by ROBERT FLEMING, Founding member of OLD SCRATCH PRESS – a poetry/short-form collective | estd. 2023
In January, 2024 I wrote a blog on Hybrid Poetry which is an integration of two or more art forms, where one form is text.
If you create a hybrid work, who should you collaborate with? If you choose another person you will have to coordinate with them and all their peculiarities. Such a Drag! Why not collaborate with yourself? Only have to deal with when you are in a good or bad mood.
My hybrid blog showed my first visual poem, at age 11, I integrated poetry and visual drawing with crayons.
Figure 1.
Do you have two or more skills that can be integrated? Pick them from this list.
- writing poetry
- writing prose
- creating visual art
- music: playing an instrument
- singing
When you join two skills, it might have been given a name:
- prose poetry = writing prose and writing poetry
- visual poetry = writing poetry and creating visual art
- performance poetry = (playing an instrument or singing) and writing poetry
If you have integrated two skills before:
- How did it go?
- Would you do it again?
- Consider not just the quality of your work but did you enjoy it?
In deciding whether to collaborate with yourself:
- Comparatively at what skill level (beginner, intermediate, advanced) are your two skills? Are they at the same skill level or different? My two skills of writing poetry and creating visual art are at the same level.
- If your skills levels are not at the same level (e.g. intermediate in writing poetry, beginner in playing an instrument), can you accept that your work produced is likely to be at the lower skill level?
- What will you do with your work: celebrate it and share it with others, share it with yourself, or trash it?
- Cycling between genres: At the current time, what is your inspiration for creating different types of work? I cycle through different time periods where I am motivated to spend a different percent of time on each genre (25% poetry, 50% visual art, 25% visual poetry). In 2022, when I was producing my visual poetry book, White Noir, 75% of my time was in visual poetry.
What’s it going to be?
Collaborate with yourself?
- No: stick to one genre
- Yes: try it as an experiment
Collaborate with others? Read Robert’s upcoming blog.
Robert Fleming, a contributing editor of Old Scratch Press
OLD SCRATCH PRESS – a poetry/short-form collective | estd. 2023
who published an Amazon best seller visual poetry book: White Noir
an editor of the digital magazine Instant Noodles
Recent Robert Fleming publications and art
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