Poetry Fishbowl Open!

[ysabetwordsmith]

The Poetry Fishbowl is now CLOSED.  Thank you for your time and attention.  Keep an eye on this post, as I'm still writing.

Starting now, the Poetry Fishbowl is open!  Today's theme is "gender, orientation, and identity."  I will be checking this page periodically throughout the day. When people make suggestions, I'll pick some and weave them together into a poem ... and then another ... and so on. I'm hoping to get a lot of ideas and a lot of poems.

Click to read the linkback poem "The Emulsification of Humankind" (14 verses, Torn World).


What Is a Poetry Fishbowl?

Writing is usually considered a solitary pursuit. One exception to this is a fascinating exercise called a "fishbowl." This has various forms, but all of them basically involve some kind of writing in public, usually with interaction between author and audience. A famous example is Harlan Ellison's series of "stories under glass" in which he sits in a bookstore window and writes a new story based on an idea that someone gives him. Writing classes sometimes include a version where students watch each other write, often with students calling out suggestions which are chalked up on the blackboard for those writing to use as inspiration.

In this online version of a Poetry Fishbowl, I begin by setting a theme; today's theme is "gender, orientation, and identity."  I invite people to suggest characters, settings, and other things relating to that theme. Then I use those prompts as inspiration for writing poems.


Cyberfunded Creativity

I'm practicing cyberfunded creativity. If you enjoy what I'm doing and want to see more of it, please feed the Bard. The following options are currently available:

1) Sponsor the Fishbowl -- Here is a PayPal button for donations. There is no specific requirement, but $1 is the minimum recommended size for PayPal transactions since they take a cut from every one. You can also donate via check or money order sent by postal mail. If you make a donation and tell me about it, I promise to use one of your prompts. Anonymous donations are perfectly welcome, just won't get that perk. General donations will be tallied, and at the end of the fishbowl I’ll post a list of eligible poems based on the total funding; then the audience can vote on which they want to see posted.

2) Swim, Fishie, Swim! -- A feature in conjunction with fishbowl sponsorship is this progress meter showing the amount donated.  There are multiple perks, the top one being a half-price poetry sale on one series when donations reach $300.



3) Buy It Now! -- Gakked from various e-auction sites, this feature allows you to sponsor a specific poem. If you don't want to wait for some editor to buy and publish my poem so you can read it, well, now you don't have to. Sponsoring a poem means that I will immediately post it on my blog for everyone to see, with the name of the sponsor (or another dedicate) if you wish; plus you get a nonexclusive publication right, so you can post it on your own blog or elsewhere as long as you keep the credits intact. You'll need to tell me the title of the poem you want to sponsor. I'm basing the prices on length, and they're comparable to what I typically make selling poetry to magazines (semi-pro rates according to Duotrope's Digest).

0-10 lines: $5
11-25 lines: $10
26-40 lines: $15
41-60 lines: $20
Poems over 60 lines, or with very intricate structure, fall into custom pricing.

4) Commission a scrapbook page. I can render a chosen poem in hardcopy format, on colorful paper, using archival materials for background and any embellishments. This will be suitable for framing or for adding to a scrapbook. Commission details are here.  See latest photos of sample scrapbooked poems: "Sample Scrapbooked Poems 1-24-11"

5) Spread the word. Echo or link to this post on your LiveJournal, other blog, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, StumbleUpon, or any other social network.  Useful Twitter hashtags include #poetryfishbowl and #promptcall.  Encourage people to come here and participate in the fishbowl.  If you have room for it, including your own prompt will give your readers an idea of what the prompts should look like; ideally, update later to include the thumbnail of the poem I write, and a link to the poem if it gets published.  If there is at least one new prompter or donor, I will post an extra freebie poem.

Linkback perk: I have a spare series poem available, and each linkback will reveal a verse of the poem.  One person can do multiple links if they're on different services, like Dreamwidth or Twitter, rather than all on LiveJournal.  Comment with a link to where you posted.  "The Emulsification of Humankind" has 14 verses and belongs to Torn World.
 

Additional Notes

1) I customarily post replies to prompt posts telling people which of their prompts I'm using, with a brief description of the resulting poem(s). If you want to know what's available, watch for those "thumbnails."

2) You don't have to pay me to see a poem based on a prompt that you gave me. I try to send copies of poems to people, mostly using the LJ message function.  (Anonymous prompters will miss this perk unless you give me your eddress.)  These are for-your-eyes-only, though, not for sharing.

3) Sponsors of the Poetry Fishbowl in general, or of specific poems, will gain access to an extra post in appreciation of their generosity.  While you're on the Donors list, you can view all of the custom-locked posts in that category.  Click the "donors" tag to read the archive of those.  I've also posted a list of other donor perks there.  I customarily leave donor names on the list for two months, so you'll get to see the perk-post from this month and next.

4) After the Poetry Fishbowl concludes, I will post a list of unsold poems and their prices, to make it easier for folks to see what they might want to sponsor.

5) If donations total $100 by Friday evening then you get a free $15 poem; $150 gets you a free $20 poem; and $200 gets you a free epic, posted after the Poetry Fishbowl.  These will usually be series poems if I have them; otherwise I may offer non-series poems or series poems in a different size.  If donations reach $250, you get one step toward a bonus fishbowl; three of these activates the perk, and they don't have to be three months in a row.  Everyone will get to vote on which series, and give prompts during the extra fishbowl, although it may be a half-day rather than a whole day.  If donations reach $300, there will be a half-price sale.


Feed the Fish!
Now's your chance to participate in the creative process by posting ideas for me to write about. Today's theme is "gender, orientation, and identity."  I'll be soliciting ideas for QUILTBAG folks, queer allies, homophobes and other identity bigots, boomerang bigots, gender scholars, the oppressed, the misunderstood, ordinary people, outcasts, abuse survivors, the women that men don't see, questioning, debating labels, losing everything, looking in the window, taking people for granted, surviving oppression, hiding in the closet, coming out, upstanding, speaking truth to power, punching up, protesting, telling your own story, bedrooms, classrooms, counseling offices, churches, government buildings, libraries, cities, alleys, bars, parades, liminal zones, self-discovery, self-awareness, QUILTBAG pride, pride flags, other symbols of identity, birth control, reproductive freedom, sex toys, assumed male gaze, same-sex marriage, alien sex/gender dynamics, unpaid labor, self-sacrifice, emotional labor, disruptions, subversive education, humility, humiliation, social evolution, appreciation, identity literature, and poetic forms in particular. But anything is welcome, really. If you manage to recommend a form that I don't recognize, I will probably pounce on it and ask you for its rules. I do have The New Book of Forms by Lewis Turco which covers most common and many obscure forms.

I'll post at least one of the fishbowl poems here so you-all can enjoy it. (Remember, you get an extra freebie poem if someone new posts a prompt or makes a donation, and additional perks at $100-$300 in donations.  Linkbacks reveal verses of "The Emulsification of Humankind."  The rest of the poems will go into my archive for magazine submission.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

Gendered expectations of emotional labor. Bonus points for playing out these expectations in an m/m or f/f or poly relationship, or exploring when one partner in such a relationship is nonbinary and/or genderqueer.

Society with (idk) five standard genders. (The US has two: cis man and cis woman.)

Metagender.

Nothing scares a man with a sword more than a woman with a pen.

[alexseanchai]

boosted

[redsixwing]

I'd love to see the Iron Horses go and correct some assumptions about how one should treat the local two-spirits.

Kenzie's continued conversation with Blair would be great, too. (That hits at least QUILTBAG pride, emotional labor, appreciation, and self-discover, and probably more. Mmmm.)

[antisocialite_forum]

Seconding this, especially the Iron Horses' confrontation with the gay bashers. I believe JE was hoping for that too.

- Deacon

[kellan_the_tabby]

Shiv! And pilgrim badges! Definitely with some 'am I a supervillain or an artist' identity stuffs there, & possibly also something about his religious beliefs or lack of same, & the interaction of that with the concept of 'pilgrimage', whether the latter is religious or secular.

Poem

[ysabetwordsmith]

This prompt contributed to the free-verse poem "A Wanderer with Purpose." Shiv gets to see Tolliver's forge and explore pilgrim badges as a simple craft project.

572 lines, Buy It Now = $286

Poem

[ysabetwordsmith]

A backchannel prompt form Shirley Barrette inspired the free-verse poem "Missing." Schrodinger is asexual and happy about it.

Hold for original prompter.

[readera]

Hidden queer people is something I would love to see more of. A better phrase may be straight passing. IE: pan or bi male/female couple.

Allies in unexpected places.

What does lgbtqa+ stand for in another language or what do they use instead?

Poem

[ysabetwordsmith]

For hidden queer people, see thumbnail for "Chipped."

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Have tumblr boosted.

[stardreamer]

Calliope and Vagary have a conversation that edges into discussing something personal -- her being transgender, and how it's shaped her life. Vagary starts to get a clue about why she's so prickly about boundaries.

[sweet_sparrow]

Ooooh. This sounds really interesting. ^_^

Prompts from total family

[librarygeek]

SlytherClaw Kid asks for pride flags and All the A's, aromantic, asexual, and agender.

I want gender scholars, punching up, libraries, and emotional labor.

The women that men don't see, is getting an extra vote here too from my husband, annoyed that invisible is actually SAFER than pretty for those who are female bodied.

Added thoughts, winter holidays in July: as a dysgraphic autistic Jew, I really don't GET the Xmas or holiday card thing, and my husband does that, if he gets around to it each year. Emotional labor and handwriting are NOT my strengths, meaning fortès, but I can't access French spelling right now.

Re: Prompts from total family

[librarygeek]

Kid got the freebie! Schroedinger's Heroes, All the A's, poem is Alpha Bets.

http://ysabetwordsmith.dreamwidth.org/11049213.html

[antisocialite_forum]

Exploring identity labels, which anyone seldom sees in fiction.
It might fit well with Kenzie's thread because of gender, but it counts for orientation, 'kin identities, and plural identities too. They're all terms that people have to find and *choose* to pick up to see if they fit, and even then they might be wrong if there aren't other options given. This is what happened to our group and a lot of friends when all they could find were plural or 'kin terms - those didn't fit, but people acted like body sharing = plural/multiple or different species = otherkin, and that there weren't alternatives; it ended up causing a lot of damage and frustration beyond that. It's a process, not an absolute. It would be nice if that were shown more often.

Additionally... harm caused by being shouldered into a mis-fitting identity. We've seen this happen to a lot of asexual, bi/pan, and nonbinary people.

Exploring and reclaiming expression - clothing, mannerisms, make-up, hair. Especially after changing expression for one reason, but finding difficulty in going back and reclaiming what it was before. Trans or genderqueer people who were pressured into presenting one way and are only just getting into the mindset of "Fuck it, it's my body", or people trying to reconnect to cultural heritage, might get this.

- Deacon

[across_space_and_time]

Boosted on across_space_and_time.

- Deacon (same person, different journal)

[sweet_sparrow]

Lawrence utterly pwning a REG/TERF/etc. (Bonus points if it hits on intra-community queer issues since, ime, most TERFs are young queers.)

Ambrose thinking about faith and (his) sexuality.

Maybe something new with Salvo? Or... how are things at Bouchet now that Ansel's helped Kyle get his classes sorted? And maybe something uplifting like... someone surprising another person for all the emotional labour that they do.

Or someone self-diagnosing a part of their identity and how powerful and validating just having words can be.

[curiosity]

I am totally here for Lawrence pwning TERFs and for Salvo opening up a bit.

[kengr]

How about a riff on my post earlier today about the fun that's going to ensue as the rest of the Country has to deal with Oregon adding an "X" (other) gender marker as an option on official ID.

More specifically, someone with an "other" type gender and ID to match interacting with people who don't believe (or at least don't *want* to believe) that there's anything other than male & female.

I don't know how Terramagne is about such things, but if it's not common there, it might be a good place to set it.

But basically the X person trying to deal reasonably with folks who want to try to force them into there binary, or even just folks who have no idea how to *cope* with the fact that their forms/database/whatever can't deal with anything that isn't M or F.

Whether this is a long suffering X, or an X who (secretly?) delights messing with the system *because* their ID breaks it would be different stories.

Though come to think of it, maybe it's a bunch of little vignettes with multiple folks "breaking" the system in different ways and places.

[kengr]

Boosted on DW, LJ & Facebook.

[siliconshaman]

I wonder how A.I's, who don't have a biological default, construe their gender. There has to be some of that in polychrome, and there's the ships in the Lacuna.

Come to think of it, dating as a superhero or supervillian has to be fraught... and how many closets can you be in? [Russian doll closets?] and how complicated can that get when you're physically 'enhanced' or diverge from human normal standards significantly.

Then again, appearing to be utterly vanilla white-bread has got to be a strain if mentally you're anything but that. That has to be like have a secret identity, and who knows, maybe being a 'soup' would serve as an outlet... even if you don't have powers!

[kengr]

>>Come to think of it, dating as a superhero or supervillian has to be fraught... and how many closets can you be in? [Russian doll closets?] and how complicated can that get when you're physically 'enhanced' or diverge from human normal standards significantly.<<

The Whateley-verse actually has a "book" about it.

Sara's Little PurpleBook

>>Then again, appearing to be utterly vanilla white-bread has got to be a strain if mentally you're anything but that. That has to be like have a secret identity, and who knows, maybe being a 'soup' would serve as an outlet... even if you don't have powers!<<

Trust me, it's no fun at all having to hide something that fundamental. Gender, orientation, kink, etc. They are all "invisible" differences, and ones that society makes quite clear are "bad" to be.

[alatefeline]

Three very fast prompts:

Working and eating at a farm/garden as a means of building/supporting an identity that connects to the Earth. Very maybe Aidan & Saraphina?

The significant difficulties caused by erasure of and prejudice against that aromantic people, whether allosexual, asexual, or whatever. Context here:
http://claudiearseneault.com/?p=1657 Could be an example of characters responding POSITIVELY by not doing the messed up things. Calliope?

Identifying with AIs and robots while being physiologically human. An Army of One?

Wordplay with the syllable "pan" ... frex, I've seen a little frying-pan shaped used as a symbol for pansexuality, which would tie in but also clash with the spoon/fork symbolism in Polychrome Heroics...

[technoshaman]

AO1 would be *perfect* for sentient silicon beings.

[janetmiles]

Monster House -- are there female bogeymen?

Sex toys -- I recall a story from 30-some years ago, about the Arizona legislature entering a bill that would have banned ownership of more than five sex toys. A male legislator is reputed to have addressed the body, asking, "And which of my hands do you want me to amputate?"

Identity symbols -- Betan Earrings.

Churches -- I just learned the other day that the Catholic church has a status sort of midway between lay and nun: consecrated virgins, and that this rite may predate women living together in religious communities.

[kengr]

I think texas has possession of more than 5 dildos as "possesion with intent to distribute"

I've still got the "Betan Earrings" code we worked out on alt.callahans lo these many years ago. Take me a bit to dig it up, but I know I found it while consolidating backups from dead computer a while back.

[lb_lee]

I MADE IT FOR ONCE! 8D

What gender, identity, and orientation mean when you're a being that's been constructed rather than born.

[fayanora]

SECONDING! (Though I want my prompt, too.)

[fayanora]

A pair of asexual aromantics in a deeply emotional relationship with one another. I have a friend who doesn't get it and thinks that kind of relationship wouldn't be any different from friendship. The more people can disabuse him of that notion, the better.

Freebie poem

[librarygeek]

Did you see this? I think it fits your prompt too.

Kid got the freebie! Schroedinger's Heroes, All the A's, poem is Alpha Bets.

http://ysabetwordsmith.dreamwidth.org/11049213.html

[technoshaman]

I remembered again!

Things should be getting interesting for Mallory and Heron and the wee-one-to-be about now, no?

Eek, I almost forgot!

[chanter1944]

Prompt the first, Terramagne: Benchdog considers himself ace due to his dual-species characteristics, doesn't he? Something about human and canine females not smelling quite right? Does he openly ID that way?

Prompt the second, Walking The Beat: Dale and Kelly (and maybe Claire and her girlfriend?) poking a new neighborhood bigot in the metaphorical eye.

Prompt the third, Fledgling Grace: Any chance of a celebration of same-sex marriage in Germany, similar to the poem you wrote for Alabama, with happiness and pride (and maybe a few jerks depicted in there, because bigots exist) shown in wings? Bonus points for visibly genderqueer or other nonbinary people, Jewish, Roma, Turkish or Polish folks.

Re: Eek, I almost forgot!

[ysabetwordsmith]

Your prompt about Benchdog inspired the free-verse poem "The Best Type of Intimacy." Kennedy, Benchdog, and Pinion all have their reasons for bailing from the mixer party to hang out with each other instead.

200 lines, Buy It Now = $100

[mdlbear]

Aside from Iron Horses, which I've already seconded (or maybe tenthed), I'd like to see something in An Army Of One. AIs aren't normally thought of as having a gender identity or orientation, but some might.

Poem

[ysabetwordsmith]

This wound up breaking into two parts:

"The Order of Their Stars" is a free-verse poem in which Astin takes V shopping for necessary items. They talk about gender and identity.
240 lines, Buy It Now = $120

"Mosaic Identities" is a free-verse poem that follows Astin and V after shopping. They go for massage and visit a bar, where they meet up with some AYES and talk about gender issues more.
331 lines, Buy It Now = $166

[helgatwb]

The difference between being labeled and being Named.

[kengr]

Oooo!

Yes!

[wyld_dandelyon]

Society can't change one's internal gender or orientation, but it controls so very much, especially when we are children. So many of us end up with mosaic identities, part what society demands, and part what we cannot deny, and perhaps not at all sure where the blurry lines between those things is, or if there's even still a dividing line. But the tensions remain.

what zie said

[callibr8]

This "mosaic identities" and "tensions" phrasing really resonates for me.

polychrome ponderings

[callibr8]

Replying w/o reading other prompts first, feel free to combine as the Muse suggests.

[1]
Ala Robert Burns and the idea of "to see ourselves as others see us"
Contrasting the Finnlings' (particularly Drew, Heron, and Edison, maybe also Halley) perceptions of Shiv, versus his perception of himself and/or his approximation of how he thinks they perceive him.

[2]
How is Stan & Lawrence's friend Jayce doing these days, since her transition? What aspects of self-identity have/n't changed, and how has that affected her behaviors in classes, or off-campus and just hanging out with friends?

[3]
Pain's Gray and ... either Damask or Shiv, and the elements of D/s, power exchange, self-identities as top/bottom, dom/sub et alia.

Whatever of these "sparks" for you, great. I'll be happy to see them days or weeks down the road as "spillover". Take all the time you need to craft the brilliant work we both know you're entirely capable of.

Re: polychrome ponderings

[lone_cat]

Re:[2] If she makes it onto the cheer squad, at least some members of the football team, not to mention Coach Petersen, will probably have some trouble adjusting to that.

[fyreharper]

Navigating when none of the labels fit - at least not consistently - such that it isn't even possible to give one's friends the right words to avoid misgendering.

Places where it is possible to relax and not bother one way or the other about presentation, because even if people *did* know about [trait] it wouldn't matter, because that isn't what they see when they look at you.

[elf]

Kinsey scale for gender.

Emotional labor costs of having to inform people of your identity - gender, orientation, etc. - and costs of keeping track of others' identities.

(Here from mdlbear's boost.)

(s)he measures six-oh on the Kinsey scale...

[callibr8]

Have you seen Bob Kanefsky's "Kinsey Scale"? It borrows the tune of Richter Scale, by J. Kent Clark & Elliot Davis. They're both good songs, but I particularly enjoy introducing people to Kinsey Scale at science-fiction conventions. :-)

Done for the night!

[ysabetwordsmith]

Nowhere need done, but need sleep now.