The Next Big Thing Blog Hop!

The amazingly diverse poet (and Great Permission Giver) Edward Smallfield tagged us in a blog hop project called “The Next Big Thing.” Writers around the world are tagged by other writers and asked to respond to 10 questions in a self-interview about their latest big project. Our response, about our interactive poetry project The Poetry Machine, is more a living machine than a publication –though we have published an anthology of machine generated poems. 

1. What is the working title of the book?

The website is www.thepoetrymachine.net

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

The Poetry Machine was a brainchild of over 4 years ago. Frank and myself wanted to create an interactive poetry experience for a DADA event in Barcelona called the Navidada and we came up with the idea of building an analogue machine which would extract a poem from a person.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

Poetry. But when The Poetry Machine is working at full capacity, you never quite know what it will extract.

4.  If applicable, whom would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Bert and Frank the poetry technicians would be played by Steve Buscemi and Gene Wilder.

5.  What is a one-sentence synopsis of your book?

The Poetry Machine turns people into poems.

6.  Will your work be self published or represented by an agency?

The Poetry Machine publishes on the spot. See for yourselves.

7.  How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

The Poetry Machine has been evolving for 4 years. It has become more and less sophisticated at various points in its history. The first machine was built in a couple of months and the online poetry machine was under construction,for about 6 months. It was made reality by our inspired designer, Sebastien Vidal.

8.  Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The Poetry Machine was inspired by one of those electrical partnerships in which two technicians’ minds met over a blueprint. The rest is history.

9.  What other books would you compare this story to in your genre?

The Steampunk Bible, The Automatic Grammatizator by Roald Dahl, about a story writing machine. Nothing really compares to The Poetry Machine.

10.  What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

We find everything about The Poetry Machine fascinating. Most importantly, it is the people who go through the machine and leave their words stuck in its piping and engines. Wiping the machine clean and finding the debris of poems is the highlight of this dirty work. What surprises people most about the machine is how reliably it works on “non-poets”. When people recognize their own words and phrases in a poem, they have the strange sense that a dream has been stolen or that everything they ever meant to say has been magically put before them.

Check out Ed Smallfield's post at http://adaywithouttheever.blogspot.com.es
On 1 May Jessica Rainey will continue the project by answering the questions about her digital project.