What's a Renga?

A renga as I know it is essentially a piece of collaborative poetry. What makes it different is the fact that while each writer contributes a line or two to the piece, he doesn't get to see portions of the poem as it's being written. The result is an organic (because it grows, seemingly taking on a life of its own) piece of poetry that surprises in how it all seems to make some sort of sense at the end of the day.

Either that or it's a meandering piece of crap.

Still, it's a fun exercise and a good way to peer into Jungian things like Gestalt and Zeitgeist and Synchronicity.

Here's how ours works. Someone writes the first line. The next person writes a new line but covers the line before his. The poem is passed to the next writer and so on and so forth until it returns to the first writer. He looks over the whole poem (and bursts into fits of laughter or groans of disgust). He writes the final line that ties everything together.

Everyone reads and is assaulted by his contributions to his attempts at collaborative poetry.

Why not try it with a few friends? April is poetry month after all.