#AffectInArt

[yellowmanula]

Perhaps this will be a challenge of a difficult or even solipsistic nature, or maybe, I don't know, it will be seen as a bidding for darkness… I know that experiencing darkness, tragedy, and absorbing the dark principle of life, the Black Sun, is, unfortunately, a rather common experience. For me, however, it’s a revelation. I’ve finally understood my grotesque, gothic, coffin-like yet oddly serene imagination.

In 1994, ironically on April 10, my mother Hanna died prematurely from hypothermia, a suicide, though not the kind that slowly ripens through depression. She died holding the body of her 1.5-year-old daughter, Hania Junior. The little one fell into a septic tank. My mother didn’t watch her closely enough. She chose to stand in that septic tank, with water 1.2 meters deep, holding the child until death enveloped her.

I was five years old when I lost them both. It’s a brutal challenge, I realize that. But it’s significant to me—it’s a kind of howl, a cry that the darkness in my poetry is authentic, that this depth is not copy & paste, not fascination. I don’t draw from any tradition. Of course, I deeply value John Keats, Philip Larkin, Jola Stefko, the Brontës, and the later post-gothic and punk-gothic movement.

I am happy now. I’ve worked through the Shadow, the Well Phase, the Animus, the Terrible Mother, etc. I’m okay, I’m moving forward. But it matters deeply to me that the poetry I write, which 'Klaster' has already begun to nibble at and which is transforming into a Phase of Depth, is seen through the lens of genuine affect, not mere fascination. I observe a time devoid of belief in affect and imagination; in poetry, the game seems to have become solely about intertextual play. Generally speaking, of course.

That’s why I feel close to 'Katawotra' by Przemek Owczarek, and I’m glad that my review of it will be published soon. This is simply a request: even if you don’t like the language in my poems, treat the darkness in them seriously.

Droga

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Przede mną długa współczesna droga, jak w Vengo, czerń mknie przed siebie, nawet jeśli chciałabym nią jechać to od jeziora napływa mgła i widok gęstnieje,

postać w bieli podnosi dłonie, strużkami płynie z nich mleko

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widzę was, zjawy, lucyferze, każecie mi pamiętać o genach, o naszym powołaniu, o nieznanych dotąd imionach krów