_ poetic directions --- 2007, ongoing

in this project, breakarts artists & friends create & exchange "poetic directions" in the form of a series of steps designed to generate poetic text & images. participants receive a set of directions designed to inspire ephemera collecting, image-making, and poem-writing. the results of these poems and images are then gathered and sent back to the direction-giver. the directions themselves become a kind of poem, provoking new ways of relating and ordering the everyday. the culminating event will be a showing of this co-respondence.

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Poetic Directions, Version #2, Rachel McIntire
due: june 30, 2008 to rachel's email

Walking into the Fire

My poetic directions are inspired by a conversation Amanda and I were having some time back about the extreme sense of intimacy we shared with our sleek sensuous Macintosh’s; finger tips tipper tapping late into the night. Amanda declared that the computer was the postmodern fireplace, where people, alone and in cluster, gathered for the sharing of stories, current events and general support attached to the act of communing.

With that thought, walk into the flame.

Turn on our computer
Make a wish as you machine revs up, screen after bursting screen.

Write a code word to that wish and a date that corresponds to when you hope it will come true.

Platform fork in the road

MAC: Go in to photo booth & take a picture of yourself.
List 5 adjectives that describe what you see.
Tell a story about this person’s childhood, their earliest memory.

PC: go in to your photo folder and select an image of yourself, one where you are not posing for the camera.
List 5 adjectives that describe what you see.
Tell a story about this person’s childhood, their earliest memory.

Convergence

Open up your internet browser.
Sign into your most used email service.
Go to the oldest page and select a message from a name that rings the loudest bell.
Respond to your own email, relative to what you know today about how that message was received.

Google Earth

Find a place to rest. Go on vacation on google earth and write a postcard to a friend describing how you are spending your time.

Search for a secret

Do a google search for a secret you have. What are you told?

Write a short goodbye note to your secret. Delete it.
Write a welcome note to your future. Save it.

Empty the trash

Turn off your computer

Go outside and find a comfortable place to sit.
Write about the sky before you.
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Poetic Directions, Version # 1
due: april 30, 2008 to amanda's email



1. Leave.

2. Walk ten steps in any direction.

3. Stop. Look straight ahead. What do you notice? Write a haiku.

4. Walk ten steps in any direction.

5. Listen. Write down eight words to tell the story of those sounds.

6. Keep walking the number of steps equal to your age.

7. Stop. Look for the person closest to you and ask, "What are you going through right now?"

8. Write down their response.

9. Walk ten steps in any direction.

10. Stop. Breathe. Write about the ugliest thing you can see or think of right now.

11. Stop. Breathe. Write about the most beautiful thing you can see or think of right now.

12. Keep walking in the direction of blue.

13. What is sadness to you, right now? Write a haiku.

14. Find a place to sit down.

15. Write a brief love letter.

16. Call a friend right now and ask, "Where have you been today and where are you going?"

17. Take careful notes on this conversation.

18. Keep walking the number of steps equal to your mother's age when she met your father.

19. Think of your mother. Write down 3 questions for her. Make her a promise.

20. Arrive.

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