From "Poem/Post" to "Twitter Political Theatre": On to Step Three

On to step three in our Election 2010 Social Media Experiment! It looks like we'll be using all  of the Twitter poems we harvested during the mid-term election as elements in the theatrical version of this brand-new media thing we're all exploring together.

That means we've got 31 original tweets with which to work, plus 11 cultivated tweets culled from other sources. Depending on how the performance piece evolves, we may or may not incorporate those culled items.

I'll get to work on a narrative frame for the theatrical "product" -- my goal is to have a first draft done by December 15th. I'll announce it via Twitter and then post the entire "script" on this blog, so we can take your comments and suggestions for a couple of weeks before wrapping it up by early January 2011.

It would be especially nice if we could have the performance piece ready for a public reading by the time these newly elected law-makers are sworn in, eh?

More later,
KSH.

Twitter poems are IN -- Let us know what you think!

Lots of people have asked us to post the poems we got in our experiment. Here they are without attribution – Want to see who wrote them visit our tweet stream at www.twitter.com/112poems

PLEASE GIVE US YOUR FEEDBACK ABOUT WHICH ONES YOU'D LIKE TO SEE INCLUDED IN OUR THEATRE PIECE SOMETIME BEFORE THANKSGIVING. We can even use them ALL if we want to!

Prelude:

Twitter Poems send to @112poems between 20  October 2010 - 1 November 2010

* Halloween night, two days before the vote. A cobbled alley, flickering with torchlight. My own ghost sits beside me. Which of us is sighing?

* She shuffles down the street, her life crammed into a dirty pillowcase. What is Election Day to her?

* They say the political pendulum swings back and forth, left & right. But what if it gets stuck?

* To ensure my roommates vote, I will drive them myself to the polls. And I have hidden all the alcohol and food.

* Not going to vote. Not watching the news. Instead I’ll go looking for love and light up the night. Sheer self-preservation.

 

* Isn’t it at the tea party that Alice realizes everyone is crazy?

 

* Special rules for special interests. One minority group after another. They say America is broken. No, it isn’t. Americans just got lazy.

November 2, 2010:  Election Day

* No sleep the night before. No sleep the night after. Still, it's worth getting up with the dawn on November 2nd. The sunrise needs help.

* Off to the polls. Down the rabbit hole. In just 24 hours the world could be spinning in another direction. Backwards.

 * I just walked into my son's school & saw the optimistic smiles of the voters. While I am optimistic, I just don't feel like they look.

* Promises made. Promises broken. Tonight the promises get CPR. Long time coming.

* Voting 2010. Feels like Dead Man Walking. I do it anyway. One tiny cell in the centre of my heart must still hope

* As election day closes, I truly wonder what form change will take now

* Every day is Election Day. This is just the one day we define ourselves with math.

* And the House flips...

* I can't help but wonder if one person beating another will help me get a job when I graduate.

* All this tea, and what I need is a strong cup of coffee.

* Last night's politics conversation with the boyf's roommate ended in flow charts and yelling. And he's going to waste his votes

* I wonder if I have enough tequila in the house for this election night. The dog wants to get drunk.

* The polls seem packed. People are especially noisy, like they are before a wedding. Or after a funeral.

* CNN just used the world "bloodbath" to describe the election. Time for reruns of 'the office'

* Hope is not a form of protection. Just ask Bristol.

* MSNBC should just get rid of the analysts and bring in therapists for viewers.

* Exit polls depress me. Here's hoping they're wrong

* Perfect world 2010: I dreamed it was a new day. And then I got up and voted.

The Day After:  November 3, 2010

* The world has gone crooked, wrenched on its axis like a swastika.

 * America for Americans. Back to the basics. It's about time.

* For sale. One large North American nation. Slightly used. Great fixer-upper.

* This is a big one. Enough disappointment and even perfectly nice people become fascists. Germany 1932. We have been here before.

* We may not have a functioning government, but our state-of-the-art negative ads are the envy of the world.

* Election 2010. Backlash? Or mid-flight correction? Depends on what "backwards" looks like to you.

@112poems also Cultivated Election-Related Twitter Poetry

* Getting up so soon I'm using an egg timer for an alarm clock 

* Suddenly feel less uncertain. May go out and create a job today. .

* Angry whites who lost their jobs/homes becuz their jobs were outsourced just voted back in the 1s who outsourced em

* Terms I've heard for last night: "Demaggedon," "Demolition,""Democalypse." Any others?

* About last night: we are a nation of swingers.

* Every morning the silverhaired woman stands on her porch, throwing kisses at dawn, nibbling on whole wheat toast

* The problems with progressives is we take library books to a knife fight - Rep. Anthony Weiner.

* The painful things in our life are only pretending to be permanent.

 * A dank drizzle is falling. The slow sweep of the windshield wipers sets the rhythm of my day and I entertain thoughts of a whaling voyage.

* I don't think any of these Republican wins are valid until they SHOW US THEIR BIRTH CERTIFICATES.

* Message of '10: What the wave giveth, the wave taketh away.

At least in Alaska, the election continues! Feel free to keep your poems coming to @112poems

And if you don't see your tweet listed here -- send it to us again!

The Election's Over But We Aren't -- KEEP TWEETING

Hi, there,

Dateline:  November 3, 2010. GREAT JOB everyone -- we've gotten wonderful material in the last few days, with a virtual starburst of material in the last 12 - 18 hours, and I want to thank each and every one of you. This is truly a ground-breaking experience that's giving us a lot to work with in the next few months as we move into the theatrical development stage.

BUT IT'S NOT OVER YET!

The next 24 - 48 hours will see a waterfall of feelings cascading across the American political landscape, and we want to make sure we capture as many as we can. So PLEASE KEEP TWEETING and begin this morning, with "Day After" tweets.

There are already some great examples of these in the 112poems tweet stream, and I've written a few more to illustrate the kind of thing we hope to see from tweeters all across the political spectrum.

(Please remember that the following twitter poems do not represent my own personal feelings on last night's events -- they are EXAMPLES I've tried to craft from a variety perspectives.)

I will label them as such, although, in the big scheme of self-governance, I tend to find labels extra-ordinarily unhelpful to the democratic process.

OK; here goes. Apologies in advance if I get it wrong from any particular POV. I've deliberately tried to make them dramatic.

SAMPLE TWEET POEM FROM (Imagined) TEA PARTY P.O.V. "America for Americans. Back to the basics. It's about time."


SAMPLE TWEET POEM FROM DEFEATED PARTISANS (Democrats and pre-tea party Republicans): "The world has gone crooked, wrenched on its axis like a swastika."


SAMPLE TWEET POEM FROM THE NEWLY POLITICALLY EMBITTERED WHO STILL HAVE A SHRED OF HOPE: "For sale. One large North American nation. Slightly used. Great fixer-upper."


SAMPLE TWEET POEM FROM THE FRESHLY FRIGHTENED AND/OR POLITICAL OPT-OUTS: "This is a big one. Enough disappointment and even perfectly nice people become fascists. Germany 1932. We have been here before."

OK -- time to log off and get moving through this historic day. Please be continued companions for this remarkable journey. It's been great so far!

All the best,

Dr. Harvey.

Some examples

Just to get things rolling, I've tweeted two examples of "Election Day poems" -- but this is just one of the many, many ways that a "pweet" can look!

You are Invited to Our Election Day Twitter Poetry Experiment

Please join us during the 2010 Election in a ground-breaking theatre, politics and Twitter experiment called "112 Poems."

We're exploring the role of the arts as a way to capture political experience via social media, and we want to invite you to Tweet us your thoughts and feelings, hopes, fears, reflections and surprises during this high stakes election. The experiment is being run by Dr. Kerric Harvey in George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs.

What we're doing is curating a collection of people’s experiences, observations, dreams and desires written during the period around Election Day 2010, which we're calling “Twitter poetry.”

The point of this project is simply to start using Twitter as a way of exploring political experience via the arts. Who knows what we'll find?

We're not sure what we're going to do with the poems yet -- but we're thinking of turning them into a book, a piece of academic research, a live performance – or all or none of the above depending on what we get and what we learn.

But even if you don’t want to contribute poetry we could really use your help.

In terms of the "poems" themselves -- there's no need to worry about making them rhyme if you don't want to, and don’t worry about whether it’s a “good enough” poem or “fancy enough” writing. If it’s true to your own experience, then that’s what we want.

In fact, these are more “quick peek observations” than they are conventional poems – slivers of your life and how it feels to YOU during this watershed election. The tweets can be funny, angry, quirky, wry, confused, sad, excited, baffled, despairing, hopeful, and everything in between.

They don't have to look like conventional poems. They can use all the 113 words available in our tweets (to leave space for the RT request) or consist of just a word or two, and you can send as many pweets as you like.

Here's how it works:  Anything you write in the time period around the election will go into our twitter poetry folio. We’ll ReTweet a bunch of these back to you, and together we’ll pick 15 - 25 of them to make into a short performance piece with both Real World and online presentations.

To participate, follow @112poems and submit your poems as a reply to @112poems or with the hastag #112poems. Please no obscenity, hate speech or ranting.

Here’s where you come in even if you don’t want to send us anything as a Twitter poem.

I’m new to twitter – which is key to my research – and so I not only don’t have time to cultivate followers, so I need you to spread the word about this project to your followers.

All I need you to do is follow me at @112poems and to retweet some of my tweets about the project. You can also read and tweet a link to the full blog post about the project which is at bit.ly/112poems

I’m asking folks who write for the experience to use the hashtag #112poems

We're looking for tweet poems (pweets) from all across the political spectrum, so don't be shy!