Now for a short commercial break...

This brand new badge...

 now replaces this one...

What, might you ask, do these badges mean? Well, they are visual affirmations to place on the blogs of everyone who participates in a river of stones (aros). Some people have created new blogs for their "stones" (short poems on single observations), and others (like moi) have added the "stones" to their poetry blogs.

I thoroughly enjoyed taking part in this daily writing during January and am looking forward to July. If you would like to sign up, click on The River. You never know, maybe another book will result from July's river rafting, like:

pay attention: a river of stones edited by fiona robyn & kaspalita
*I'm on pg. 48 &103*

Below is an interview with Fiona Robyn, the creator of "stones." I first posted it on my other blog. Please click here to read the original and for information on how to get a copy of the book.

FIONA:
Sometime during December, I had the idea that people might like to join me during January in writing a small stone every day – something I’ve been doing for many years. I believe that there are lots of benefits from having a daily writing practice, and this seemed like an ideal way to share this practice with others. Kaspa teamed up with me and we created a blog and started asking people if they wanted to join the ‘river’. We originally thought it would be nice if 20 people joined us – by the beginning of January more than 300 people were writing small stones and posting them on their blogs.

We really enjoyed reading the small stones during January, and thought it would be good to choose the cream of these and publish them in a book. More than 3000 small stones (and MANY hours) later, we’d chosen the stones for the book, edited them, communicated with their writers, arranged them into chapter groupings, designed the cover, arranged them into an order and written some prose pieces to go alongside them. And – TA-DA! – ‘pay attention: a river of stones’ was born!

We do hope it’ll be read both by people writing small stones and people who’ve never written before – it’s full of beautiful short pieces. And it might inspire a few more people to start writing them….

I do hope you participate. Let me know and maybe we can link back to each other and share.