Archive for May, 2011

As announced last week, the circus has closed.

(We are sad, too. Thank you for all your lovely comments & well-wishes.)

But the site will stay up as a record of your work and to preserve the resources it contains, which includes a list of other prompt sites. You can also find the toys we gathered for your poetry pleasure. And of course, access to previous prompts, in case you need them.

We’ll also leave the comments open on this post for a while so you can touch base with each other about your thoughts, goings on and what not.

We are incredibly grateful for your contributions and for the community each and every one of you helped create. We’ve been cheered and inspired by your encouragement of each other and we look forward to keeping up with you elsewhere.

Thank you so much for all you’ve done here. We love you and hope you will stop by our new three-way co-authored blog, A Fine Kettle of Fish, from time to time. Because we already miss you.

~Carolee, Deb & Jill

by Carolee, Deb & Jill

It’s show time! It’s time to post your original poem, written in response to Monday’s prompt — using a line or two generously given from one of our community members — or any other inspiration from the week. (We love it when you write to our prompt, but we also love it when you write on a whim. We all know how fickle that muse can be.)

What did you write? Please leave a link to your blog post, or leave your poem itself, in the comments!

Let the very last Big Tent Poetry show begin!

Here’s how prompts work under the Big Tent

You’ve got all week to write your poem, based on this week’s prompt. Come Fridays (today!) you’ll find a “Come One, Come All” post (this one!) where you can 1) leave a link to your poem or 2) leave the poem in its entirety.

We want to give you all weekend to post your work and read each others’ work. Take your time. Enjoy all the poems that are new to the world.

Some hints

Hint: We’ve set Big Tent Poetry to Central Time.

Hint: An easy way to check on new post comments is via a RSS reader, if you use one. Here’s the address you would add to your reader: https://bigtentpoetry.org/comments/feed.

Hint: If you are new to our site, or put more than one link in your comment, your comment(s) will be held for moderation for your first few posts. We’re checking the filters often, so don’t despair! That said, if it takes more than a half a day to see it come live on the site, do email us at info (at) bigtentpoetry.org. (But be patient, okay?)

Circus etiquette

We figure you know how to play in the poetry community, but here are the basics:

Be nice. Have fun. Remember we aren’t a critique forum. We want to support each other as we bring more poetry into our lives. Only provide critique if someone specifically asks for it.

Although we love seeing our badge in the sidebar of your blog, we would appreciate it if you would also link back to the site in each of your poem posts. Linking within your post helps people travel back and forth from your site to the Big Tent Poetry site, and it helps perpetuate Big Tent Poetry “findability” in Google searches — and that helps us all.

Ladies and gentlemen. Boys and girls. It is with mixed emotions that we announce that this week’s prompt and its matching “Come One, Come All” gathering will be the last. We have decided to take a break from community-building and focus awhile on writing (more than is possible when running a circus).

This site will stay up as a record of your work (and to preserve the resources it contains), and we are grateful for your contributions. It’s inspiring how you showed up every week to cheer each other on!

We are going to try something new — a three-way co-authored blog called A Fine Kettle of Fish. Stop by and see us from time to time so we don’t have to be sad about missing you?

Thank you so much for all you’ve done here. We love you, and we’re looking forward to this Friday for one final “Come one, come all!!”

~Carolee, Deb & Jill