Table of Contents

Member's Responsibilities

All of us are responsible for the growth of poets in 123 through challenges, discussions, chats, feedback. The secretary will keep track of the schedule for the next year. She will be contacting you to schedule your challenges and discussions.

Commitment and Desire to Remain in P123

Periodically we ask you to take stock and reaffirm your commitment to P123. We are asking you to do that now. Please ask yourself the following questions: Is this the workshop for me? Am I holding up my end of the deal? Do I have the time to devote myself to the pace of the course? Can I do the weekly assignments on time so I don’t hold things up? Do I have the time to respond to my fellow members fairly? Am I doing my share to initiate assignments, discussions and insure that the workshop runs smoothly? AND, the dreaded question... should I give up my space to someone who does?

Posting Assignments

Our week runs from Friday through Thursday. Please get your work in on time so that you may receive thoughtful feedback.

Posting Schedule

We follow a 6-week cycle organized to give members time to do other things. Here’s how the cycle works:

• Week 1 - Post Poem: of Choice, or Rewrite
  
• Week 2 - First Part of Challenge due
  
• Week 3 - Post poem of choice, or Rewrite
  
• Week 4 - Second Part of Challenge due
  
• Week 5 - Discussion Week
  
• Week 6 - Week Off
  

Challenges

Everyone needs to take turns issuing the challenges.

• The person offering the challenge does all the research and posts the information in the challenge or posts easily accessible sites where the information can be found.

• Prep time for preparing to write each poem resulting from a challenge should be bite size, requiring no more than two hours to do and/or no more than three single-spaced 12 point pages of reading.

• The secretary will keep a running list of who has done the challenges. We have tried to recognize times when it is not convenient for someone to post the challenge, but everyone needs to take a turn at this. It is part of the commitment to sharing the work load.

Critiquing

Critiquing Guidelineswill be found on separate pages:

Discussions

Everyone is responsible for coming up with discussion topics.

The topics should include

Introduction to the topic including enough information to define the scope of the discussion. The topic will be posted one week in advance. (The secretary will notify you when it's your turn to choose the topic) The Friday the discussion begins, the discussion leader will begin the thread. Everyone should include 3 things in their post:

one reference or poem if we are discussing a poet - this should be typed into the post (stuff copied from a book, journal article or internet)
thoughts on posted material
a question for the reader.

You are not required to give feedback to everyone’s post on the discussion but it is encouraged.

Chats

We will continue to have chats, and participation will remain voluntary except that feedback must be given to all featured poets. We would like as many people as possible to take responsibility for initiating chats and facilitating them. Chats may be - featured poets, poems of choice by everyone, challenge chats, or discussion chats. A link to the chat room will be posted at the time the topic is posted.

Leaves

Members may take leaves whenever they feel that they need time off without having to make up missed work. We will trust each member to be responsible about this. If the policy becomes abused, we will have to reconsider. We want to be flexible and make the workshop a pleasant taskmaster, but we need to be mindful that membership in the group is limited.

You must get permission from the facilitators for leaves.

If a member still wishes to have leave after a specified amount of time, he/she may be asked to give up his/her place in the workshop. Former members may re-apply for membership. Readmission will depend upon whether there are any vacant positions. Former members who reapply need not submit an explication or samples of their poetry.

Each case will be decided on an individual basis.

Miscellaneous Postings

Please post anything that is not an assignment or response to an assignment under the miscellaneous thread on the B board. The thread can be moved by anyone when it is too long, but as a rule, it should be moved once a week and only once a week to coincide with the change over to a new assignment week.