House of Words (no. 25): Dave Bonta and the internet, 6

Dave Bonta, "Brush Mountain under ice,"
February 2011

MY: One thing I notice about the online part of what publishers call "presence" — particularly through Facebook and sometimes through my blog — is that I meet people who want to collaborate. I don't always have the time for this, but I have met wonderful artists in various fields this way. They have given me far more than I can ever give back, except through the simple fact of going on and doing work that they like. You are involved in a number of ongoing collaborations. How did they begin, and how do they make you more fruitful or help (imp the wing!) your own creativity?


DB: They definitely help. They come about naturally enough, because if you have a daily writing habit, you're always looking for material. For example, when the nature blogger and photographer Jennifer Schlick approached me last month about writing poems in response to a series of 16 macro photographs of spring wildflowers, I jumped at the opportunity. Ekphrastic poems are fun to write, and I love wildflowers. The fact that the poems will be featured in an artists book associated with an exhibition in upstate New York, and possibly in a print-on-demand book if we can figure out how to do that — that's gravy, but it wasn't my primary incentive.

I like these eyes in a beech bole...
Dave Bonta, "Beech grotesquerie," February 2010

Similarly, Luisa A. Igloria's now daily responses to my Morning Porch posts began almost by accident, on Facebook, where I automatically repost Morning Porch content. A very busy writer and academic, she has just enough time (and brilliance) to write a poem in her spare time each day, but not enough time to chill on her front porch as I do and watch the world go by until a poetic subject turns up. So she gets a daily prompt and a new audience, and I get stellar content to re-post to Via Negativa, plus the opportunity to watch a master poet at work. Her energy feeds off my indolence. I love it.

There are just so many opportunities for collaboration now — I don't see how any serious writer can fail to be excited by that. I think poets need to move away from the mentality of always writing for the next, single-author book, or if that's too much of a stretch, at least stop thinking about collections of poetry solely in terms of print.