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
