Monday, April 06, 2009

Compasses reopens!

A year or so ago, Joe Hyam and I had a project over at our shared blog, 'Compasses', where I supplied photos to illustrate his cycle of 50 sonnets 'Handbook for Explorers'. Since this finished, the blog has been lying there gathering dust.

Late last year, we started another collaboration, only this time we each asked the other a question, then responded with a piece of writing. It began as a submission for qarrtsiluni's current 'Mutating the Signature' edition, but it didn't make it, and indeed, in the form it was then neither of us was really satisfied with it.

We cut it right down, changed it about, expanded it again, chopped more of it out, became distracted by good weather, bad health, doubt and uncertainty and other ideas and activities, edited and rewrote it some more, and now we have at last committed ourselves to doing something with it. We are both inveterate tinkerers and if we waited until we were both totally happy and sure about anything we'd never get anywhere. So it's now or never. Though we have an initial blueprint for it, it will change as we go along, and are not entirely certain how it will finish up.

As it stands now, Joe has posted a response to the question 'What do you know that I don't know?' I'll respond in the next 24 hours, then perhaps there will be a gap before the next response, etc. We'll see.

(The evident problem with publishing something like this in blog form, of course, is that it will unfold 'back to front', so will ned to be read from bottom to top, as it were... I'm sure you'll manage!)

3 comments:

Zhoen said...

For those of us who love nosing in on other people's conversations.

The Crow said...

I like the immediacy, the freshness, of the poetry, Lucy; more like following, as Zhoen said above, a meandering conversation between old friends.

Pure delight for me!

:)

apprentice said...

I look forward to foloowing this.