a more reasonable and a more doable one in terms of going deeper into analysis. Some works left me speechless and though, if I have had more time, I would have loved to come back to them and words eventually would have ended up in my mind that I would have shared… feelings are strange flows and to catch them demands some patience … it’s like hunting! Sometimes I also would have loved to find and share poems I like, written by my “favorite poets” ( Frank Bidart, Alice Notley, and so many others) on topics tackled by the 366 Project members. Alas alas … but I don’t give up this idea since Project 52 will give us more time to react less superficially  

The funny thing is that after a little while, getting some kind of familiarity with many of the involved poet’s styles, I could tell without reading names, whose poem I was discovering, whose picture or painting I was watching.  

To make a long story short, the whole experience was just delightful and I’m very thankful, even feeling blessed to have been part of this adventure … so it was obvious to me that I would, should continue with the Project 52, I didn’t hesitated, not a single second!  

Again, thanks to everybody for having been such good companions during this 2016 ending year.  

Looking forward to experiencing Project 52 and I wish you all a happy New Year

Béatrice

Next year

Very much interested in either a Project 365 again or Project 52. The Conversation in Poetry perhaps too. Replying to Kit's post from September. Unable to offer any assistance in running things - too many family commitments at present and study too.
LOVED being part of this - wish we could all get together in person and just yarn around a fire or something - just once... Or at least some of us.

Sarah St Vincent Welch - the experience of Project 366 (Project 365+1)

A friend died in a head-on car crash a year ago. Cathy was a runner, and she was driving home from an event that was a goal for her, that she had planned and trained for, that she exhilarated in completing. She was with her best friend, Helen, and she died too. I cannot yet comprehend it, and probably never will. Like with the deaths of other friends and colleagues, my response eventually was, to just try and live. To do things. Like a great dark clumsy submerged creature asleep, I stirred, listening, what could I do, what could I do?

Just before New Year 2016 Lizz Murphy told me about Project 366, and hell, Kit and Anna were getting it going (friends from Sydney in the 1980s). Why not do it I thought? I had been feeling other calls, having moved from Sydney in the late 80s for study and work, the association and allegiances of that time in Sydney so dear, Poets Union, the workshops of No Regrets, Left and Feminist, and poetry readings in Newtown and Redfern, and I decided, yes, I will try to do this post a day thing, be with these dear people, meet new ones. Me, someone who writes, but doesn’t publish very much, doesn’t send my work out through fear that it’s not good enough, who has mainly written short fiction and an unpublished novel, and part of another, whose prose is poetic, poetry is prosey, who doesn’t know where to try to be with my writing.

Kit suggested I think whether I could manage the post a day thing, and I figured if a photo could count too if no words were there for me that day (which seemed quite possible) I would try.  I have managed to post a poem and image every day. For me to keep producing something however small or light has meant a great deal to me, and to be connected to  other poets and artists, to be part of their day as they are part of mine, has been so good. Over the year I have thought if this participation in Project 366 is the major creative output in my life, then I am happy. I am blessed. And I thank this Project 366 (aka Project 365 + 1) community and especially Kit and Anna and everyone who has done some administering and helping out over the year, everyone who has been so generous with their creativity and friendship.

I wake and the first thing I do is read what is new on the project, and often it is the last thing I do as I go to sleep. Dylan, my husband, has joined recently and I have watched others’ appreciation of his connection with animals and landscapes, and seen him walk and find and wander, finding time in his busy work life, to find and make images. Project 366 is such a good space.

At first I wanted to document all the connections and currents and responses I felt and perceived in all the poems and art, but realised I wouldn’t be able to do a post a day if I did that. I would have loved to have done that.

I feel more legitimacy as a writer through this project. I have become more comfortable with showing pieces in this way. I have attempted new forms for me, sought advice when I didn’t quite get how to make them. I have become interested in rhyme, something I have disdained in the past. I am more attune to my own patterns of creating. I have been doing other creative work, as we all have, along with this project. But Project 366 is a current running through it all, and I have felt to be in great, generous, kind company. I have always wanted to comment and respond and engage more, but am often staggering to the line with my poem at 11.59 pm. Often in awe of others.

In terms of practice I notice I sometimes travel over the same territory again, re-remembering, and I realise that is OK.

The photographic element has surprised me. The ease of using the iphone as a camera, and its unexpected quality, has enabled the image project to travel with me and be something in itself. I have noticed how much I enjoy details and textures, how much I dwell on them whether I am taking a photo, writing a poem, or not. How much joy that observation brings me. Shadows and dreams were what I told Kit 2016 would be about, and it has been, as well as other things. I often turn to my recent catch of images to find inspiration for a poem, match them with the inspiration of others’ poems or art, to see how they might work off each other.

I didn’t want my quick visual capture of images to override what I was trying with words, which is a more laborious process sometimes, more fearful. Then I realised the photos weren’t just an illustration but part of the project, my noticing and capturing and framing in the visual world a parallel journey to the one in language, perhaps the same journey. I am often thinking about the same things, even subliminally, when noticing that potential photo, framing it, or asking for a poem, for words to form.

I admire the groups political poems, and want to find the voice for my own. I go there sometimes, but it wrecks me emotionally, and I have to go back to nature, memory etc to rebalance, to be able to create again the next day.

The Disconnect

(And a summing up.)

Not meaning to sound negative for its own sake, but because project 366 was an experiment and so I guess everyone's experience is of interest –

Participating in June was a joyous experience for me. I loved the work I was exposed to and the sense of community. I didn't continue longer although Effie invited me to, because of being busy elsewhere; then regretted that and made noises about rejoining, but they went unheard – and it soon became obvious that I really am so busy elsewhere that it's hard to take on more for very long.

Also I already write nearly every day – often every day – and am very much involved in other online poetic groups and communities, so can get some of the benefits elsewhere. (366 had a more carefree feeling than most, probably because it came with fewer responsibilities, and that was particularly delightful.)

Most of that I've said before, but it's part of the account.

I thought I would continue to read and enjoy the posts, particularly as I arranged to do a little behind-the-scenes admin work. But it didn't turn out that way.

One problem was that I had huge internet access problems for a number of weeks, which took time, effort and persistence to sort out. I think, also, not being part of the daily interactions resulted in a gradual distancing.

I want to come back and read things in December, when I expect a bit more free time; and I do hope Project 366 will remain online as an archive, regardless of the creation of an anthology.

I like the idea of an anthology, and will of course hope to be included.

I like the idea of a Project 52. I like the idea of a 'Conversation in Poetry'. And even of a new Project 365. And earlier on I was declaring myself 'in' for such future endeavours. But now I'm reneging. I'm involved in more than enough writing, editing and publishing commitments to be going on with. Sorry!

 I wonder what happened to others who participated for a month only. Do they miss it? (I do, but not enough any more – though at first exceedingly.) Or are they so busy with other things that it is largely forgotten? What do they feel they got out of it? (I have already indicated what I did – joy, delight, a strong sense of community – and yes, an experience of being in a poetic conversation, though not as directly and overtly as Kit seems to have had in mind.)

I also wonder what the experience has been for those involved for the whole year?