Open Notebooks is created and curated by poet
Karen McCarthy and commissioned by literature development agency Spread the Word.

I’ll be opening up my notebook to write 10 new poems online and sharing the creative process. The poems may include hyperlinks, image (video and stills) and audio trails. I’m interested in how poetry intercepts with the web: in how what we write here could be unique and how that work is viewed/read by audiences.

Does the physical act of writing yield ‘truer’, more emotionally honest work? Can we use blogs and web platforms as interactive, multi-media notebooks, and if so does it change the end result?

I’ll interview poets about how they write, how they draft, edit and redraft - and, if I can! - persuade them to share the ‘messy bits’ from their physical, paper notebooks - a place where I believe the heart of the poem often lies.

I’m also commissioning a selection of ‘Guest Bookers’ to create one poem online and blog about the process. They are: Yemisi Blake, Malika Booker, Tom Chivers, Inua Ellams and Chris Mooney-Singh.

There are many stages to writing a poem, from reading, walking and thinking to following an often labyrinthine trail of research, discussion with our peers and interaction with other art forms. For the most part, these activities go unrecorded and evaporate into the ether as soon as the ‘finished’ product – the poem – comes to life. Just as mothers are hard-wired to forget the pain of childbirth so they can endure it again!

But what if the poet were to record their process in much the same way as the visual/conceptual artist – where our creative activity becomes both a narrative of the work and integral to it? How would this pan out when the ‘private’ domain of the notebook became something accessible to others? And does the fact that poets often tend not to record their process have wider implications in a world where ‘selling’ poetry in an open market is increasingly difficult? Just because we don’t talk about it afterwards doesn’t mean the work hasn’t taken place.