The Watercats have disappeared (I think you know where my suspicions lie) and three fair lady girl women things, all experienced riders of the Bus, have made suggestions:
NanU: Happiness!
Rachel: have a week off
Weaver: open week - submit anything you like.
Which is lovely.
But before the poem bit, tonight I felt in the mood for some reflection. Tomorrow, The Poetry Bus takes on a further incarnation, becoming a print magazine. Of some rare beauty, judging by the preview pictures. And really, you have to ask "How"?
I stumbled across TFE's blog via, I think, ArtSparker's, and the first few times I dropped in he was dying of pneumonia. As someone who has had pneumonia, I felt an empathy for this whiner, so came back a few times. And on one of those times, back in August 2009, TFE set a five-minute-poem challenge. Whoever wanted to was instructed to sit down at 7pm on the Monday, write a poem in five minutes and then post it. I wanted to play (no change there) and had a rant about a call-centre manager who really was called Kelsey McNally. She probably still is.
So if you want to know who was there when the Bus wasn't even a Bus, then you can relive it here:
http://titusthedog.blogspot.com/2009/08/its-five-minute-poem.html
Notice in the comments TFE said, "Might post wekly tasks till people get bored. " Ha!
Thus, the Bus was born, and TFE drove it solo. He came up with all the prompts (remember the week when we not only had to get hold of an obscure Irish film, we then had to watch it and then write the poem about it)(said film's depression rating was a maximum 10). He did all the links. The Bus turned into a double-decker, TFE got a bit overwhelmed, the keys started getting handed out, and then, and then, doesn't he decide to turn it into a print magazine as well.
Incredibly, laudably, he has.
Now the big story also has our stories inside of it, and mine is a bit this. I haven't missed a Poetry Bus challenge. Partly because I have an addictive personality, partly because I have a loyalty thing that pervades my world-view, partly because I knew it was doing my writing good but mostly because it's such good fun. It just works. The Bus is warm, welcoming, it carries the rhymers, the first-timers, the novella-length writers (been guilty of that myself a few times) as well as the itty-bitty ditty-ers. Real, serious poets, part-time poets, just joining-in poets, every and any sort of poet can buy a ticket and they get just the same ride. No business class, no first class and no economy. We sit together. That is the Bus.
So thanks to the man who created this phenomenon, and who has given it an ethos which makes it irresistible.
It's also given me most of my new book (hmm, quite a lot of Bus poems made the cut...) and one huge leg-up now I've started the much-deferred MLitt. I can write to a prompt! Usually in 5 minutes! Ha-Ha!
So I've taken a bit of NanU's suggestion this week, and a bit of Weaver's. I have no doubt that not even Rachel has taken her own suggestion, for the weeks roll by and the Bus rolls on and there we all are at the Bus stop. My poems are about starting university, which has made me happy. But they're also a bit about anything. The first, for the man to whom we owe it all, is a haiku with a title.
The 2-Hour Workshop
Nicotine is more
addictive than heroin.
Give me a fag break.
and then this:
Beginnings
I am all red dragon this moment
in process of becoming.
It won't last.
I'll get tired,
they'll find out
I read Thomas Harris.
What is there left to say except God Bless TFE and all who sail with him?
Oh yeah, NanU's doing the links, here:
http://sciencegirltraveler.blogspot.com/2010/10/poetry-bus-of-happiness.html
Huzzah!
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