Tag: awp

ditch poem #6

we’re all becoming animals here

our scaly skins showing through the stained glass

why now why slither

the rainbow gate beneath suit sleeves

beneath chiffon and tweed

the rainbow plexus in our throats

once a wren ever an abalone shell

we were whole once

wander detritus wonder

the furs in the soft air

gentle browns of wood and bark

as the furs gallop by

identify me

call me into

curiosity pinwheel

i make little sparks

in recent lavas

we were the hands holding

tectonic/footstep

we were the under

and beneath

to speak in soil tongues

to be called into ditches

to be summoned

venal wing

wet black eros melt

leaf matter and dirt cake

the cavity of I root

small declivities of teeth

along the rim

how the mouth knows

we were once rose quartz

we were agate

smashed and smashed

among the rock

your smooth body a reminder

The Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange: A Community – Curated Model

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Following is a transcript of my talk at AWP 2014 where I presented on a panel commemorating 60 years of the Poetry Center’s Digital Archive. I presented the Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange in its current manifestation as both archive and site for circulation of current work. I discussed its creation, development, and direction as digital repository; the importance of community curation, development of collaborative tools within a public space, and original notion of chapbook as gift–sharing poetry as opposed to ownership.

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How much agency do we have in deciding what gets saved to define a poetic history or lineage? When we talk about born-digital, electronic, or out-of-print books that exist only as PDFS or Word documents, there’s a huge risk for future data loss due to format obsolescence and bit corruption. Sometimes, these creative losses are a welcome relief – we don’t need to save everything after all nor is it possible to do so. But as communities of practice, it behooves us to participate in the telling of our shared history for future generations by collecting moments enough to define our time.

With the Poetry Center, I’ve taken a small step in this direction by creating an open-access digital repository to help expand and ensure sustained access to chapbooks. The Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange is a community-curated archive created and developed for poets to convene, correspond, and collaborate via chapbooks: the currency of the poetry community. Our mission is to engage our poetry community by sparking dialogues between the chapbooks in the interest of collaboratively building a community archive.

The model for the chapbook exchange was catalyzed by the need to invigorate poetry collections in public libraries and was expanded to include extant poetry communities. This cooperative model has facilitated the compilation of a diverse and innovative collection of poetry chapbooks for public access. We began by inviting a select group of core contributors – and have grown our collection in just a few months to feature chapbooks from over 40 contributors.
Contributors are invited to share their chapbooks via upload and as such gain access to the chapbook repository. They are also invited to recommend another poet to contribute to the exchange. The model is “take a chapbook, leave a chapbook.” The chapbook exchange is a contributor-driven peer-to-peer environment that allows users to exchange chapbooks as a variation on the pay-to-play theme in that in this case, poetry is the currency required for participation.

Deploying Chapbooks as Community-Bonding Tools

Chapbooks have a long history of communicating impelling messages to communities. “From the 16th to early 19th centuries, chapbooks were mass-produced, cheaply made booklets sold hand-to-hand by traveling salesmen, or chapmen in Western Europe and North America.” (Craig, 2011) Today’s chapbooks are regarded as essential to the evolution of ongoing dialogues around poetics and poetry. “…[They’re] part of ongoing poetic conversations, as well as a practice of exchange that is ever present in the maintenance of community” (Craig, 2011). They are often handmade and sold cheaply or given as gifts. The message within often outweighs financial compensation for the author; often, what fuels their tenacity is a desire to contribute to a powerful lineage of poets as well as a commitment to correspondence and collaboration with peers.

A 2009 report from the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute via the Poetry Foundation titled Poetry and New Media: A User’s Guide – describes their “vision for engaging educators, institutions, and communities” and names the importance of open-access publishing and “working to increase the access of poets as producers.”

The Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange aims to foster that ethic, by making available virtual hubs for collaboration and exchange of chapbooks. To augment existing print collections as well as build a virtual poetry collection sustained by global and local poetry communities. We’ve maintained an instrumental role by providing and moderating key access points to this portal to engage local writers. The open-access format is conducive to quick and efficient chapbook sharing, and can serve as a forum for writers and other patrons to communicate and share ideas. We’re interested in capturing the many ways we activate one another as writers in the community.

Currently, the site is in the early stages of what we hope will be a lively and vital cooperative space for poets to practice the continuum of reading and writing in the creative process. Contributing creative works in this forum also allows users the opportunity to generate creative responses to extant works in the collections. As such, this chapbook exchange might be a model for teachers wishing to employ emerging technologies in the classroom to highlight opportunities for both active and collaborative learning.

As a community-curated project, Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange participants are actively involved in the process of archiving their own work. Once they become active members, they also able to assign metadata (or tag) their books with pertinent descriptors to make their works more findable. In doing so, they become agents in the shaping of our shared history for future readers. Contributors also choose their own creative commons licensing attributes and permissions, and can permit or decline use in any number of ways.

The site was built using Omeka: “a free, flexible, and open source web-publishing platform for the display of library, museum, archives, and scholarly collections and exhibitions.” (Ray Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, 2014). We chose Omeka as our trial platform because of the Roy Rosenzweig and Center for History and New Media’s great reputation for preserving and archiving creative works. Omeka enables participants to control how their work is presented, and offers tutorials to facilitate the user process. Omeka uses Dublin Core metadata standards and allows for user tagging which enables participants to define how items are remembered. It also hosts various plug-ins, which allows users to import myriad file formats.

Cooperative Archiving & Preservation

As archivists, it is incumbent on us to meet certain criteria to maintain our digital collections: digital objects must be controlled, i.e. findable, secure, readable, renderable, and authentic. Digital preservation necessitates the use of metadata by which to store and retrieve our digital objects. A collection must be safe and secured from both internal and external threats. We must also know when to upgrade our software and hardware to maintain readability of our collections. Congruent with readability is renderability; we must know how our digital objects should be displayed.

Though not without its limitations, the cooperative archiving model is an active means toward long-term preservation. First, by crowdsourcing descriptive metadata from the community to assign to our digital collections, we are improving chances for a file’s findability in 10 or 15 years by activating memories of individuals as well as the community at large. Through remembering nuances or details, we give voice to these subtleties and allow for the chance to re-experience lived events through the archive. In this sense we do indeed converse with the dead.

Another benefit of cooperative archiving is the use of community standard file formats, which will aid renderability later when we want to read files. Experts in digital preservation recommend opting for community standard or widely used data formats like PDF because there are greater chances that we’ll have the right programs to open files.
The LOCKSS system, which is also known as (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe), may also help ensure that our peers or colleagues will have a copy of our book downloaded to their hard drive. While this is a common preservation method, it is not necessarily the most secure since LOCKSS lends itself to the possibility of copies being whittled down one by one for various reasons (unreadable formats, human error, etc). However, cooperative archiving does allow for more content to be saved due to sheer volume. Lastly, cooperative archiving encourages participants to share their diverse skills, knowledge, and expertise and facilitates opportunities to learn from others in the community.

Future Directions

Some future directions for the Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange are to cooperatively bridge the gaps between the historicity of the archive and the currency of pen striking paper. We’re interested in what happens when communities come together to archive the now while also honoring historical conversations around poetics, art, and poetry that helped generate contemporary creative works. As archives are creative forces in themselves, we’re excited by the energetic possibilities for poets to further engage with the collection by producing new works and developing partnerships.

As a cooperatively curated site, the chapbook exchange can also be a self-sustainable method of disseminating the current arcs of various poetic movements and potentially may prove successful in engaging users all over the world. In fact, we recently added a bilingual chapbook to the collection from a poet living in Ireland who had written to us with interest.

Conclusion

Our sense of communing with the dead through the written word, our wonder and fulfillment at the dread and elation of writing – These are some of the reasons we feel called as readers, as writers, and also as archivists. It is this continuum that catches us in its legacy as we root with it. As we live and write we extend laterally to encompass the time we’re in, the currencies moving about, and we pulse on. It is also this vitality and community that we as writers can feel alienated from or urged to maintain. However, our combined resources are mighty – and with a little collaboration and cooperation – we may just keep this thing going.

References

American Library Association. (1996). Library Bill of Rights. Accessed May 10, 2012 from http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill

Andrade, Mary. 2012. Crowdsource your next program design. T+D, 66(3), 52-56.

Antonucci, Ron. 2004. A rhyme a day. Library Journal. Retrieved from http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/ljinprint/currentissue/871807-403/collection_development_quotpoetryquot_a_rhyme.html.csp

Caplan, Priscilla. 2009. Understanding PREMIS. Library of Congress. Retrieved from at http://www.loc.gov/standards/premis/understanding-premis.pdf

Collins, K., Furman, R, & Riddoch, R. 2004. Poetry, writing and community practice. Human Service Education, 24(1), 19-32.

Craig, Ailsa. 2011. When a book is not a book: objects as players in identity and community formation. Journal of Material Culture, 16 (1), 47-63.

Dymoke, S. & Hughes, J. 2009. Using a poetry repository: how can the medium support pre-service teachers of English in their professional learning about writing poetry and teaching poetry writing in a digital age? English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 8 (3), 91-106

Fallows, D; Horrigan, J; & Lenhart, A. (2005). Content Creation Online. Washington DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project, February 29. Accessed May 11, 2012: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2004/Content-Creation-Online/2-Content-Creation-Online/1-The-material-people-contribute-to-the-online-world.aspx

Grotke, A. 2011. Cooperative archiving: Event harvesting in perspective. Annual meeting with Library of Congress and National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. Retrieved from http://search.loc.gov:8765/digitalpreservation/query.html?st=1&charset=utf-8&lk=1&nh=10&si=0&col=loc&qp=url%3A/http%3A//www.digitalpreservation.gov/&qt=revolution

Holley, Rose. 2010. Crowdsourcing: How and why should libraries do it? D-Lib Magazine, 16(3) 5-23.

Hughes-Hassell, S., & Miller, E. T. (2003). Public library websites for young adults: Meeting the needs of today’s teens online. Library and Information Science, 25, 143–156.

Jones, P. (2002) New Directions for Library Service to Young Adults. Chicago: American Library Association.

Lenhart, A., & Madden, M. (2005). Teen content creators and consumers. Washington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project, November 2. Accessed April 27, 2011: http://www.pewInternet.org/PPF/r/166/report_display.asp

RLG. (2002). Trusted Digital Repositories: Attributes and Responsibilities: an RLG-OCLC Report. Retrieved from: http://www.oclc.org/programs/ourwork/past/trustedrep/repositories.pdf
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. About CHNM. Retrieved December 10, 2011 from http://chnm.gmu.edu/about/

SinhaRoy, S. 2011. Libraries tap into the crowdsource. American Libraries, 42(11/12), 22-23.

Smith, Aaron. (2010). Mobile Access 2010. Washington DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project, July 7. Accessed May 11, 2012: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Mobile-Access-2010.aspx

Tyckoson, David. 2003. On the desirableness of personal relations between archivists and readers: the past and future of reference service. Reference Services Review, 31 (1), 12-16

 

little stem

 

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My poem “little stem” is up at Finery, and will be one of seven postcard poems featured (in an extended version) in my upcoming Dusie Kollektiv chapbook: Prism Maps. “little stem” began as a postcard poem in conversation with the image above, and was mailed to a poet in the group. “A poet in the group” sounds ominous – alas, postcards are not cannibals; they’re a great catalyst for building momentum when you think you’ve no time for writing poems. (Catalysts, not cannibals.)

I have a soft place in the heartstrings for postcards and handwritten correspondence. So much can be said in the postcard space by diverse measures – dashed off fervently while waiting in line for groceries, exactingly laid down to enhance the postcard form, or scrawled to cover every inch of the text space. Postcards are a pithy and resonant form for the force, y’all.

 

 

AWP 2013 – Poetry and Librarianship: Collection Challenges talk

The following post is the transcript for a panel presentation I gave at the Association for Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference a few weeks ago at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. The panel was titled  Poetry & Librarianship: Collection Challenges, and featured myself and other poet-librarians discussing the challenges of collecting, archiving, and digitizing literary texts and recordings, including barriers to collecting small press materials and  proposing solutions that will allow libraries to continue to collect literary objects regardless of medium. It was moderated by Jessica Smith and also featured Elise Ficarra, Judah Rubin, and Dan Coffey.

Crowdsourcing Content to Promote Community and Collection Development in Libraries

With the Poetry Center at SF State, I’ve begun to build an open-access digital repository for poetry chapbooks that I’ll be sharing with all of you shortly. The repository is essentially a chapbook exchange: a place for poets to share their current works. Users are invited to share their chapbooks via upload and as such gain access to the chapbook repository. The model is “take a chapbook, leave a chapbook.” Our mission is to provide a space for poets to correspond, convene, and collaborate. The chapbook exchange is a contributor-driven peer-to-peer environment that allows users to exchange chapbooks as a variation on the pay-to-play theme in that in this case, poetry is the currency that allows users to access the site. Yes, you heard that right. Poetry as currency.

As most of us know, the reality is that libraries are underfunded and underappreciated within our capitalist economy.  As collection developers and librarians, the lack of funding remains a primary concern when considering how we can select, promote and advocate for collections while keeping costs down as well as how we can engage our time-strapped, hard-working communities and increase circulation. I would like to discuss ways libraries can augment and reinvigorate extant print and electronic poetry collections to maintain relevancy and reflect the liveliness and vigor of poetry communities. This proposal will discuss crowdsourcing poetry chapbooks from communities as a viable means of expanding existing poetry collections.

Using Crowdsourcing to Develop Poetry Collections

Circulation of poetry collections in public libraries has long been a source of conflict for librarians. The battle between “give ‘em quality” and “give ‘em what they want” continues to rage on the poetry shelf where the books often sit undisturbed in the 811s. Our role as librarians is to navigate that murky line to ensure community access to timely and culturally diverse resources. While poetry collections may not be in as high demand as genre fiction or children’s literature, poetry is an asset to the overall collection due to its quality of influence as well as its appeal to local writing communities. Librarians scaling back on poetry purchases cite a lack of patron interest that seems contrary to the evidence.

As poet/librarians, we witness a dissension between the kinetic, masterful poems we hear at readings or in the street and the often archaic and drab library collections displayed for public consumption. So, what’s missing? Pith. Urgency. The moment. All of which can be found in chapbooks.

Deploying Chapbooks as Community-Bonding Tools

Chapbooks have a long history of communicating impelling messages to communities. “From the 16th to early 19th centuries, chapbooks were mass-produced, cheaply made booklets sold hand-to-hand by traveling salesmen, or chapmen in Western Europe and North America.” (Craig, 2011) Today’s chapbooks are regarded as essential to the evolution of ongoing dialogues around poetics and poetry. “…[They’re] part of ongoing poetic conversations, as well as a practice of exchange that is ever present in the maintenance of community” (Craig, 2011). They are often handmade and sold cheaply or given as gifts.  The message within outweighs financial compensation for the author; often, what fuels their tenacity is a desire to contribute to a powerful lineage of poets as well as a commitment to correspondence and collaboration with peers.

“Giving a chapbook to another poet…serve[s] a similar networking function to the exchange of business cards…In this ongoing conversation, the offering of work is time-sensitive – less because of the content of any particular group of poems, and more because continued participation and membership can be marked by ongoing exchange.” (Craig, 2011)

To augment existing print collections as well as build a virtual poetry collection sustained by global and local poetry communities, the Poetry Center seeks to engage writers by making available virtual hubs for collaboration and exchange of e-chapbooks. The Poetry Center will maintain an instrumental role by providing and moderating key access points to this portal to engage local writers. The open-access format will be conducive to quick and efficient chapbook sharing, and will serve as a forum for writers and other patrons to communicate and share ideas. Writers will also benefit by gaining access to greater communities of fellow writers as well as improved networking opportunities. As such, the chapbook exchange will do much to foster community building as well as promote collections.

These e-book collections will be freely available to the public through our open-access digital repository that we built using Omeka: a product of the Ray Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media.

Currently, the site is a prototype of what we hope will be a lively and vital cooperative space for poets to practice the continuum of reading and writing in the creative process. Contributing creative works in this forum also allows users the opportunity to generate creative responses to extant works in the collections. As such, this chapbook exchange might be a model for teachers wishing to employ emerging technologies in the classroom to highlight opportunities for both active and collaborative learning.

As a cooperatively curated site, it is also a self-sustainable method of disseminating the current arcs of various poetic movements and potentially may prove meritorious in engaging users all over the world.

Cooperative Archiving & Preservation

The cooperative archiving model also has the potential for preservation, and employs the LOCKSS system, which is also known as (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe), a popular preservation technique to ensure persistent access. Some of you currently employ this process when you store multiple copies of a Word doc or jpg for example in your email, Dropbox, hard drive, thumb drive, work computer, desk drawer, etc. While this is a common preservation method, it is not necessarily the most secure since LOCKSS lends itself to the possibility of copies being whittled down one by one for various reasons (unreadable formats, human error, etc)

Nevertheless, we chose Omeka as our trial platform because of the Roy Rosenzweig and Center for History and New Media’s impeccable reputation with preserving and archiving creative works.

For those of you interested in creating your own digital repository or chapbook exchange, an alternative to Omeka is DSpace: a product of DuraSpace originally created by MIT Libraries and Hewlett Packard. While a discussion outlining the logistics of both DSpace and Omeka are beyond the scope of this presentation, I will show a few slides in a minute showing the specs of both. I would also be happy to answer more questions about their capabilities during our Q&A or afterwards.

Conclusion

Our communities are rife with content creators, and the urge to share our creative efforts has galvanized social media as a primary source of information and communication.

As Tyckoson (2003) a leading thinker and futurist writes:  “The nature of publishing is going to change and libraries are going to play a greater part in the process.” Libraries can provide both the tools and the expertise to help users get projects off the ground.  Outreach to local museums, archives, community colleges, and K-12 schools may also be a way to develop existing collections reflective of the local community. By incorporating works by local poets and writers, public libraries can involve users directly by showcasing selected works to ensure patron’s continual value in the future of library service.

We also have a mailing list if you’d like to receive an email invitation to join our chapbook exchange. Thank you!

References

American Library Association. (1996). Library Bill of Rights. Accessed May 10, 2012 from http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill

Andrade, Mary. 2012. Crowdsource your next program design. T+D, 66(3), 52-56.

Antonucci, Ron. 2004. A rhyme a day. Library Journal. Retrieved from http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/ljinprint/currentissue/871807-403/collection_development_quotpoetryquot_a_rhyme.html.csp

Collins, K., Furman, R, & Riddoch, R. 2004. Poetry, writing and community practice. Human Service Education, 24(1), 19-32.

Craig, Ailsa. 2011. When a book is not a book: objects as players in identity and community formation.  Journal of Material Culture, 16 (1), 47-63.

Dymoke, S. & Hughes, J. 2009. Using a poetry repository: how can the medium support pre-service teachers of English in their professional learning about writing poetry and teaching poetry writing in a digital age? English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 8 (3), 91-106

Fallows, D; Horrigan, J; & Lenhart, A.  (2005). Content Creation Online. Washington DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project, February 29. Accessed May 11, 2012: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2004/Content-Creation-Online/2-Content-Creation-Online/1-The-material-people-contribute-to-the-online-world.aspx

Holley, Rose. 2010. Crowdsourcing: How and why should libraries do it? D-Lib Magazine, 16(3) 5-23.

Hughes-Hassell, S., & Miller, E. T. (2003). Public library websites for young adults: Meeting the needs of today’s teens online. Library and Information Science, 25, 143–156.

Jones, P. (2002) New Directions for Library Service to Young Adults. Chicago: American Library Association.

Lenhart, A., & Madden, M. (2005). Teen content creators and consumers. Washington, DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project, November 2. Accessed April 27, 2011: http://www.pewInternet.org/PPF/r/166/report_display.asp

SinhaRoy, S. 2011. Libraries tap into the crowdsource. American Libraries, 42(11/12), 22-23.

Smith, Aaron. (2010). Mobile Access 2010. Washington DC: Pew Internet & American Life Project, July 7. Accessed May 11, 2012: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Mobile-Access-2010.aspx

Tyckoson, David. 2003. On the desirableness of personal relations between librarians and readers: the past and future of reference service. Reference Services Review, 31 (1), 12-16