International Pwoermd Day 2018

Geof Huth, "lipspeak" (2018)

The trudge of hard work of International Pwoermd Writing Month has come to an end, but that celebration is followed soon after by International Pwoermd Day, a shorter (and thus easier) event.

This day does arrive too soon after the monthlong celebration, but there's no way around it. May 19th we celebrate as International Pwoermd Day because it is the anniversary of the coinage of the word pwoermd by me in 1988. It's been a long time.

I'll create some pwoermds especially for #InterNaPwoDay and likely write a few small thoughts on pwoermds, and I encourage others to do so as well.

I will also release two "books" of pwoermds and announce the publication of a couple of others.

So stay tuned, and make something yourselves for us to tune into.

pw(o’er)md

Wordlet

The pwoermd is only, not lonely.

pw(o’er)md

The Ethical Pwoermdist

Geof Huth, "wordflesh" (8 April 2018)

Today, Jeremy C. Casabella wrote me to ask me an ethical question:

I put together a pwoermd that had implications with which I felt uncomfortable, and so I changed it. Do you feel it Is a pwoermdist's responsibility in being a pwoermdist to catch them all, or is it best to ignore some possibilities?

I returned a jesuitical response:

We can’t catch everything. But people can hold us responsible for what we make all the same.

I then asked him to send me the two works so I could judge the former against the latter. I found the replacement pwoermd, the revision, to be more problematic--but for reasons entirely different than the problem he had with the first pwoermd.

The interest here was low-level social responsibility (how we show respect to people somehow unlike us). Yet we both came away with different thoughts on what was best, which is to say, least offensive. Jeremy argued, convincingly, that his original would be more offensive to more people, which I agreed could certainly be the case.

The issue here is that we all speak different languages. We have individual relationships with something as complex as language, so we see it from different perspectives, one for each person on earth for each second of their individual lives. 

And that has something to do with the magic of pwoermds. Sometimes, we write an ingenious poem in a single word, but no-one understands the point of it. That doesn't make the poem weak or worthless. It merely shows we can never know enough about language, but we can keep trying--and keep enjoying language as we do.

pw(o'er)md

The Wily Word

Geof Huth, "HUNT" (7 April 2018)

Today, I've had a difficult time with pwoermds. I've made a few--by this point all but one I am required to make. I've not been inspired to create a pwoermd out of my head, meaning a pwoermd of the type I can write onto a page without the need for anything additional.

I have made various forms of pwoermds, however, maybe more than in other days, so the pressure to look for inspiration continues, even though I have less than a half an hour to finish.

We'll see how it works.

pw(o'er)md

Word

The pwoermd is unitary. In the world of many, the pwoermd is singular and alone. \\

The pwoermd exists outside of syntax but inside of language.

The pwoermd is the sound of a human exhalation.

The pwoermd is a breath let go.

The pwoerm is a sound sent outward alone.

I am not the pwoermd, but you are the reliquary for the pwoermd.

If you want to hear the pwoermd, you must be fully of the word.

pw(o’er)md

dpress / un-dpress

Hilton Garden Inn, Room 710, Albany, NY

I’m away from home with a non-functioning keyboard and trying to type on a screen. I found an old pwoermd / fidgetglyph and posted it above. I am tired and barely productive. Maybe this is my work for tonight.

pw(o’er)md

The Pwoermdists

Geof Huth, "DEATHEART" (2 April 2018)

This is just a brief note on the second day of International Pwoermd Writing Month, which day I've decided to call All Fools Day, a note about the pwoermdists I know are doing something for InterNaPwoWriMo. Here's a list of these brave souls:

Tim Canny
Jeremy C. Casabella
for a day, while
Claudia (Rose) Franken
Sean Gallagher
Cliff Hight
Alicia La Motte
Bob Marcacci
Stephen Nelson
Bob Phillips
Katy Rawdon (Smack of Jellyfish)
Sven Staelens
Gökhan Turhan
Hale Turhan

I'll try to write something about each of these brave souls before the month ends.

pw(o'er)md

How It Begins for Me

Before International Pwoermd Writing Month began, I started making a list of types of pwoermds I would be writing each day of this month. I made the stakes hard for myself. Last year was the tenth InterNaPwoWriMo, so I had ten tasks. Since this is the eleventh, I have eleven tasks--and this little essay constitutes the eleventh and final task of the day.

I'm continuing my process from last year, and keeping track of my daily pwoermds on forms I've prepared, so as to ensure that I don't forget a task. But I also make it a little more difficult for myself by deciding (only yesterday) that I would keep track of the creation of my pwoermds in reach time, within the covers of a little rose-colored notebook I bought yesterday. Also, I'm requiring myself to write longer essays about pwoermds, and I'm going to produce a good list of participants--the latter, just not tonight.

In my booklet, I am documenting all the pwoermds I create, along with the time and location of their creation. This booklet is a little pwoermd diary for this month. But what if I make this a daily practice. Will I survive?

Anyway, here are my eleven tasks, to provide a sense of my plans:

1. Environmental Pwoermd

I have to make at least one pwoermd a day that is set out in an environment, that gains meaning by being in a certain setting. Today's pwoermd I set up by a tufting of crocuses in Battery Park, just across the street from my apartment. First, I toured the park to find something to inspire a pwoermd, then I went home wrote the pwoermd down, returned to the park to set it in place, and documented that setting in place.

2. Foreign Language Pwoermd

Each day, I have to write a poem in a language other than English. Today, the language was French, probably because I know it relatively well and because it's a good language for pwoermds. I've written pwoermds in at least three other languages besides English and French, so we'll see what I can make happen with other languages later.

3. Found Pwoermd

I don't know why I have kept this form in the list, since it's a little unnerving to try to find a pwoermd every day. Not make one but FIND one. I have a trick up my sleeve, however, so I should be okay. Today, I heard this pwoermd, a weird mispronunciation-as-portmanteau during the television show "Meet the Press," so I moved this off my list (or onto it?) quickly today.

4. Handwritten Visual Pwoermd

Today is Sunday, and Easter, and April Fool's Day, and the second day of Passover, which is to say I had more time than I would during the week. With this time, I spent maybe an hour making a large handwritten visual pwoermd in pencil. I'll probably confine myself to simpler achievements for the rest of the week.

5. Object Pwoermd

Before this month had even begun, I had collected and even boxed the objects I planned to turn into object pwoermds, so I'm ahead of schedule here. I found a box with seven pieces of glass and made six object pwoermds out of them.

6. Photopwoermd

Even though I take photographs all the time, I had to decide to take a photograph I thought I'd find someway to turn into a photopwoermd--because the rest of my photos were of brunch with Karen or simply of the pwoermds I'd created today.

7. Pwoermd Essay

You're reading that (fairly weak attempt) right now.

8. Pwoermdbottle III

This is the third year of this project, where I write all the transcribeable pwoermds only small lozenges of white cardboard and load them into a bottle (always an empty bottle once holding Barr Hill gin). I like watching the bottle slowly fill.

9. Soundpwoermd

This is an easy pwoermd to make. I'm good at glossolalia, so I just stop myself after a few syllables and call it a soundpwoermd (an aural pwoermd). This year (well, at least today), I made it harder but forcing myself to transcribe the pwoermd into the International Phonetic Alphabets--so let's hope I accurately identified the click I used to end the pwoermd.

10. Textual Pwoermd

I usually make at least one of these a day, so these are not hard for me. I even created one ("countercountenances") early this morning before I had gone to bed. I did four of these non-visual pwoermds today.

11. Wildcard Pwoermd

I made this one loose, so that it could include any kind of pwoermd I had not made over the course of the day. Today's was a pwoermdkname for my friend mIEKAL aND. I realized as I was writing this that I didn't write an icepwoermd today, so I stopped to create "ghust," which is almost my email i.d., but which is really a strong gust. I took the picture of it in the dark, so that the flashing of the flash would be a gust of light.

With that, I'm almost done. All I have to do is update the pwoermdbottle and post evidence of "ghust," because distributing evidence is a big part of this project.

pw(o'er)md

Announcing International Pwoermd Writing Month XI

Geof Huth, [Visual Pwoermd after Saroyan] (29 March 2018)

The first of April, Easter, Passover, the first changing over to spring in a way we can feel it are all upon us. And with such graces of the seasons comes International Pwoermd Writing Month, the least of all the writing months of all the countries of the world, because it is the month focused on poems only one word in length. Add a title or another word, and the pwoermd disappears.

This year, I am once again calling for people to tell me if they will be making pwoermds this month and where they will be posting them, so that I can try to do a better job than I usually do pointing people to the pwoermds being made in the world.

To be truthful, every month is International Pwoermd Writing Month (officially only April) and every day is International Pwoermd Day (officially May 19th), but it is good to take a break from two-word and full-sentence pwoermds to focus on the small and see deeply into this thing called language and this ability of ours called insight.

If you will be participating, leave a note here or look for my name on the Internet and leave me a note where you find me.

A pwoermd is fleeting but that is why it is also precious.

pw(o’er)md