Since 1993, a menagerie of poets from across the globe has been waking up at 3:15 AM every night during the month of August to write as an attempt to capture (and ride) that precarious state between dreaming and waking.
Steps:
1) get notebook
2) get ball point pen (ink pens can leak and stain sheets and pages)
3) apologize to loved ones (or invite them to join)
4) set your alarm on JULY 31, 2010 for 3:15 AM*
5) wake up (but not too much, we likey 1/2 sleep language)
6) write
7) repeat (for the entire month of August)i’m doing this for the first time this year! well, a slight variation of it? i expressed my concern at the fact that i’m often sleepless for a couple of days at a time, and when i do sleep i’m generally nocturnal (meaning not asleep at 3:15 am), and i got told this:
There are no hard and fast rules. We’re a loose bunch. It’s really up to you and what you want to get out of the experiment. The general idea is to write in an altered state of consciousness, riding that precarious line between sleeping and… waking. Pick whatever time that would be for you. If the “middle of the night” is 10 AM, then write 10:15 poems. Perhaps you can set your alarm to go off 4 hours after you go to sleep, whenever that is? As long as it’s in the spirit of the experiment, then who cares about rules. :-)
SO YAY. i think it’ll be fun! it starts tomorrow night!
click through for the facebook event. this is the official site & this is the official facebook group. whoooo poetry
So. Cool.
This looks interesting.
