Stanzas: Monthly Chapbooks August 2015 (Collaboration) | Page 2

The Melting Pot

T

ake a little word, add a few lines, splash a bit of ink over it, what
have you? You could say a poem, you could say a picture. Some
say a picture paints a thousand words, so is a thousand words a picture?
We’ve seen pictures painted in a single sentence, and in a single picture
whole universes.
We’ve just come from putting on a festival, so we thought for
August we’d do something nice and simple. Simple, like taking eleven
poets and pairing them with eleven artists, getting each to collaborate
and come up with uniquely inspired pieces and throw it all together on
the night with music layered on top. Simple: Stanzas Style.
Maybe we’re pushing ourselves too far, we’ve certainly wondered
how we got here and where we’re going. But then maybe we’re not
pushing ourselves far enough. For this ‘Collaboration’ themed Stanzas
we wanted to test the boundaries of what poets and artists can do.
What happens when you take artforms and smash them together?
We’re like the Large Art Collider, causing a black hole in the universe
of Literature and sucking all your assumptions in. What comes out the
other end, well, we’ll find out won’t we?
In this (big)little book every item on the left is an origional piece,
whether poem or picture. And on the right is what that piece inspired.
We have tigers and blankets, playgrounds and cups of tea. It’s all here.
It’s all wonderful. It’s all so terribly Ort.
Maybe it’s not for you. Maybe you like your words triple distilled
and poured over a glass of irony. But Stanzas has never been about
this so-called “purity” of poetry. We’re not even a poetry night! We’re
an evening of words, thank you very much. So whether you swallow
your words whole, or with a side of pencil number B4, we’ve got you
covered. There’s always room at this inn. Pull up a seat, feather your
cap, pluck thy brain from the consciousness that combines us, and
maybe, just maybe, get inspired enough to write your own mish-mash
of poetry and art. Heck, if it’s good, we’ll add it to next year’s batch.
‘cos we’re not going anytime soon, so get creating, it’s time for
stanzas