Our Part of the Night, part 2

In the past when I've done this poetry project, I had always composed them initially in a notebook. What I've done is simple, I will write anywhere from 2 to 10 poems in my notebook that are either the same poem, the same title, or the same thread. Once that's done, some time later, I'll go back to them, edit them by either finding the piece that works the best, or by combining some parts of several poems into a single one. This usually happens on the computer.

I put the individual poems into a folder and sometimes I'll title the folder with the intention of making a chapbook. Sometime I'll make the chapbook. When I make the chapbook, it is digital, it always stays digital. I've never once printed a chapbook. I consider the project completed and I move one. Over the last several years, I do this in September between a photo project in August and Inktober in October.

But this year, I decided to skip the computer outright.

So, this is how skills build on one another. Writing poetry is one thing. And interestingly, the poetry was the secondary outcome of the project. The first thing, was to do something unplugged. And the next thing, was that I was determined to make a final product.

In this day of slick digital tools, I decided to go very lofi.

I decided to make a single copy of a poetry chapbook, one unique copy with no back ups.

I got out my trusty Smith and Corona Skywriter. I have had this particular typewriter for a decade, and I have never really used it. I loaded it up with a new ribbon some years ago. My cousin provided me with correction tape. I thought about hierarchy on pages, and I got a set of rubber stamps for the titles. This was going to be very lofi.

The last time I used a typewriter for my writing was in the summer of 2000. I was in a cabin in the coast mountain range of Oregon. I did not have electricity in the cabin, and I was looking at very long nights. That was 23 years ago and things have changed.

The process began in the composition notebook, and when it came time to rewrite the poems, I would have to rewrite them the way I wanted them to be and then I would type them. I wanted the final outcome to be 30 poems, or in a way, one poem a day for the month of September.