Categories
Culture Me Other

The Poetry Wiki, again

Julie, in the comments a couple of posts down the page, said:

Harry,

I’ve gotten emails from people who’ve checked out the wiki and think it’s a neat idea, though none of them are playing. Yet? I hope so.

I think one reason that The Poetry Wiki didn’t take off in its previous incarnation is that, psychologically, it’s quite intimidating. It’s not quite like anything you’d normally do with poetry, and it’s hard to know how to approach it or where to start. Are you rewriting the poem drastically? Tweaking it? Trying to respect the original intention? Bouncing off it in some other way? Cutting? Adding?

Julie’s idea of posting one of Spenser’s poems as a starting point gets rid of one psychological block, because you don’t have to worry about how the original writer will react.

I might post a similarly unthreatening piece to play with later, although the best thing to do would just be to dive in and edit.

Categories
Nature

Top ten animals I’d most like to see

It’s the season for lists. I’m not going to do a review of 2005 in music or films of poetry or anything. I’m going to do a list of ‘top ten animals that it would be really really cool to see’. One ground rule – they can’t be extinct, so no Dodo, no Great Auk, no moas, no phorusrhacoids, no baluchitherium, no pteranodons, no plesiosaurs, no seismosaurus or tyrannosaurus. Not even a giant prehistoric dragonfly. *sigh*

Still, even without a time machine there are some pretty great things to see.

Before I get onto the final list, here’s a list of ten that might have made it onto the list if I hadn’t already seen them. In no particular order:

Stellar’s Sea Eagle

Giraffe
Black and White Colobus Monkey
Giant Anteater
Amazon River Dolphin
Carmine Bee-eater
Skimmer
Hoatzin
African Elephant
Leopard