Eric,Wordsmiths goals:
To provide an outlet for creative, poetic energy by way of group meetings that double as workshops, open mics where group members and non-members can perform their work (poetry, songs, etc.), and pamphlets where group members works is featured. The last two of these, the open mics and pamphlets, serve two further goals: to increase Vassar awareness of Wordsmiths and, more importantly, to increase poetry's place on campus rather than just in the classroom. Let us make poetry virile and vibrant by saturating the school with a verse that is not magnetized to condescension and academia, that, in how it is delivered (voice, paper, etc.), embraces and, crucially, beckons an audience.
Beckons an audience. This is a key point. Last year, this was a problem, that we had so few members at our meetings and such sparse attendance at our open mic. We need to meet and talk seriously about how we'll approach this. For now, I have a few ideas:
-Use either the measly money we have or appeal to the speakers fund and bring a poet to Vassar.
-Bookmarks we make with poems on them that we put in the library. "Wordsmiths and our blog url will be on them.
-More events. At one point we were discussing doing something with VCPUNX. This should occur. We need monthly or so open mics. Continue and expand the poetry at the FLLAC.
-More small publications. Our material should litter the campus. People should it when they see it.
-Get English faculty somehow involved, have them at events or have them be leaders at workshops we organize. Something.
-Involve other literary groups and many music groups on campus with our events. People at Helicon and Write Club should be at our open mics.
-Someone talked about t-shirts at one point. That has some potential. They'd need to stick out and be well designed.
-t-shirt ideas:
-Someone said something about putting quotes on t-shirts. I like that. Let's make the quotes big and put them on t-shirts by cutting cardboard to create a guideline. Then spraypaint or just paint the letters in. Each shirt, this way, will be unique.
-Shirts with a logo on them. I've been working on a new one.
-Just WORDSMITHS in big, black, bold type. All uppercase. It should be askew. We could split up "word" and "smiths."
-Get coverage in the Misc. about Wordsmiths, our pamphlets. This we can definitely do.
I like having our pamphlets be themed; adds a unity to them. All together, we should make a list of ideas for pamphlet theme ideas. Here are a few I've thought of:
-Poems all in the form of romantic classified ads.
-In the same vein of this, poems in the form of obituaries, missed connections.
-All poems inspired by one painting.
-or movie, song, etc.
-All poems in one poetic form that are on the same subject. E.g. haikus on auto repair.
-All poems in the style of same poet or poetic movement.
-Poems that all retell greek myths
-Maybe all poems from one single greek myth.
-Poems on subjects: love, religion, etc.
-Poems all on one experiance. E.g. the last physical contact in a relationship.
-Poems on the first time having done something. E.g. riding a bike, first time to an aquarium, etc.
-Poems all written while on some kind of substance--could have sections titled the name of the substance the poems written under. Intro to it could remind readers of the grand tradition we are following in by writing substance-ridden, that of Coldrige and his opium, Yeats and his mescaline, Dylan Thomas and his alcohol.
-Poems that all use the same words, but in each poem they are ordered differently.
-We're Vassar. Let's do something with Elizabeth Bishop.
A note I wrote myself on the pamphlets:
Think of each pamphlet as an episode of This American Life: the poems unified by their topics, but each having a distinct, singular, and subjective take--so that the poems, read together, give a generalized and hopefully valid view of some facet of the human experience. Hopefully, people will at least read them. And that, getting people to read them , is our most basic and, I think, difficult goal.
Our open mics need to be differentiated from other ones. We need to apply Seth Godin's "Purple Cow" theory: everyone would remember a purple cow if they saw one because all other cows are white and black. We could have some weird prize for the audience's favorite person. There has to be something remarkable about our events. Ideas for how to make our open mics memorable:
-Provide odd prize.
-Reserve some public space. Tell no one. Have spontaneous poetry reading or open mic. Plant people?
-Have style nights, where all work read must be Romantic, Modernist, etc.
Crafting a remarkable and memorable open mic is vital to garnering Wordsmiths followers, people who regularly attend and take part in our open mic. Ideas for how to "brand" the open mic are coming slow to me. We'll talk about it.
We are a spoken word poetry group and we need to address that. We need to work on how we perform our material. I know I do. We need to help each other get better. This is the key goal of Wordsmiths: helping each other get better at writing and performing poetry.
What we should do is flood the school with pamphlets and posters starting a week or so before an open mic. Not just tabling. We should keep putting throughout the whole week so that the posters seem new. We could make a number of different posters and roll out one each day or so. We need to have one of those big banners in the DC and Retreat.
-Eric
