Pandemic Poems x PSNY Collaboration
A 24-hour collaborative poetry experiment. A sonnet crown—or "corona"—of epic proportions.
Read the poem hosted on the Poetry Society of NY website here: https://www.poetrysocietyny.org/pandemic-poems-may-day
About this Event
If there is one thing we're learning, it's that it is okay to not be okay. It is good to call out for help, for advice, for a friend, or a word, or a string of words, like pearls, for something beautiful to connect us to one another in the face of sorrow. That's why The Poetry Society of New York and Pandemic Poems are teaming up this May Day to offer each other a little help with a big project and to put out a call to poets globally: m'aider, come help me.
PSNY and Pandemic Poems will be laying the groundwork over the coming weeks to pair poets up from all over the world who will collaborate on a series of "Pandemic Poems." Poets will be given a partner, a first line, and a last line. Each pair will then work together, going line for line, to co-create a sonnet in a single day (May 1st). Throughout the day each poem will travel back forth between partners until it is complete. Following this communal poetry exchange, PSNY and Pandemic Poems will string these sonnets together, one after the other, into a sonnet crown (or "corona") of epic proportions!
A sonnet is a poem with a problem to solve. Let's write our way through this crisis together, dig until we find the line that helps us to remember where we are and what we've learned. Let's turn a thousand voices into one beautiful sound, that we can all lift together and wear, like a crown.
HOW DO I PARTICIPATE?
The most important question! Just register here on Eventbrite with your email address, and you will receive an email connecting you with your writing partner, providing your first and last lines of the poem, and offering further instructions for creating and submitting your sonnet when you're done.
I'VE NEVER WRITTEN A SONNET! CAN I STILL PARTICIPATE?
Of course! We're not asking you to be Shakespeare, but we would love it if you were sincere, or funny, or fragile. If possible, your poem should be fourteen lines, but these sonnets can be nontraditional and are not encouraged to follow a meter or rhyme scheme, unless you and your partner feel compelled to! What we really want is to hear your voice, and the voices of everyone who's willing to reach out, with a hand or a heart string (or an email address), to connect with us, and to each other, and say something meaningful about this collective experience.
HOW DID THIS PROJECT COME ABOUT?
The Poetry Society of New York (PSNY) was planning a resurrection and relaunch of its collaborative poetry experiment, The Typewriter Project, in Brooklyn this May. The Typewriter Project’s mission has always been to investigate, document, and preserve the poetic subconscious of a people and a place in a moment in time. With the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, we realized we would either have to postpone the project indefinitely or find a way to pivot and fulfill the project's mission in this unprecedented time of fear, sorrow, and isolation. That's when we reach out to our friend, Kate Belew, who had recently launched Pandemic Poems. Pandemic Poems was created to help people connect to each other in times of isolation. Through the format of e-mail, Kate was able to make a place in cyberspace for poets to create with little pressure or expectation, except to remind one another that none of us are alone in this. Creating shared stories is a form of survival, and all of us facilitating this project are hopeful that participants will not only survive but perhaps even thrive in the knowledge that in the face of this crisis, we are banding together to support one another on a global scale. Sign up here.