Writing can be lonely, and that isn’t always a bad thing; in fact the peace and quiet can give you the space to think and to form ideas that would be lost if you tried to explain them first. However, sometimes working with others can be a tremendous help, especially if you are struggling with writers block. Collaborations are not for everyone – the work is never fully yours and you do not have complete control of it, and for some people that is a no go; but for others it can give them a freedom to make something not perfect, not exact and just different to what they might already be known for. Equally, there are different types of collaboration so some experimenting might be needed to find what works for you.

Types of Collaboration:

Anthologies

Anthologies are the simplet and most commonform of poetry collaboration, a theme or themes is put out and everyone writes something or scrabbles through their back catalogue/note books until they have something that matches and together a collection is created. Rarely do groups meet up to work on the anthology though some writing retreats and festivals as well some creative writing courses or even community projects do have this as part of the process. In that case you will find there will generally be physical meet ups, maybe walks and then sitting around together being given writing prompts.

Recently we went on a story telling equivalent and looked around an old church and ancient grounds in Wales and then we all sat wrote where we wanted on the site. Some people worked in pairs or groups and others sat alone. I personally took photos of things that I found interesting to create a mood board later and then sat and composed two poems. If people felt confident enough they shared their writing and feedback was offered and some works paired together.

There are also online video chat anthology and collaborative groups using platforms such as Zoom, Teams, Google Meet and Discord. We took part in a lovely project with refugee women last year run by the She Spoke collective that was absolutely amazing, and was an international collaboration across borders and in some cases into active war zones.

And that brings us to the second most common type of collaboration:

Collectives

Collectives are not just glorified workshop groups, they actively exist for a reason; a “shared vision” may be too grandiose a term but there will be some thread that connects them. Art collectives often pool resources and expertise. They take part in group activities and work on shows and other creative endevours together.

Collectives come about generally in two ways: people just find they have organically grouped together and need to become a little more official to, say, apply for funding to go on group outings or screen print themselves very special book versions of their group works… or someone has an idea and sets up the collective and starts recruiting. These groups tend to have stricter pathways and clearer visions and run on the “Build it and they will come” ideology – generally. Sometimes collectives are very closed and are not looking for new members so it is important when looking around to bear that in mind; and some, especially if there is a shop or premises to maintain, may have membership fees so don’t get caught short with that one as many will assume that is how all groups work and will not necessarily think to state the fee outright when you are intially finding out about them.

Internal structure and how you collaborate will be varied and differernt even within one collective let alone across the different collectives. Again it is important to find one (or several) that work for you and not to stay were you do not feel productive or happy.

Partnerships

Next is Partnerships, this is where you team up with one other person, often via email and send each other prompts or edit each others’ poems or write a stanza and send it to them to add their stanza or possibly even just a line at a time or sometimes even just a word!

These are mostly fun exercises and involves you being not “precious” about your writing because it will be screwed up and altered beyond recognition.

Another technique with this kind of set up is merging poems; each of you brings your work and you sit in a cafe or on a video call and you combine your works into one new whole. Again there are endless ways to make this work and the other writer siting there waiting for you is the drive some poets need to actually produce work.

These above options are the most common types of collaborative work but they are not the only type and that leads us on to the next few which to me are the more interesting and personally have helped me produce the works I have then performed at places and events such as literature festivals.

Public Prompts

This is where the general public give you prompts to write from or sometimes even lines or snippets of writing about how they feel or their experience of something. Performance Poets like Spoz use this method to create poems on the spot at music festivals or during school visits but it can also be used as a slower form of writing. Two such memorable such poems are about “pussies”: the first one, by AF Harold, was created when back in the early days of twitter he asked everyone for their pet cat names and created a fabulously whimsical piece with some swearing that he later unleashed on audiences; and the other was by Holly McNish who did a similar concept but asked for the slang terms for genitalia and came out with a darkly saterical hard hitting piece. Both of these poems were created using the same public prompt concept but are so vastly different in how they hit.

But twitter doesn’t exist anymore and social media is a bit of a mess these days so unless you have an established platform you may feel this form of collaborative writing can not work, but that is not true. For one of our projects around the Moon Landing Anniversary a few years ago we went along to events and physically asked people there and then to write down their feelings or memories about space travel and things like the moon landings. We collected some amazing pieces from people ranging from the son of one of the people in mission control to the conspiracy theorist who rode their bike into the stand we had during an amazing space-art installation at a local historical site.

Another project that has used this style of collaboration was a local history project that again asked for memories and stories of a specific street in a near by city. The final piece involved lion tamers eaten by their own lion!

And another was an allotment project where spoken word and rap artists came and worked with young people as they learnt to take care of their allotment space.

The scope for this sort of collaboration is huge! And sometimes local authorities are happy to fund such works.

There is also this in kind of a reverse… you can get prompts from sites like us here at WoPo or various Facebook Groups or from a writing tutor and just write. In many ways this is a loose form of collaboration and one that is so pervasive that most will not even think about it. Some of us at team WoPo work as writing tutors and create prompt and exercise sheets that we give out, and it is always a pleasure when someone comes back to you with a poem they’ve written from the prompts and sometimes even waving a poetry book containing their works. It is always amazing to find that the prompts have helped people.

And lastly I have seen poets with type writers at busy events and markets creating poems for queues of people – this I feel is more of a commission type situation but it could also be used as the foundation of these types of collaborative works.

Art from Art

This is my favourite form of collaboration.

A group in Oxford used to run an event were we would go through the special art exhibitions and write from the art works. Museums and Art galleries will sometimes have events for specific art exhibitions, one we were involved in was the Enduring Eye which was photography of the Arctic Exploration missions and things like the ships manifests with the names of the dogs and everything. The poetry that came out of this was amazing and ended up with a performance night and many of poems went on to be published in various publications and collections.

This is the most common version of Art from Art but can feel a little impersonal, there are more active collabrative versions such being sent other participants’ art – either their writing or visuals – and writing your own pieces from them. A photographer friend loves giving their images to writers to see what they come out with!

These visuals and words work really well for putting poetry collections and exhibitions together.

The art can also be things like listening to someones music, and poetry films.

An even more interesting version of this leads us to out final section:

Events

This may seem an odd one but can produce some wonderful works and are nearly always an interesting experience. At the very edge of it you can take a note pad to an event and sketch and write, just on your own, as you are inspired by your surroundings, considering the envirnment to be shaping your thoughts. But a more active collaborative version is to work with festivals being an “artist in residence” or just on a one off and working with dancers and musicians and even light engineers to become the centre of the art piece – penning or forming your words as these very different artforms unfold around you. Some may want you to share your words as they are happening, giving a strong improvisational element – whilst others will expect you to be writing away. It is important to make sure everyone is expecting approximately the same thing from the experience – you do not want to trip up a ballet dancer and you might not feel comfortable being plunged into a sudden rap battle.

This does not just go for art either – I have been invited to be the visiting poet for tech events where duties were opening and closing with a poem but also walking around observing and writing and in some instances live blogging which is not so much of a concept anymore but you would sit and update your blog or website as the event was happening.

All of these are wonderful things to try and there will be even more we have not thought about or have forgotten to include. Why not have a think about collaboration and put some feelers out for people to work with?