SDMB Poetry Sweatshop - Feb. 2010 edition, logistics thread.

Cafe Society
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Hello, everyone, and welcome to the logistics thread for the SDMB Poetry Sweatshop, February 2010 edition. These have been tremendous fun, and have produced some excellent poetry as well. As with the past Poetry Sweatshops, the basic idea is that any interested participants will have one hour to write a poem that incorporates three mandatory words, selected at random by me. Other than that, the poems may use or eschew rhyme, meter, form at the poet’s discretion. They may be any length. At the end of the sweatshop, an Anthology thread will be established, with a poll so that readers may select their favourite poem. After the poll is closed, the author of the favourite poem will be known as the Poet Laureate of the SDMB, and now that we have custom titles available, wouldn’t that look nice under your user name? tracy jo, Maserschmidt and The Hamster King were the Oct. 2009, Dec. 2009 and Jan. 2010 Poets Laureate, respectively.

Links to previous logistics threads may be found here -
October, 2009
December, 2009
January, 2010

and links to previous anthology threads (well worth the reading!) may be found here -
October 2009
December, 2009
January, 2010

Some nuts and bolts - I really liked the way the Out of Office reply system worked for the last one, and I would like to incorporate it again. To reiterate, once the Sweatshop started, any interested poets could send me an e-mail at sdmbpoetrysweatshop at gmail dot com, and an automatic response would send them the three words. The time stamps on the incoming and outgoing e-mails were used to keep everybody honest. Then, in the last hour of the sweatshop, the words were announced at the top of the Anthology Thread, and I cut and pasted all the poems into the thread.

One of the great advantages of this was that poets in different time zones could write whenever they had an hour (and change) free. I would propose a start of 8 AM Pacific Standard Time on Friday, February 26th, (thereby, I hope, catching some of the poets who access their computers from work…) running up to 6 PM Pacific Standard Time on Sunday, February 28th.

One thing I feel I should clarify - the Sweatshop is for SDMB members. However, if anyone feels like joining the SDMB in order to participate, I have no problem with that. One of our poets in the last one did just that.

Taking a suggestion from the last Anthology thread, I would like to try establishing the poll based solely on the reply number and title of the poem. If there is no title, I will call it Untitled - this way, there won’t be any user names, so the poll will be based entirely on the appeal of the poem. Any objections?

I’d also like to solicit opinions on the poll - it has been suggested that the voting extend for a longer period, say, a week. I have no problem with that and just wanted to ask if that was acceptable to everyone else.

Hoping that everyone interested can find some time next weekend to participate.

My best wishes to all of you,
Le Ministre de l’au-delà

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As an interested non-participant, I’ll vote “yes” on leaving the poll open for at least a week, and “I don’t care” on not using author names on the posts. If you do go that route, suggest putting something like “Untitled ('This is the first line of the poem’)” in the polling thread, to make sure there’s as little confusion as possible about what you’re voting for. Or maybe first line of poem with all of them?

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I’d agree with both leaving the polling open longer and keeping the poems anonymous until after voting is over.

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Love this idea.

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Whoa, just found this thread by accident really, and glad I did…

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Hm, Le Ministre, maybe you should keep a list of previous participants and PM them when you’re getting ready to start a new sweatshop.

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I’m on for this one.

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A capital suggestion! I’m on it…

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I had complications with my weekend schedule last time - would love to be included this time around.

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1.) I like having a broader window to write with an email address to write to to get the words.

2.) I am strongly opposed to excluding poets’ names from their poems. I think people deserve all the recognition they can get for their hard work–someone who stops to peruse the thread won’t necessarily remember to come back later after the names have been revealed. Anyone who’s inclined to “cheat” by voting for their friend instead of the best poem isn’t going to be stopped by their friend’s name being excluded. For the benefit of those who’d prefer to judge the works anonymously, the author’s name could be posted in a spoiler box.

3.) I am strongly in favor of extending the voting period (e.g., to a week).

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I agree about the voting period extension.

I do, however, like the idea of keeping the poet’s name anonymous until the voting closes. While I appreciate the sentiments of Shot From Guns, I respectfully disagree. We are essentially submitting these poems anonymously even if our user names are posted along with the work since most of us post under user names that are not our legal names. The only advantage I can see is that more prolific posters have more “brand recognition” and it could give an advantage to previous winners via momentum.

ETA: to the OP, do you mean by Member status a paid membership or does my lecherous Guest account qualify?

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Brand recognition may also work against previous winners - a voter may be tempted by the sentiment ‘Oh, that poet was the favourite last time - I’d like to see a different poet ‘win’ this one.’ I’d like to see the voting simply reflect the poems’ relative merits.

The spoiler box idea may be a viable compromise. Opinions?

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Do people *really *think that votes are going to authors and not to poems? :dubious: I think that’s selling the SDMB community short. Such a theory is also belied by the fact that of three contests, we’ve had three different winners. If it had been the same person time after time, I could maybe see making the entries anonymous, but so far, I see no reason to do so.

ETA on seeing LMdl’a-d’s post:

I like spoiler boxes. That way, thems as prefer not to know whom they’re voting for can avoid seeing authors while they’re still deciding on their vote, while thems as enjoy knowing who wrote what can assuage their curiosity as soon as they like.

ETA2: The ETAing:

There’s no way to enforce why someone votes for a particular poem. The judging in a setting such as this is particularly subjective. Since everyone only gets one vote, who are we to tell people how they may spend it? IOW, why is it any more wrong to vote for a poet who hasn’t won yet than to vote against a poem that used a word you hate?

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Sweet. Another silver lining. I have a furlough day on Friday. This will be a great way to start the day off.

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My apologies - I didn’t intend ‘Member’ to imply anything more than someone who has signed up and gets to post here, as opposed to ‘lurker’. Guest accounts welcome!

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This all sounds great! And for once, I’ll actually be able to participate!!

I’m soooo in!

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I’m in again - thanks. Other than extending the voting period, which I strongly support, I have no particular opinion on format.

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I just wanted to give this thread a gentle bump - we’ll start in just under 36 hours. I’m hoping you can find time to participate.

'Til Friday morning…

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Wanted to chime in and say that I absolutely adore this idea. Unfortunately though, I can’t make this one. I’m participating in a different brand of sweat shop (South Devon 10k) and, as I’m staying at a very basic B & B for the weekend, I likely won’t have an internet connection. Looking forward to next month though. :wink:

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Here we go - all interested poets should send me an e-mail at sdmbpoetrysweatshop at gmail dot com. You will receive an out of office auto reply that looks like this

Hello, and welcome to the February 2010 Edition of the SDMB Poetry Sweatshop. As of the time stamp on this Auto-Reply message, you now have one hour to write a poem that incorporates the following three words -

words will appear in the e-mail only
Please e-mail your completed poem as a reply to this message - that way, the time stamp will show if it has been completed within the hour. At 5 PM PST, Sunday, February 28th, I will establish the Anthology Thread at the SDMB Cafe Society, and I will cut and paste all the poems into that thread.

Thank you for participating, and good luck!
Le Ministre de l’au-delà