SDMB Poetry Sweatshop - August, 2011 edition, Logistics Thread.

Cafe Society
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Hello, everyone, and welcome to the logistics thread for the March 2011 Poetry Sweatshop. These have been tremendous fun in the past, and have produced some top notch work from the participants.

I would like to begin this month’s Poetry Sweatshop on Friday, August 26th at 9:00 AM EDT, and close it on Monday, September 5th at 10:00 PM EDT. This is an extra long period of time in which, I hope, many Doper poets can find a one hour window in which to write. It has, through one thing and another in my in-tray, been far too long since we’ve had a Poetry Sweatshop.

As with the past Sweatshops, any interested poets will have one hour to write a poem - any style, form, length, rhyme scheme (or no rhyme.) - but the poem must incorporate three words chosen at random. The words will be in an auto-reply message that can be received by writing to sdmbpoetrysweatshop at gmail dot com after 9 AM EDT on Friday, August 26th. (Please remember to mention your SDMB username…) Send the poem in a reply to the auto-reply, and the time stamps will show whether the poem was completed within the hour or not. Sorry, lurkers - entry is restricted to those who are permitted to post on the SDMB, be they Guests, Members, Charter Members, Mods, Admins or other interesting titles. (Though if you have been reading here for a while and have always wanted to join, this would be an ideal opportunity.)

In the last hour of the Sweatshop, an Anthology Thread is started and the words are announced in its Original Post; at the end of the Sweatshop (i.e. at 10 PM EDT on Monday, September 5th) a poll is established, in which readers are encouraged to vote for their favourite poem. At the close of the poll, the poet with the most votes is acclaimed Poet Laureate of the SDMB.

The Roll of Honour of Past Poets Laureate reads -

tracy jo - October, 2009
Maserschmidt - December, 2009
The Hamster King - January, 2010Pandoranoid - February, 2010
Maserschmidt - March, 2010
Elendil’s Heir - April, 2010
mauxlicious - May, 2010
Elendil’s Heir - June 2010
Serenata67 - July 2010
Le Ministre de l’au-delà - August, 2010
Le Ministre de l’au-delà - September, 2010
Maserschmidt and Elendil’s Heir - Joint winners, November 2010.
Woeg - January, 2011
Angel of the Lord - March, 2011

Since the April 2010 Sweatshop, we have used a multiple choice poll, and I’ve been very pleased with the results. Unless there are any strenuous objections, I’d like to keep the poll multiple choice.

And, of course, if there are any logistical considerations, this is the place to bring them up. I’m hoping lots of you can find a spare hour sometime in the next 11 days.

Best wishes,
Le Ministre de l’au-delà

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I’m in - thanks, Le Ministre!

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I’ll play!

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Looking forward to it, Le Ministre.

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Short stories Sweatshops, I’m in
Can do that but never win
But poetry’s a different beast
And something I like the least
So unless you include the word Nantucket
I’m gonna have to beg off and say __________

(Hmm, what rhymes with Nantucket?)

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We’re off and running - the words are in the auto-reply message, and I’m away to write for an hour.

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I’d go with bucket, personally. I’m quite certain I have no idea what else might fit there in terms of rhyme, scansion, and meaning.

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xenophon41 - got that. Beautiful.

I’m always relieved when the first poem that isn’t by me arrives - it reassures me that the hamsters have been properly appeased, and that maybe things will run smoothly.

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I’m always relieved when the autoreply shows up in my inbox within an hour of the timestamp. In this case, it was practically instant. (Not to discount Le Ministre’s hamsters’ sufficiency of mollification in this instance, but I got lucky in my ISP roulette today.)

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As the third evening draws to a close, we have but two poems. It’s a disadvantage of the extra-long window of opportunity - I don’t want to start the anthology until an hour before the Sweatshop closes, but I’m interested to see other people’s reactions to the poems… I keep repeating ‘Patience is a virtue’.

Here’s hoping some of the 9 to 5 readers get a notion over the coming work week.

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Just found last night’s poem from vdgg81 - lovely! (And yes, that simple correction arrived in time.)

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Thank you very much for the kind word and especially for accepting my late correction. I rarely write anything that is not a legal brief of one kind or another and am usually very unhappy with the results whenever I do, but I feel pretty good about this one.

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Oh no, now you’ve jinxed it!

ETA: My friend who’s in town for the weekend has raid tonight, so if I remember, I might try to snag an hour of that time to write.

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And as I retire for the evening, there’s another poem, this one by Puddleglum - fantastic!

I love this job!

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I beg your pardon, all I’m getting from that sentence is that your friend has a can of bug spray. Please, put an old man out of his puzzlement…

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We both play World of Warcraft, an massively multiplayer* online role-playing game**. A raid is when you get a group of players together (in this case, 25) to fight the toughest computer-controlled monsters.

Of course, I totally forgot about poetry by the time I was free last night. :smack: At least I’ve got through the holiday to remember!

*Think, thousands of people online in the same version of the world at the same time.
**RPG doesn’t necesarilly mean that you role-play as your character as much as define a style of game that involves a great deal of character customization, frequently including things like race, class, role, and ability specializations. A Blood Elf (race) Protection (specialization) Paladin (class) will play very differently from a Worgen Restoration Druid, for example.

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Ah, I see.

I had been searching for the missing letter, or the substituted letter, but nothing seemed to make sense. Your friend has (b)raid(s)? §aid? rai(n)? None of them were bringing me anywhere near the understanding that I now have - thank you. (I avoid Role Playing Games for the very reason that I think they might be fun. I’m certain that they are addictive and time-consuming, and I already have to steal the time in which to read from other things…)

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As I shut 'er down for the evening, we have a fifth poem from Elendil’s Heir - delightful.

To all of you - it is a great honour to be the first person to read your finished work, and I thank you.

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Why do you think I didn’t start playing WoW until I was out of college and in a period of unemployment? :smiley:

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I just gave it a shot… had an hour to kill. Made it with 5 mins to spare! shwew :wink: