THE TUESDAY POEM

Tuesday Poem's global birthday poem continues: a dozen poets have posted, more than a dozen to go

This is how it started last Tuesday April 3:

"The shyest sparrow's supplications in the early evening trees
are a careful arpeggio - each note liberates a flotilla of leaves
fleeting, indeed, left scattered as archipelago in a dew-grass sea." 

But it's many lines past that now with a dozen poets from around the world: from Spain to Australia to Italy to the UK and the US having posted a line each at the rate of two lines a day.  Helen McKinlay from Christchurch was the last one to post at 10 am this morning, and there are more than a dozen poets to go with Helen Lowe from Christchurch, Eileen Moeller from Philadelphia and Orchid Tierney from Dunedin due to post in the next day or so. 

The Tueday Poets will continue posting until next Tuesday when the final poem will go up. The editor is TP co-curator Mary McCallum who says: 'It's an exciting process watching the lines go up one by one - seeing the thinking behind each line - the language, the line-breaks, where it's left for the next poet to pick it up. It's like watching one poetic mind at work, with each poet like one of the many competing voices that a poet hears as s/he writes: 'break the line there' 'no don't' 'rhyme it' 'don't you dare' 'how about plums to echo plume' 'what are you thinking?' and so on. We do some editing as we go along - for example we had a few stanzas of three lines each to start with, and then decided the poem would work better with one stanza - giving more flexibility with line breaks. It's strictly a group effort - such fun. I wonder if it's a world first?' 

Do check out the blog - for the global poem, and all the other fabulous poems in the sidebar. You can't beat it on a Tuesday.