Keep Digging Deeper
[Closed] a tributary web of acrostic golden shovels
Why a golden shovel?
The golden shovel is one of my favourite poetic forms because it’s so versatile, defined by the opportunities it creates rather than the constraints it imposes.
It’s simple, too: you just choose one line (or a few consecutive lines) of any poem you like, and use each word in order to end the lines of your poem. (More info: Writer’s Digest.)
The form is tributary in both meanings of the term: it pays tribute to the source poem that inspired it, and it also lets the source poem run its course into a part of a larger body of poetry, like a stream flowing into a river.
Why an acrostic?
In an acrostic poem, the opening letters of each line (or sometimes the last letter, or a middle letter) spell out a word or phrase related to the poem.
Having recovered from the awful experience of ‘A is for Alice who went to the shops, B is for Bob who’s in strife with the cops, … ’ and other nasty primary school acrostics*, I’m now growing quite fond of the form — largely because I can combine it with many other forms to add a little structure or meaning to the resulting poem…
…or to add an extra element of challenge to the writing process. That’s why I added the acrostic constraint to this exercise.
Why a web?
When I wrote my first golden shovel some months back, I immediately recognised that someone could write another golden shovel based on my poem.
Why stop at one?
Why can’t my acrostic golden shovel spark another one from another poet? Why can’t that one spark three more? Why stop there?
How can I play?
That’s simple (I hope):
- Pick a line (or several consecutive lines) from any of the poems already in this project; that is, poems tagged with ‘Keep Digging Deeper’ and appearing on the Chalkboard project page. If you’re an early player, you’ll probably have to choose from one of the seeding poems I’ve listed below.
- Create a new story and write your acrostic golden shovel, giving it a cool title and a correctly attributed picture — but don’t publish it just yet!
- As your subtitle, write ‘after <@originalpoet>’ (with the original poet’s Medium name in there).
- Add [TK: @tamyka] to the subtitle, so all the Chalkboard editors know it’s for me.
- Make your acrostic stand out by formatting the first letter of each line as bold text.
- Make your source line(s) of poetry stand out by formatting the last word of each line in italics.
- At the bottom of your poem, put a separator, then add:
This acrostic golden shovel is part of Keep Digging Deeper: a tributary web on Chalkboard. I worked from a line in this poem:
followed by an embed-link to the original poem. - Add the tag Keep Digging Deeper as your first tag, then add whatever other tags you like. (I used Poetry, Golden Shovel, Acrostic, and Collaboration, but you may prefer to use tags related to the theme of your poem.)
- Now you’re ready to submit!
(a) If you’re a writer for Chalkboard already, just submit it to the publication as a draft.
(b) If you’re not yet a writer for Chalkboard, highlight anywhere on this post (right here, the one you’re reading!) to create a private note to me, and share a link to your draft; I’ll add you as a writer and then request your story for publication. - That’s your part done! I’ll check your submission meets the requirements and then I’ll publish it. Finally, I’ll add your poem to a list of links at the bottom of the source poem, so readers can choose their own adventures…at least until the project grows unmanageable.
If you have any questions about the formatting, it’s easiest to check the three seeding poems below. If you’re still not sure, or if you’ve got some questions about the process, ask away in a response to this story.
That was fun…can I do it again?
Yes! Participate as many times as you like, but please don’t contribute golden shovels from lines in your own poems, because that would look narcissistic, and no one wants that. I hope. (But you’re welcome to write them anyway, and submit them elsewhere!)
And can I re-publish my poem elsewhere?
Of course you can—it’s your poem! I just ask that you help us avoid broken links by either making a new copy of the poem or, if you need to remove your published story from Chalkboard, letting us know before you do it.
If you choose to publish elsewhere, feel free to use whatever formatting you’d like—you don’t need to stick to my bold-and-italics pattern. But I’d really appreciate it if you could provide a link back to this page, to inspire others to join our project.
Where do I start?
You can work with any poem in this project (easily identified by their tag Keep Digging Deeper or by being on the project page on Chalkboard). Here are the first three seeding poems I planted:
But you’re not restricted to lines from those three poems! You can choose a line from any poem in the project:
(Note: Medium keeps destroying the above link whenever I post it. It goes in with the right URL, and some time later it turns back into the Chalkboard home page. I’m not sure what wizardry this is, so just go here: https://medium.com/chalkboard/keep-digging-deeper-project/home)
*I actually just made this acrostic up now…I think.
