Robert Brewer posts poetry prompts on Wednesdays. I’ve found that this gets me into a practice of writing–even if it’s awful. Today’s prompt is to start a poem with “I think…” Let me know if you make this happen. I’m not publishing my poetry in this blog, but I do have an email list of people who are also writing the prompts if you want to
join–and you can also post your poem on Brewer’s blog to be part of that community.

In addition to Neil Gaiman’s short story starting at noon Eastern today, you might be interested in following the Twitter thread started by Robert Brewer. It uses the hashtag #poettues, as I mentioned in my previous post. You don’t even have to have a Twitter account to follow along. Just go to this Twitter search for #poettues. This is a new experiment, and I’m interested in seeing what comes of it.

Poets & Writers Magazine has come up with a database of writing contests that have been vetted and somehow proved legitimate. Even if you don’t win anything, isn’t it nice to have the motivation of a deadline?

Another motivator is Robert Brewer, who is the editor of Writer’s Market and Poet’s Market, as well as the online editor of WritersMarket.com. He does prompts for poets every Wednesday from his blog, Poetic Asides. Today’s prompt is “about finding something that doesn’t belong where it is.” You can also join his page on Facebook to follow the prompts and get great poetry news. He has recently started a meme on Twitter with the hashtag #poettues for conversations about poetry (I think they were meant to be exclusively on Tuesdays, but who knows what will happen). You can follow the conversation on Twitter, even if you don’t have an account.

So I haven’t blogged since June. It’s now October. I’ve been studiously ignoring this blog. I just found a wonderful comment that I missed from said studious ignorance (thank you Ellen). I am so immersed in MSU Libraries and our emerging technology efforts, Facebook, Twitter, and Virtual Reference. Honestly, I’m tired of it. Maybe even burnt out. We aren’t going to be able to do the MS Library 2.0 Summit this year because of the current economic climate–even though there has been passionate interest in doing it again. Maybe it’s because I didn’t make a more compelling argument?

Lately all I seem to be interested in is poetry and art. Fourth Fridays. The cre8tive warehouse. Launching a new graphic novels bookclub in Starkville. Housekeeping. I’ve even started writing poetry again when I get exhausted from writing academic papers on Virtual Reference.

I just found myself sitting at my desk, trying to figure out how I could push the information I’m gathering about these topics. I thought about Facebook, but I needed an RSS feed. I thought about Twitter, but I needed more than 140 characters. Then I remembered this long neglected blog. Could I really do it? Aren’t I supposed to be a professional/librarian online? Am I allowed to have a personal-ish blog? More struggling with Online Identity. Is it better to have a dead blog if I can’t think of anything to say anymore about 2.0 and Libraries? Should I just kill it altogether and make this site a CV?

But then I remembered that my goal is to experiment always. My job is to find new ways of using technology–sometimes they have applications for libraries and sometimes they don’t. I was reminded about Carol Greider, who had been conducting “irrelevent” basic science research–quietly studying an enzyme with no application in mind. An enzyme which eventually became critical in understanding cancer and aging.

So maybe everything I do doesn’t have to have an application. Maybe it’s okay to just do something to do it and let the cards fall.

In celebration of the UK’s Poetry Society’s 100 anniversary.

I find this tremendously comforting for some reason. Can you imagine the meeting where they decided to do this? “Yes…how about knitting? Everyone loves to knit. We’ll get hundreds of people to knit letters and send them to us and sew them together into a huge poem. Yes, yes, that will work.” Amazing.

For the knitted poem they selected Dylan Thomas’ My Craft or Sullen Art, which you can find in full text or audio at the Poetry Archive, and since I am a librarian, and they’ve gotten all the permissions to post it, I won’t. It’s a declaration of his craft, his role as a poet. Sort of a poetic mission statement. “I write on these spendrift pages …. for the lovers, their arms / Round the griefs of the ages, / Who pay no praise or wages / Nor heed my craft or art.” Art for arts sake.