Have I mentioned how lucky I am? Whenever I ask folks to collaborate, they rarely say no, they nearly always follow through, and the result is usually better than I could have anticipated.

I had an idea to write an exquisite corpse style poem (you can see the an exquisite corpse drawing exercise in #86, June 2016). My idea was to ask three poets to write from a line I provided. They all agreed. I printed their writing in their handwriting.

I proposed a title and sent to to Brian Mattarochia, a writer I met at a weekly reading in Nashua, NH in 1994, when we were seniors in high school. We later were roommates in Seattle, attending readings twice a week. A lot of what I learned about how to maintain focus and drive was from watching him edit his work every night.

I sent him the title “We Create Nothing Alone” and he wrote a stanza.

Recipients proposed the next line, which I chose, and then mailed onto the next poet, who could not see what Brian wrote. There is a gap between each step of this process to allow for responses. I chose to print each card in a similar design with dark ink, so it should be easy to find the next two.

Printed with polymer plates on my Heidelberg Windmill, on flurry paper from Boxcar Press.

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