#i played with form so this is a weird prose poem thing in my mind lol

[yuechicake]

an intake form for people who’ve survived more than they should have.

summary: Chase and Qilan consider some questions on their motivations.

notes: 1.2k words, vague spoilers for chase's backstory, character exploration, experimental form

Would your father be proud of you?

Here’s a question he’ll ask in return: Why would it matter?

He hasn’t thought of his father in years. Hasn’t had the time, or more accurately, hasn’t let himself stop to think about him.

Father. Dad. Pops. Old man. There’s a dozen different ways to address a man like that, in a dozen different languages, but the titles have always felt like stage names, bright and flashy and shallow. They signal an affection he might have wanted once, when he was young, when he still believed that people could be good and fathers always loved their sons unconditionally. 

It’s a silly question. Irrelevant, really. Why not ask what the fluttering ladies and sighing gentlemen think of him? What about the guards who salt his name with curses and ill remarks? Or, in fact, ask his crew, who’ll scoff and roll their eyes but keep their secrets rolled under their tongues? There’s enough colorful opinions of him that one opinion of a dead man doesn’t really matter in comparison.

But he’s dodging the question. Of course he’s dodging the question, just like he dodges everything else: skating easily past anything uncomfortable, throwing enough fanfare and distractions that people forget what they want from him in the first place.

Is his father proud of him? Heh. Well, why would his father even care?

Why do you keep going?

The same reason everyone does: because he wakes up, and the world is still there and hasn’t crumbled to pieces overnight, and he has no choice but to get up and to go, go, go. It’s a basic instinct, and humans are animals at the end of the day. 

Isn’t that a thought? That after wars and civilizations and great achievements, humans are still shackled to their base impulses and instincts? That logic is nothing more than just an excuse, meant to disguise the base truth? But he digresses. 

The reality is, he’s always lived like this: one foot already out the door, ready to run, waiting for the moment he has to leave. It’s better, he figures, than being caught unawares and having the room crash down around him. This way, he can mitigate whatever damage might occur.

In truth, sometimes he doesn’t know why he keeps going. There’s nothing left for him, and anything he has now could so easily slip out of his hands. Leaving is easy. Staying is harder. 

He smiles, lopes around with ease, so no one can tell that he’s trembling, deep down, clutching onto his life with shaking hands. Because he’s survived this far, and he can’t even tell you why. 

He gets up, again and again and again, and as afraid as he is of living, he’s afraid of dying all that much more.

What comes after this?

Silly question. There is no after. There is no before, either. There’s only here, and now, and it’s the only truth he knows.

If he was waxing romantic, he might even say it would be his version of religion, even though he’s never put much stock in the One-God. Because if such a being was real, he would trust it as much as he could stick a knife in it. 

He’s always made his own luck, anyways. 

The future has never been kind to him, so why worry over it? He wasn’t meant to survive this long, and somehow, each time, he’s made it through, survived situations that have killed other people. 

His future doesn’t exist. He can only keep doing what he does best, until he dies like every other rotten criminal in the world.

—

Is your father proud of you?

She already knows the answer to this question, long before the question was even asked.

Her father. To begin with, she has to tell you about him. He’s a stern man. Not cold, but not particularly warm, either. Maybe she could blame the lack of expressiveness from her mother’s death, stealing all chances of a smile to return to his face.

But the truth is, he was like that even before her mother died. Maybe it’s something to do with Ket culture, or how he believed so fiercely in honor. Or maybe it has nothing to do with culture, and everything to do with the sort of man he was. Because he believed in righteousness. In justice. In defending one’s community, in never striking at the weak and in giving everyone a fair chance. 

Her father. He lived by his personal code, no matter the personal inconvenience. He was steadfast, in every way. And even if her mother’s face faded from her mind, this code was the one thing she was never allowed to forget. So it could haunt her or support her, whatever you choose to believe about the things parents leave behind for their children. 

In some ways, she finds her father’s mindset foolish. To believe in others is a weakness in this world. Honor is a hollow ideal, incapable of saving anyone, but capable of damning them.

And in other ways, she finds her father’s mindset so steeped in goodness and trust she has to close her eyes before it burns her.

Her father was a soft man, in a strange way. And she, though she inherited so many other things from him, didn’t inherit this. For better, and for worse.

Why do you keep going?

That is her duty. To keep going, to keep fighting, to keep planning for the next step. 

It’s what comes easiest to her. She can’t imagine a life without considering what happens next, planning for each and every step she takes, for every future consequence. 

Is there another reason to keep going, other than because it’s what she has to do? Because her life is just another bargaining chip on the gambling table, and she knows how to take calculated risks and hedge her bets. She’s already lost everything once, and she refuses to lose everything again.

There’s no past for her to return to. The only thing left of her home is memory, and the future is always just out of her reach, an impossible dream. No, all she has ever had in this world is herself.

She is a soldier first and foremost, and so there’s only one path: forward. Time is merciless in this aspect. Or maybe it’s just easiest to cling to such ideas of blind progression, and to use them as a shield against all the people who died so she could live. Whatever you want to believe.

What comes after this?

Another day. It’s a simple question to her, really. What comes after this is another day, and what comes after that is yet another day.

Ah, but maybe you’re really asking her what she’s living for after this. When the battle is over, when the dust is settled, and people no longer need a soldier.

The mercenaries in her hometown never seemed to know the answer. That’s why they picked up their swords again after abandoning the Ket way of life, as much to make a living as the simple fact that they couldn’t go back to an ordinary life.

Once a dog gets a taste of blood, it’ll chase after the scent for the rest of its life. Maybe she’s not a dog, but she’s a weapon, all the same, and there is no use for weapons without a battle to fight.

So she’ll do what she does best until she no longer can, because there’s no life outside of this. Not anymore.

[caixxa]

hi caixa 🥰!! 7, 13, 16, 19, 28, and 35 for the weird questions ask please? 💗

Baby!! So many!

7. What is your deepest joy about writing?

Creating a thing out of thin air with nothing but my imagination and words.

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy?

Violence is difficult. The action of fighting, physical injury, pain, and I know next to nothing about firearms either. I'm also not very confident in my ability to write sports as action. It takes time.

The romantic style of writing atmospheric descriptions of spaces and nature as a reflection of emotions and inner thoughts is something that comes easily.

16. What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever used as a bookmark?

I don't think I've ever used anything particularly weird.

19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

I suddenly remembered I had answered the question once and I'll copy my answer from a year ago here bc my thumbs sre going numb from typing.

I told myself bedtime stories in my head, those that I can remember, from about 7 or 8 years of age. Elaborate ensembles of characters, either completely of my own or characters from a book series. Never wrote them down.

I had a diary, I wrote little poems, my teacher liked my essays at school and the little plays I wrote for my classmates. It was fun.

From then on, I always had some kind of a story running in my mind. Sometimes, I wrote them down; usually not.

University taught me news prose and the value of readability, clarity, and accuracy. Work has taught me the value of good enough and done in time versus perfect.

Now? I gather building blocks called information and stack them together for easy but nutritious servings.

But I also tell myself bedtime stories in my head. Sometimes I type them down to give them a concrete form. I have posted some of them on Archive of our Own.

Where am I going? Where is anybody going? As you see, my friend, time is a flat circle. Maybe I’ll end up writing short sentences about how the day went and simple little poems in a small diary in wobbly handwriting.

28. Who is the most delightful character you’ve ever written? Why?

Answered, Hine in myporn AU sdfies (he'sa major character in two fics). Here's a snippet:

He was right, Roope got him something unmistakably fancy, the aroma of freshly ground coffee under a hint of vanilla and foaming steamed milk is rich and dark and he can basically feel the caffeine injected in his veins.

Roope sits on the other edge of the messy bed, pulls the blanket to straighten it over the sheet. He places a cardboard box down between them and opens the lid, revealing a small selection of fruit, a croissant, sliced avocado on two pieces of toast and a small plastic plate filled with thin green spinach omelet. Roope fishes a wooden fork from the bottom of the box and takes a bite of the omelet.

“Have something,” he gestures with an extended little finger, mumbling through a mouth full of egg. Sebastian pics a grape and puts it in his mouth, starts chewing slowly.

“Isn’t this stupidly expensive?” he can’t help asking.

Roope shrugs and takes another bite of the eggs.

“If I’m down to the last twenty on my debit card three days before pay day, I just can’t care. I’ll rather have something tasty because I’ll be broke anyway,” he says. 

35. What’s your favorite writing rule to smash into smithereens?

The "first drafts are meant to suck, just get it all out" doesn't work for everyone. Some writers work better when they try to get the text right and ready from the start and will rather think and edit as they go. If the only way you get anything written is this, go for it.

--

Thank you for the ask!

[owlmylove]

Do you have any advice on writing creative nonfiction for the first time? Your works are so beautifully (and sometimes painfully) vivid. -shoe

((To clarify about my creative nonfiction ask, I mean "painfully" vivid in the sense, the emotions are very well crafted and instilled, even when the work is about something painful or very vulnerable)).

Hello shoe!! First and foremost, thank you so much for your kind words and for asking me about my literal favorite thing in the world. I don’t get to ramble abt cnf a lot on here, and it makes me !!!! that you’re interested in writing it for the first time. If you’re just starting to get interested in the genre it’s a very weird little hybrid, and I’d love to share some of the basics before giving specific advice

Creative nonfiction is about seeing the movements of the mind on the page. It takes us somewhere new by the end, even if we end up returning to a premise or scene from the beginning. CNF thrives at the intersections of research, experience, and artistry, and combines elements of poetry, memoir, journalism, etc. There’s different forms and genres within creative nonfiction, and the limits are almost entirely up to your imagination. 

CNF is the most playful sculptor of prose that I know of, second only to poetry, and some pieces end up looking like different creatures than essays entirely. Look at Lauren Trembath-Neuberger’s Drug Facts, or Dinty Moore’s Mr. Plimpton’s Revenge. It’s a species with remarkable biodiversity, so let’s talk taxonomy:

Lyric. Lyrical CNF is fueled by the beauty and imagery of the words. How they flow together, what the sentences sound like. Play with long and short sentences, with alliteration, with recurrent imagery. Highly descriptive, lyrical essays can be something akin to longform poetry. Anne Carson’s The Glass Essay may look like a poem, but it’s technically lyrical CNF.

Literary. Fact-based research is at the heart of literary CNF, and some pieces can appear to be regular journalistic articles at first glance. David Foster Wallace’s infamous Consider The Lobster is a fantastic example: it began as an assignment for Gourmet magazine, but Wallace combines research with experience, and moves from objective fact to abstraction. 

Form. CNF forms help authors sculpt stories around things they may not always be comfortable confronting head-on. Hermit crab essays are exactly that: a borrowed textual structure (a shopping list, a how-to guide, a Wikipedia page) that fits around the soft, vulnerable heart of your topic. Eula Biss’ The Pain Scale (I think it’s also a braided essay?) and (my absolute favorite hermit crab) Drug Facts by Lauren Trembath-Neuberger are both hermit crabs.

Other forms include braided, when you weave 2-4 (but usually 3) strands of topics together; flash essays, which are generally less than 500 or 1,000 words; memoir, which is as the name suggests, but less strictly regimented and more creative than traditional autobiographies; and hybrid forms, which can be a collage of just about any genre or form you like.

A good CNF piece will probably combine all three of these elements, but will likely be driven by just one. I try to include relevant notes of research (etymology, biology, history) in my lyrical personal essays, because you’d be surprised what kind of narrative vehicles you’ll find, metaphors and facts that can serve as little hermit crab shells around things that hurt. But my pieces are still mostly lyrical, and driven by sentences and images rather than research or form. It might seem counterintuitive to writing emotions, but consider researching topics you’re interested in for metaphors and imagery that can help you emphasize your point.

As for rendering emotions or experience in painfully vivid detail, I love focusing on the movement of CNF. You can base your piece’s movement on your body, moving through a space. On your memories moving through time. Or, as I tend to do on the pieces posted here, the movement of cognition, as your thoughts develop. My pieces feel like trains of thought. I let the topics flow from one to another, including stops at the more painful memories if they arrive, and then keep going. My favorite thing is to try and let the reader feel, or see, what I’m experiencing in real time. When I wrote about on taking a night-walk during a dustbowl, there are no transitional statements and very few “I”s: every sentence is an order. The reader is forced to do what I’m doing, consider what I’m considering, but I balance this intimacy with some of my own thoughts so it doesn’t get overwhelming.

Your sentences are like a camera in CNF: they control the piece’s perspective and how much, or how little, you want to confess. Like a droid zooming up from the ground into the sky, your sentences control the scale of the reader’s understanding, and you can play with that for greater impact. You can write long, lingering sentences to make the reader slow down and focus, or you can blur out bigger things in their peripherals with brief, glancing mentions before changing the topic. You can write pieces that feel like years on a calendar flipping by. You can also write rapid, run-on sentences that feel like you’re being rushed along a busy street (which is where I got the dustbowl idea). 

A good aim for CNF is to try moving from small, objective facts (physical objects, research, matter-of-fact memories recounted without any “I am” or emotional lens) to higher, abstracted wonderings (how do your facts connect to your memories? [i.e, I lived in a fireproof home but my heart feels like a pyromaniac] spin out some “perhaps” statements about your memories, or things you didn’t experience: “perhaps my mother knew what it felt like to burn” etc.). go from high concept to low and back again. play with form, and movement, and memory. with language. and consider strip-teasing your audience around what you may not wish to reveal. 

So, basically! Creative nonfiction is about balancing words, research, and experience. It’s about developing a topic or memory or concept into something beyond objective fact. And above all else, it’s a beautiful kind of play. There’s honestly no right or wrong way to write CNF, and new forms are being invented all the time. If you’re still finding your style in CNF, I highly recommend trying to create imitations of interesting form to see what feels right (like a hermit crab, trying on different shells for the perfect fit) and make your sentences work for you. Try to worry less about confronting a big scary topic, and more about how (via form, metaphor, perspective, etc.) you can comfortably approach it. 

Sorry this got so long, but I truly hope it helps!! And if you ever have further questions, or want a proofreader on your work, feel free to let me know<3

[bobdylanrevisited]

Rough And Rowdy Ways

Released: 19 June 2020

Rating: 9/10

As we all know, 2020 was a fucker of a year, the entire world plunged into lockdown and lived in fear of a deadly virus. Personally, three things helped me through this period: my fiancé, the vaccine, and Bob Dylan releasing an incredible album, which became the soundtrack to my working from home. After an 8 year break from writing original music, the poet returns with poignant lyrics and melancholic tunes. As with all of Dylan’s post-1997 work, this is an album looking back and wondering what could have been, whilst also confronting death and legacy head on.

1. I Contain Multitudes - Bob really leans into his own mythology here, and as the title suggests, he is made up of various emotions, events, and public figures. It’s a brilliant opening track, a slower tune which builds for the chorus, and Bob’s voice sounds great (it seems him doing his Sinatra covers helped him to properly sing again). This is one of my favourites on the album, I love hearing Bob mess around with his own legend and our expectations of autobiographical songs.

2. False Prophet - A roaring blues song, Bob growls his way through a sermon about himself, in an amusing and bitter manner. Like the previous track, he plays with his own achievements and persona, but again this is a fantastic song with his band being in their usual, flawless form.

3. My Own Version Of You - This is an odd one, in the best possible way. The music is pointed and almost unsettling due to its unique sound, and this is matched by Bob’s weird delivery and his lyrics that are almost as abstract and bizarre as his mid-60s output. All of this means that I fucking love this song, it stands out and stays in your head because it’s just so unlike Bob Dylan, and therefore is the most Bob Dylan track on the album.

4. I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You - This is a slow, straight forward love song. The music is soothing, Bob’s singing is surprisingly beautiful, and I don’t even mind the backing vocalisations. It’s a lovely little tune, it’s not a stand out track or reinventing the genre, but still very nice to listen to.

5. Black Rider - This may be the only song I don’t really like. I get it’s meant to be slow and mysterious, and the band create this atmosphere perfectly, but I just find myself getting a bit bored as the track drags on.

6. Goodbye Jimmy Reed - We’re back to the blues and rock n’ roll, with another perfect homage to the past and Bob’s heroes. The guitar riff, the delivery, the nostalgic lyrics, it’s all just so authentic and enjoyable. Dylan’s blues numbers have been a focal point of his later career, and this one may be the best of them.

7. Mother Of Muses - Slowing everything down again, this is a song that really belongs to the band. Their playing is so diverse they can compliment Dylan in any genre he decides. The song itself is quite sad and melancholic, with Bob sounding haggard and exhausted, yet also sweet and hopeful. Not a highlight on the album, but a solid track.

8. Crossing The Rubicon - The third and final blues/rock track, and again it’s pretty much perfect. Bob sounds 30 years younger, the band are channelling the masters of old, and it’s just a joyous song.

9. Key West (Philosopher Pirate) - Wow. This track is amazing, a return to Bob’s long prose, as he tells us meandering tales about various characters and accomplishments from his life. The music is simple yet perfect for the content, it’s almost nautical and reminds me of the song ‘Tempest’. The delivery of this epic poem is tender and there’s a hint of sadness here, as Bob again looks back and takes stock of all he’s done. A phenomenal track, Bob Dylan still remains music’s poet laureate and the greatest to ever put pen to paper.

10. Murder Most Foul - If you thought the previous track was long at 9:34, Dylan drops a 17 minute song, the longest of his career. A history lesson courtesy of Bob and his unique views, this is a lecture on his life and events that affected him, backed by violins and a dark atmosphere. As the track goes on, you can’t help but think that this is Bob’s life flashing before his eyes, an old man trying to remember everything. It’s a stunning piece of music and poetry, and an incredible way to end the album, but I must admit that I rarely listen to all 17 minutes in one sitting.

Verdict: When I first heard the album, I was worried it could be his swan song, a last hurrah for the ancient bard. Since then we’ve learned that Bob has no plans to slow down, but if this was the final studio album, I cannot think of a better way for him to go out. His last sixty years all come together here, all the lessons he’s learned and the things he’s experienced are present in each song. It’s a fantastic album that only a wise, jaded master could make. The rave reviews were a joy to see, as people realised he hadn’t retired himself to covers and endless touring, and I hope that before the inevitable, dark day comes when Bob leaves this plane, we get another studio album. If this is the last official release, he’d certainly be leaving on his own terms, and if there’s one thing Bob Dylan has taught us, it’s to ignore everyone else and do what you want to do. A brilliant album, an incredible man, an unbelievable career.

[autumnblogs]

Day 3: Vendetta against Bro

Welcome back to more Homestuck Liveblogging. Picking up with Nannasprite as she prepares to give John the Dirt.

https://homestuck.com/story/421

Sburb’s opening move is to take John’s Dad away from him. If @mmmmalo​‘s theory about psychological storytelling is to be believed, Sburb provokes fear and then manifests it in the form of a character’s antagonists. If you wonder why I bring them up so much, it’s probably because I’ve been reading their blog lately. I am almost always game for more Homestuck theorization, and would love to be able to reference more people and engage with their thoughts in my theoryposts and liveblogging, so if you know somebody with good takes, please pass them along my way.

The Incipisphere, like John’s name, was invoked into existence by player/character action, but paradoxically, has always been that way. By engaging with Sburb, John authenticates its retroactive existence, like a mailman taking a signature of receipt for a package.

When we engage with the fixtures of our cultures and material realities, we too, authenticate them. This can be good or bad - when we communicate with each other, recognize each other, we authenticate each other too. Observing and being observed is a mutual act of validation for everyone involved. I see you seeing me seeing you.

I’m full of horseshit again. Read some more horseshit after the break.

Content Warning for this one: Pedophilia Mentions.

https://homestuck.com/story/422

There’s a lot to unpack in this sequence of pages, and I’m almost certainly going to miss a lot of it, but I’ll come back to stuff that I miss as it comes back up in later pages.

As a Crucible of Unlimited Potential, Skaia can become absolutely anything, and the shape that it will take on will be influenced by the actions of the players. But it isn’t anything yet. 

This is the second time in two pages that Nanna has brought up the light-darkness dichotomy of the forces at play in the Medium, and after just talking about the act of mutual authentication through mutual observation, my brain is screaming the words Hegelian Lens at me. Might go somewhere with that too.

I also wanna call attention to the name of the Medium. As a story about stories, it only makes sense that the name of Homestuck’s main otherworld should evoke the field used to propagate mass communication.

https://homestuck.com/story/423

I’ve always thought that it’s interesting that of the two forces in the Medium, the players have natural allies in the form of Prospit. The choice here is not to act on behalf of one or the other, the choice is between Action and Inaction. Not doing something is itself, doing something.

https://homestuck.com/story/427

You Can (Not) Redo.

Sburb relentlessly drives its players forward. If you attempt to go back, or stay where you are, you will be punished. No getting your parents back, no getting your planet back.

What’ll it be John? Advance or Advance?

https://homestuck.com/story/431

John is extremely resistant to being made to do things that he doesn’t want to do anyway, even by Narrators.

More thoughts about Cake and Baked Goods in Homestuck and in relation to John. The other main characters baking is associated with in Homestuck are all women - The Condesce, Meenah, Jane, Nanna - and baking in general is pretty strongly associated with women, moms, etc. I’ve always thought it was a little out of place amongst Dad’s other character traits, which are definitively masculine. Maybe it’s for exactly that reason - baking is culturally feminine.

Maybe John’s resistance to baked goods is because he’s uncomfortable receiving feminine affection (especially, but not only from his Dad). It’s like getting kisses from your Mom in public or other public displays of affection between men and the women in their lives, or even men and other men in their lives. John is certainly pretty clueless about affection from women when he receives it later in the story. On the other hand, he responds very well to masculine displays of affection, like the aloof but ebullient cards he gets from his Dad, or the one-upsmanship between him and Dave.

 (I’ll have to think some more about the capitalism thing from my other post.)

https://homestuck.com/story/433

More of Rose seeing enemies in every shadow. Then again, could it be Jasper’s fault that they’re in this mess?

https://homestuck.com/story/442

I think the fact that we jump to this point in the past suggests that Rose is probably reminiscing about this spot, going along with my theory that when the Narration is focusing on a character, it’s also giving us that character’s stream of consciousness - we’re experience what Rose is experiencing.

That probably goes a long way to excusing the kind of puzzling, irritating experience we have of our first minutes with John. Due to his tendency to get distracted by things and forget how things work, we have to suffer through his own inability to navigate his disorderly environment exactly the same way he does.

Oh, so that’s why this story gets compared to Ulysses.

It is Jaspers’ fault that they’re in this mess. My hypothesis gathers more data.

https://homestuck.com/story/444

The third of the prose poems. Drat. Got to Dave’s Poem before I even had the chance to write about Rose’s Poem. Guess we’ll come back to this one later later.

https://homestuck.com/story/445

I’ve almost certainly missed a few of these gags by now but “Left him hanging long enough” is one of the jokes that Homestuck reproduces over and over again. Homestuck reproduces itself frequently, like variations on a theme. Its self-referential nature could be called incestuous, as it turns one-off gags into recurring gags.

https://homestuck.com/story/448

While Bro and Dirk are both definitely irony ninjas where Dave is just performing irony to get his Bro’s approval, I think all the irony is an effort to distance themselves from the fact that they really do sincerely enjoy the things they’re “ironically” into. That too, is probably ironic.

Unfortunately, the actual subject matter of Bro’s interests, while innocuous in a vacuum, are still extremely inappropriate to leave out where a thirteen year old can have access to them. Bro probably isn’t a pedophile, but between the martial education, and the uncomfortable degree to which he involves Dave in his sex life, his relationship with Dave recalls pederasty which is one of many, many links between Dirk, Bro, and the Classical Hellenes, and Monastic Shudo, a similar practice historically attested from their beloved Japan. (The term Platonic Relationship is called that because Plato is one of the first Greek Philosophers to argue that maybe it would be better for students’ education if they weren’t also sexually involved with their mentors? Or so the story goes.)

I may have a bit of a vendetta against Bro Strider, which probably has at least a little to do with the fact that, when I first read Homestuck, I got fooled into thinking he was kind of awesome, and it wasn’t until I was able to deal with my own childhood abuse and the fact that I had been indoctrinated with a lot of the very same toxic ideas bro inculcated in Dave that I was able to realize that Bro Strider is kind of a horrible guardian, so I have a sort of special ire directed at this character. Maybe I’m afraid in another life, I could have grown up to be that kind of creep. I’m glad I didn’t.

https://homestuck.com/story/449

All throughout this section, the narration suggests that Dave is both subconsciously aware that his Bro’s pasttimes make him uncomfortable, but trying to soothe himself by affirming them. So, in spite of my sharing some youthful confusion with Dave, the Narrative at least communicates to us from the very beginning that something is off about Bro.

https://homestuck.com/story/452

To interrupt my dark and brooding reverie, please enjoy some Skate 3 Glitches.

I guess here’s a good place to note that I am going to be using the #personal stuff hashtag to denote when a post contains me alluding to my own dark and troubled past.

https://homestuck.com/story/457

The password is six letters long, and based on the fact that it’s the most awesome thing that it could be, I have no doubt that it’s Strider.

https://homestuck.com/story/465

Yup.

https://homestuck.com/story/466

:)

It warms the cockles of me heart that Dave’s first inclination when he starts to flip the fuck out is to reach out to John Egbert.

https://homestuck.com/story/484

8^y

https://homestuck.com/story/485

Remember that one-upsmanship I was talking about? Any chance Dave and John get around each other, they talk each other down. I’m not sure if Andrew was saying anything about Toxic Masculinity at the time. I expect, like a lot of us, he didn’t have those words on his mind in 2009, but that’s textbook toxic masculinity, and I think when viewed as a complete work, Dave and John’s growth out of it is a sign of healthy maturation. Build each other up, boys, don’t tear each other down. In this life, we’re all we’ve got, and you owe it to each other.

https://homestuck.com/story/503

Leveling up is one of those weird things about Roleplaying Games that I didn’t realize until some point in the last two years is kind of an integral fixture of them. Overcoming hardships permanently makes you stronger in games that have an experience-level feature in them, and once you’re strong enough to beat a challenge once, you’re almost always strong enough to overcome that challenge in the future.

It’s a kind of storytelling that on closer examination is weirdly propagandistic, but it’s actually all over media. It’s pretty rare for a story to say “When you overcome a challenge, good job. You will have to overcome that same challenge again and again - maybe every day of your life.” The interesting thing, and I might come back to this, is that I think Homestuck actually takes this latter approach. Exactly the same emotional struggles they begin the story with are the ones they spend all 8000 pages of Homestuck agonizing over, and these characters will probably spend their entire lives wrestling with the baggage of their youth.

Suffering and toil is the fate of humankind, I suppose.

https://homestuck.com/story/518

Surrounded by Idiots.

https://homestuck.com/story/538

Saw is a story about a serial killer who subjects his victims to gruelling trials catered to make them face their own fatal flaws and emerge changed into better people, which is a lot like authorial scorn, which Andrew describes thusly in the commentary for Vriska’s introduction: “It's not as ill-willed as it might sound, but more of a universal principle of storytelling that for things to be interesting, harsh outcomes must befall those you create, in response to which they may thrive or fail. Which to the casual observer may read as hate.“. Lord English and Caliborn bear visual similarity to Jigsaw’s creepy puppet avatars, and serve as instruments of Andrew’s Authorial Scorn. Bro reproduces the same kind of creator’s hatred that Lord English bears toward all of Paradox Space, and reproduces it for the dubious benefit of his ward - Dave is to overcome the challenges thrust upon him in order to become strong.

https://homestuck.com/story/571

Dave does not care for being watched.

https://homestuck.com/story/588

If Dave’s first instinct for when he’s uncomfortable is to go talk to his friends, his second instinct is to attack.

https://homestuck.com/story/625

I don’t remember where I read it originally, it’s too far away in the past, but each of the items in the Rocket Pack is representative of one of John’s friends. The Cinderblock Dave, the Flower Pot Jade, the Violin Rose. John’s friends, his connections and bonds (Blood) tie him down and prevent him from indulging his most impulsive behaviors (Breath).

https://homestuck.com/story/631

In addition to Mad Science (or perhaps as an aspect thereof) John demonstrates remarkable lateral thinking.

https://homestuck.com/story/635

Alchemy has helped me get my thoughts in gear on a subject I glossed over the other day - the way the characters’ personality traits and objects fill the background radiation of the comic. In a way, the same thing is going on when the characters produce all kinds of neat shit from the odds and ends around their house as is going on when Sburb populates itself with symbols from the characters domestic lives. 

Clowns become a threatening symbol throughout all of Homestuck, basically because there are a bunch in John’s house from a Doylist perspective. From a Watsonian perspective, Sburb seems, through the vehicle of destiny, to deliberately latch onto things from the players’ lives that will help them to contend with their anxiety and trauma. John has bad dreams about clowns, and seems to conceptualize himself as a clown in his self-critical estimation of himself. Maybe even as a Dark Mirror of his aspirations to be an entertainer? Is a Circus Clown a funhouse mirror version of a stage magician? I don’t have a follow up to that question, but it makes me think. If you checked out the essay from Malo I linked earlier, you might recognize some other things that John is afraid of which characterize his session, like his alleged fear of heights, and his anxiety about confronting his Dad.

I think that’s all for this evening. Another 200 pages down.

Cam signing off, alive and not alone.

[scarlettsabetlondongirl]

Poet Scarlett Sabet

In conversation with poet Gerard Malanga for London Magazine.

The London Magazine is England’s oldest literary periodical, with a history stretching back to 1732. Today – reinvigorated for a new century – the Magazine’s essence remains unchanged: it is a home for the best writing and an indispensable feature on the British literary landscape-London Magazine  

See here

“After meeting at a French New Wave Cinema book launch in London in November 2019, poets Gerard Malanga and Scarlett Sabet have since kept in regular correspondence via email.

In this unique interview, conducted over several weeks while thousands of miles apart, the two writers discuss shared influences, the recent passing of the Beat Generation poet Michael McClure, and the grounding influence of poetry throughout the international lockdown. 

This interview is based on the poets’ original email correspondence and has been edited for clarity.”-London Magazine   

GERARD MALANGA: You ask how my week has been? I’ve been in lockdown now for 3 weeks or so, though I might’ve lost count. I have plenty to keep me busy in the house here, plus I have responsibility towards my 3 cats. And then there’s dreamtime, between 4 & 6 in the morning.

But suddenly I felt days back this ennui coming on, like, did the poetry suddenly disappear? Sometimes I’m concerned—but just for a moment mind you—whether I can match or even better the last one? There’s no way I can predict when the muse will appear. If I had the answer, it would vanquish the mystique.

Since I’ve been in lockdown, there’s no going out for me for the morning coffee and The New York Times unfolding on the table. Many a first draft has begun that way, but now with a physical displacement of sorts I can’t claim to be an habitue of the cafe life. The kitchen table serves me well – or wherever I happen to be outdoors – so long as I have a small notebook in my pocket. I even prop myself up in bed with a clipboard pressed against my knees. I follow where I feel a poem coming on. When I start, then I know I’m in for it, but don’t give it the slightest thought. I’m in for the ride.

SCARLETT SABET: Yes, I find sometimes walking in the morning, having a destination, getting into my body and moving get’s the ball rolling with writing. I can understand the ritual of going to a cafe. I’ve written on trains a lot, the motion and rhythm helps, and because I’m in a vacuum in transit I can’t be reached.

I love the image of your 4am dream writing, I think that’s a great ritual. Sometimes I write three pages first thing in the morning, and it’s just anything on my mind. I’ve also found meditation helpful, deepening my state of consciousness and then writing straight afterwards to see what comes out, kind of like automatic writing in the spirit of Austin Osman Spare.

We were both raised Catholic, I wonder if that has had any bearing on your writing or practices? I find a great sense of divinity in art, those moments of inspiration.

GERARD MALANGA: Funny that you would mention that. No one’s ever asked me about my spirituality, that I recall. People have weird notions about me, like I’m some kind of guy about town. I may have a little bit of that too. But spirituality for me is to be able to laugh at yourself. Even when I talk to my cats, I’m laughing at myself. I don’t mean physically laughing as such but going about life without being self-conscious. It helps when I’m writing a poem.

Back in 1970 or so, I had a spiritual conversion. One of my closest friends, a guy named Jim Jacobs, turned me on to the first two Carlos Castaneda/Don Juan books; so we were basically comparing notes and one of the themes that came through for us was to follow your nature to be happy. Suddenly we found ourselves wearing white clothing and calling ourselves the white lights. When we went to London we ended up buying an all-white 1939 Bentley convertible with one windshield wiper not wiping, and it basically gave us the freedom to go visit friends in the English countryside. It sounds hysterically funny when I look back at this, but we were quite sincere in our endeavors. If this was going to be our path we had to be true to the discoveries we made along the way.

During our travels we decided to split off and agreed to re-connect a couple of years later in the Massachusetts Berkshires where he’s from and continue where we left off. Jim ended up being one of the top dealers in the secondary art market handling the likes of Judd and Cy Twombly, and now he’s curating shows. I continued to write poetry without a care in the world and became more attuned to the pictures I was taking. I truly feel I’ve become a better photographer because of the experiences I had. You have to be courageous to suddenly drop out and then drop back in.

Back in ’74, I had this idea for a book of my spiritual poetry that would have as its cover one of those kitschy paintings of Jesus. I called it ‘Poems for the Fat Lady’. You know, the Fat Lady was a phrase I’d picked up from reading Salinger’s Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, where he’s actually equating Jesus with the Fat Lady, that they were one. That’s pretty neat, I thought. It didn’t go over too well with my publisher who rejected the idea outright. He thought I was joking. So I settled for a kind of even-balanced title, Incarnations,’ and changed the poems around.

Perhaps, the Fat Lady was the closest I ever got to God, though I don’t give it much thought these days. It’s the inspiration and the love that come from it which is the driving force and source for much of what I’m writing nowadays, and that’s the joy when I finally finish a poem. A state of happiness sets in for me.

SCARLETT SABET: And what you said makes sense, I can understand it. Did you have a period where you rebelled against spirituality or Catholicism and were, say, atheist? Although it’s bizarre for me to admit it, once I left school I did swing to atheism, I guess as a way of rebelling or a reaction. School can be dogmatic.

GERARD MALANGA: In hindsight, to embrace atheism, Scarlett, would deny the spirituality within me which accounts for a lot of my poetry as well. There was no real rebellion on my part. I always felt that my guardian angel was looking after me when I was fated to become a poet. Who would I be, otherwise? It’s a scary proposition, come to think of it.

SCARLETT SABET: True, looking back I realise I’ve always had a Guardian Angel too. I’m so sorry for the loss of [influential Beat poet] Michael McClure, and I was moved by the picture you took of him in San Francisco, 1972. What was that day like?

GERARD MALANGA: If I live long enough, God willing, I may end up not knowing anyone because at this juncture a lot of my friends have already passed. Many of them in the obituary series of my most recent book Cool, which you have. I don’t want to slip into a consciousness of perpetual mourning. Yet I hadn’t anticipated that I’d be writing a poem for Michael, but then I opened up to myself and his consciousness flowed right in. Perhaps I had a vacuum to fill at that moment from an external point of view, taking Michael’s place for the poem that would talk to him and he to me.

I remember little of that when I came to visit with him and made his portrait. It was a serene afternoon. Just him and me. I remember distinctly that we went off in his car, perhaps to a restaurant. We were driving somewhere, and that made sense. But for the life of me I remember nothing of what transpired over lunch. With all the history—and it ain’t an awful lot—there’s still a history there to be acknowledged. You know, I performed the part of Billy the Kid in Warhol’s movie which we adapted from Michael’s play, The Beard. Hardly anyone knows this; perhaps in part because I believe the movie has never been shown. So the friendships last and last and continue beyond the grave.

SCARLETT SABET: I’m always struck by the structure of your poems. I was wondering what your approach to this was, whether there was any major influence from particular poets of your youth, or even whether the way that you frame scenes and ideas within poems has any crossover influence from your work in the wider art world?

GERARD MALANGA: Yes, there’s probably a very strict structure to my poems, but it’s casually applied in what the work proposes as possibility, which I don’t even notice when I’m starting out. For instance, for a very long time, the opening to the work begins with an indented first line of let’s say 8 characters. It’s my way of engaging myself and the reader into a form of poetry that’s a radically different departure from what may be normally perceived. Yes, it’s a poem, but I like to think of them as prose poems as well.

I left ‘influences’ behind decades back. I’m pretty much on autopilot. I’m my own navigator. I travel the journey alone. My earliest influence when I literally started was Gerard Manley Hopkins. I was enchanted by his system of ‘sprung rhythm’ which he basically invented with no imitators following. That would’ve been 1959 during the start of the high school year in my senior class. In 1962, I believe, John Ashbery made a profound influence on my early work with his book The Tennis Court Oath. That became my Bible. I’d carry it around my duffle bag wherever I went. But it was Ted Berrigan with his Sonnets in ’64 that unlocked the door for me into what Ashbery was doing and that was a sheer liberating factor. From there the work continued to expand on its own.

The only ‘crossover influence’ that I imagine, as you put it, in the ‘wider art world’ would be my own life, and not the art world, per se. So what we have here is the tendency to open almost all the work in the form of what appears to be a letter on the surface, but is actually a message. I’m addressing the subjects of my poems directly; they’re not ‘about’ the subject. I’m talking directly to them, as if they’re right in the room, whether it’s a person or a cat.

SCARLETT SABET: You mention you don’t write about your subjects but address them directly in your poems. I think this is what makes them so arresting and intimate, particularly in the ‘Lives They Lived’ chapter in your beautiful collection Cool & Other Poems [published by Bottle of Smoke Press]. Each poem is a visceral portal, allowing the reader to be present with you, and witness Christopher Logue against a snowing sky before warming his hands around a mug of cognac, and Anita Pallenberg a vivacious, laughing woman sitting opposite you at Cafe Flore. Also in that chapter you include a poem entitled ‘Gerard Malanga dies’. The poem contains the line ‘I am my only guide now,’ which I found so powerful. Could you tell us how that poem came to be?

GERARD MALANGA: Putting together that section, ‘The Lives They Lived’, I figuratively had to step outside myself. That’s how close I was with many of those listed and to the memories I have of them held dear. It was not an easy section to compile. By the way, ‘The Lives They Lived’, is borrowed from the New York Times‘s annual round-up supplement. I called my contact at the paper to get permission to use it and he saw no problem involved.

Writing ‘Gerard Malanga dies’ was a tricky situation in the need to make it work. It was one of the final poems in the section and it presented me with an opportunity to address certain issues surrounding death and to those friends I’d already acknowledged over a period of nearly 40 years. I also lapse into a bit of my own personal history, as if I’m contemplating how others might see me after I’ve gone: ‘The rabbit hole is waiting for my plunge.’ Somehow, that image of the rabbit hole has emerged in a few of my poems and also echoes back to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, one of my favorite childhood books.

The rabbit hole is an image for both death and resurrection, as I see it. Here, I question myself, ‘Am I preparing for another life? A return to life?’ And so I treat this poem as slowly nearing its own end with a ‘journey’ back to life ‘…and on and on…’. I equate this with an actual journey I’d taken by train from ‘Glasgow down to Central London…’ back in 2014 where I’d been dreamily staring out the window at a passing landscape I might not ever explore at any other time.

‘Will I even find my way home to the Bronx’ alludes to a movie I’d seen years back I recall, called ‘The Swimmer’ adapted from a John Cheever short story. Starring Burt Lancaster, his character is swimming across a series of backyard swimming pools and encountering neighbors he knew poolside in attempting to reach home. And when he arrives in the pouring rain and runs up to the door, he discovers that the door’s locked and the house is empty. Such a potent ending and darkened cinematic metaphor, brilliantly done. And it’s these private memories in my life resurfacing that I feel nourishes my work.

SCARLETT SABET: We met at a book launch in London, and you were immediately swarmed, surrounded by people. I think that is a testament to the impact your writing has had globally and across generations. How has your home city of New York and its literary landscape changed and evolved for you over the years? Is it something you feel especially connected to?

GERARD MALANGA: Your question speaks volumes, but I’m going to try to be as brief and succinct as I can hope to be as the facts show. I’m seventy-seven now and there have been no accolades to show for it. Cool came out last year and Whisper Sweet Nothings two years prior and together they comprise the best of anything I’ve ever done, and yet they’ve been totally ignored by the New York literary press overall. In the five decades I’ve been publishing I’ve received not one grant or fellowship or any of the prizes totaling in the millions. Nada. Zilch. I can’t even get my memoirs published and I have thousands of fans waiting for this book. You would think that would count for something. I’m grateful for the European attitude towards my work. That’s what keeps the work alive for me. That’s where my audience is and they relate. I love what I do, and I know it shows through the work from the responses at the readings I give and that’s how my work thrives. I love my audience and that’s the truth of it.

SCARLETT SABET: A year ago today, I finished my waitressing shift, went home and listened to what Jimmy [Page] had produced from the recordings we had made of my poems. this became our spoken word album Catalyst. It was a joy to be able to give you our album as I am so moved by your work. It had a sense of synchronicity also, as years earlier, Jimmy had given me a signed edition of your beautiful poem ‘Devotion’.

You said that ‘Cut Up’ was your favourite track on Catalyst. I had christened that poem ‘Cut Up’ simply because it was the first time I had used the William Burroughs/Brion Gysin method. I always feel it’s a handing over, a leap of faith to a higher power, to introduce another energy to it, and it came out with it’s own dark, random rhythm. Burroughs said “when you cut into the present the future leaks out”, and in that sense it has a spell like quality or possibility.

Some poems I’ve written in one sitting, a sort of channeling, like ‘Fifth Circle of Hell’, which is also on Catalyst. But part of the reason I found the cut-up method so liberating that first time was that I was trying to write a poem to encapsulate that period. I felt cautious because the subject matter was focused on the events in Europe and the Middle East, and the horrors and blood shed of the Bataclan attacks in Paris. I think my own identity and ethnicity – my mother is French-Scottish and my father is Persian – gave this piece more weight personally. So really, the cut-up was a way of detaching through the process, which was effective. I suppose I wonder what your thoughts are on cut-ups?

GERARD MALANGA: Scarlett, cut-ups are a tricky business. They almost feel spontaneous, but with every move there’s no turning back. They’re the antithesis to parallel grammatical structures which is how we reform language to make things sound right. You see Bill [Burroughs] stuck with it all his life. Cut-ups were his language and he embraced the process. It’s okay to experiment with language so long as you come out at the other end with something that satisfies you and encourages you to want to do more, to go further. That’s a big commitment. The one thing you want to avoid is being self-conscious in the process, as you put it. There’s no room for self-consciousness in cut-ups. You have to operate on a more or less unconscious level like when you dream.

Of course, you realize this in dreams. I don’t need to tell you. In dreams, nothing really connects or relates. Dreaming is a series of visual and mental disconnects. One thing leads to the next but you don’t know why nor do you have time to stop to know why. It’s like you go with the flow. Excuse the corniness of this. Dreams are the cut-ups of the unconscious. You can’t go back to change anything to make it better. There’s nothing qualitative about it. When that happens to me, I try to maintain the balance of the good and the bad together. All of it. Yes, I’ve done a little tweaking here and there, but only because I’m now in the conscious state and I want to make the lines sound just right. So it’s okay to prune. Robert Lowell taught me how to prune. But you have to know what you’re doing. It’s trusting your instincts. That’s what I do. If I throw out a perfectly terrific line, it’s because I’m trusting my instincts. But, of course, only I know that. The reader doesn’t, nor does he need to.

One of my earliest poems was a form of the cut-up. My English teacher in high school, Daisy Aldan, who introduced me to the world of poetry, gave us an assignment in class to cut out words at random from the newspaper and fill a paper bag with them. The next step was to reach into the bag and pick out one word at a time and place them on a page, and then to transcribe those words into a text, including all the capital and lower-case letters. I did one better and glued them onto the page. This all had to do with chance. Remember, Stéphane Mallarmé, in his last poem ‘Un coup de dés’ said that a ‘a throw of the dice NEVER NEVER will abolish chance.’ Well, he was right about that. You take your chances, you trust your instincts.

SCARLETT SABET: I’ve started reading Gysin’s novel The Process. I bought it last year at Shakespeare&Co but started reading it now to feel closer to Morocco, a place that I really love, while still in lockdown. I wondered what places have meant the most to you?

GERARD MALANGA: I have Brion’s book on my shelf, but I’ve yet to read it. Perhaps I’m still not ready for it yet. Right now I’m immersed in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. What I like about it is that it reads like it’s not translated but written directly in English. That’s probably the best kind of translated work.

The first place that comes to mind that has meant the most to me, although there may have been others, is the Cafe Flore. It was my first introduction to cafe life when I arrived in Paris in the spring of 1965. And henceforth whenever I’ve visited Paris, I would arrive punctually every morning during my stays. There’s no other cafe that does it for me. Of course, there’s the cafe in the Luxembourg Gardens, but that’s more like a restaurant; a different ambiance entirely. The Flore has a certain something, a certain charm about it that allows me to immerse myself reading the morning papers or writing a poem even. The food’s good too. The croissants, the omelettes, the cafe creme. Some years back, I started referring to it as my ’office’ whenever I had an appointment to meet with friends. And I’d be certain to book a hotel room within walking distance. Anyway, the Flore is the start of my day.

SCARLETT SABET: Well, I hope one day, when the lockdown is over, we can meet you at Cafe Flore.

Photos: London Magazine

[whats-the-story-tc]

26th-28th of April, 2020

"The Ones with the Series of Unfortunate Events"

[LONG AS FUCK SORRY]

After what happened on Saturday, I could barely fall asleep at night. I had a splitting headache from all the crying and genuinely felt like shit. Morning came, and I immediately reached for my phone. Nothing from her. It still being quite early, I tried to go back to sleep, and spent a full hour tossing and turning, a head full of thoughts, until I couldn't take it anymore. I turned my phone on and checked the notification bar, only to see a very familiar name and face.

I submitted my essay to her already, way before it was due, so when she actually assigned it in Google Classroom, I just pressed 'Mark as done' and thought I was good to go. V has obviously seen it (two links here). And, even though I didn't submit jackshit this time, she still felt the need to send me a "Thank you :)". I was overjoyed. FINALLY. So, as I explained here already, I had an impulse thought and decided to respond. "And thank YOU for the "task". I had a lot of fun with it. (I mean, the [poet's name] one.) If you're ever curious about anything of this sort, don't keep it to yourself :)" Of course, I regretted it as soon as I sent it. And, of course, I knew I wouldn't get an answer.

I promptly took a full day of rest after that, like I was trying to recover from a bad break-up. I didn't expect to hear from her again the next day.

Monday morning. New notification. Same old love of my life. She assigned us a project we'd already spoken about last week — to reinterpret a monologue from the play I read, the one V really likes, in any shape or form. Painting, video, prose, or, to quote V: "tiktok (not that I know how that works, but it's your choice)". She also said that she wants to keep what we make, maybe even share them with our Geo/Art teacher. I got even mote excited than when she first announced this. I knew I wanted to draw something, to show her a side of me she'd never seen before. I'm starting it on Friday. Doing a bit of painting, too. Wish me luck.

At around 2 PM that same day, Pocketwatch Friend noticed V's reply to her essay and asked me how she should respond to her. Found it quite funny, not gonna lie, knowing my history with replies. And as my friends told me about the responses they got, I realised a fundamental difference. All of them were skimmed over going into detail. They noted them fine, but didn't take the time to explain why they were noteworthy. So basically, they lacked content. Meanwhile the only things she spent paragraphs pointing out about my essay were miniscule stylistic mistakes. This gave me a fair bit of reassurance about what I do. I did enough. I was enough.

Come Tuesday, I was a nervous wreck to say the least. I always am, when it comes to online classes, but especially so when I have class with V. I walked up-and-down in the room, listening to her talk, not daring to say a word. God, I wish I kept to that.

Before I get to the part where y'all laugh at my misery, a teensy bit of prelude. Here I mentioned that the first time I had spoken to V after class, the 11th of October, 2018, we spoke about Hamlet. In short, I was a bit oblivious, and didn't really know how to recognise the Oedipus complex I've seen associated with the play. We were covering the story of Oedipus anyway, so I trotted up to her after class to talk. I remember the afternoon Sun shining really bright that day, and V being very relaxed and fully in her element as she spoke, leaning against my desk (that I wasn't sitting at by then). I went home smiling, unable to get her out of my head after that. It should've been clear from that day.

Now, on to class. There were a lot of good bits, a lot of interesting bits... but I don't want to talk about those now.

Last ten minutes, V asks if there are any questions. "I might just have one." I said, and immediately regretted it, even though I could hear the smile in V's voice as she said "Off you go". Theatre/Literature buffs, I'm sure you'll know the line "Frailty, thy name is woman!" from, you guessed it, Hamlet. Now, in the poem we were talking about, there was a line with the exact same structure, only with different words in the place of frailty and woman. I tried to twist it and see if V made that same association, but luck didn't favour me that day. V had no last clue what I meant when I said the quote was familiar. I tried to explain it to the best of my abilities, though I didn't remember the exact Hamlet quote. Neither did V. "I don't really know Hamlet by heart." "Neither do I!" I tried to counter, but just made it more awkward. Bless her soul, V googled it there and then, but just by me saying it was said to Gertrude, it brought up another play with another Gertrude — coincidentally, the one V stroke up a conversation about with me on the very last day of actual school. Those being the results made V laugh, so at least that's a win from my part. I ended up looking it up myself, trying to remember the quote, and ended up answering my own damn question. "So it was the grammatical structure, then?" V asked, with that very same peace in her voice as last year, and I excitedly replied "Yes!". Conversation over. And even though she genuinely sounded interested, I hated myself for bringing up a totally unnecessary thing. Though I hope that I made V "pull [Hamlet] off the top shelf" after class, as she said she might, were it not for me finding the answer.

I was already feeling horrible. Then, V brought up the assignments mentioned earlier and sounded really excited about it, starting to list what she imagined us doing. "A rewrite of the scene in the play..." and as she was saying my name, I grinned and asked her "Was this an indirect reference?". I needed no further convincing that she, indeed, read what I texted her. But here comes the part I laugh at now, but right then it was horrible. She actually chuckled at my teasing question, and God I wish I remembered what she said. Then I said: "I was actually planning on something else, but..." because I found it an interesting idea, and I have been meaning to do that, too. And that's where it got awkward. V, the usually unfaltering and confident V, was startled. Proper startled that she might have accidentally changed my mind. She started saying "oh, no, I didn't mean it like that, I was just trying to predict things..." and that made me worried, so after the oh no, I immediately started rambling "no, no, of course, I know what you meant, I understand". So there we were, talking over each other, both of us a nervous mess that we may have said something wrong we didn't mean. Right now, I find it absolutely hilarious, because how on Earth did we manage that?? But there and then?

I started crying. Silently, of course, not to worry her even further. (I didn't want to turn my mic off because I was scared it would malfunction again.) But I was so tense, that all my gasoline pool of nerves needed was this little spark of awkward, and it caught flame. I stood there, tears streaming down my cheeks, blaming myself for speaking and thinking I should've just shut up.

Soon after, V told us not to stress about the assignment, because "it's just homework". Everybody's favourite Cynical Twat, who is even worse at social situations than I am, tried to express he was glad to hear that, but did so in a very confusing and sarcastic way that V didn't really understand. "It would be pretty shitty of me" to make us stress, she said. So I dried my tears and jumped in, because she deserved to hear the compliment. "I don't mean to speak for [Cynical Twat], but I think he meant that we're all glad you said that. Not many people do it like that." I told her something along the lines of that. "Oh, okay." she said, disbelief thick in her voice. Hey, V. We bloody love you. It's time you start believing it.

Class ended soon after, and I spent about twenty minutes sobbing and cursing myself. The message from Pocketwatch Friend saying "I can't believe [V] replies to everything" as they were talking about her essay, only made it worse.

That night, I had a conversation with one of my underclassmen I talk to every once in a blue moon. We were discussing school and teachers, and I intentionally didn't bring up V. I waited for her to. Though, okay, I did provoke it a teensy bit, but just slightly. So, we talk about her, and through the things the girl says, I find out that... heh, of course, I'm not the only one she strikes up convos with. Turns out, after a joke, V even winked at her! (Okay, she did that to me once, too, when I stood up for her in class, but that's not the point.) After that, I was carrying the convo on just fine, but inwards, I was spiralling into a great big void of 'You ain't special to her, bitch, the fuck were you thinking'. The girl ended the conversation with "the woman's weird (...) but that's how we love her". Right. Yeah.

Now, two days later at current, I'm back in the room where all the crying went down. Bit surreal, thinking back. I'm sure I won't forget this for quite a while. Will my unlucky strike stop anytime soon? I don't know. We'll see. But I don't think anything could surprise me anymore.

You may take that as a challenge, V.

~ S ♡

[Every story I share here, no matter how specific I get with my wording, depicts actual events from my own life.]

[spamzineglasgow]

(REVIEW) All The Poems Contained Within Will Mean Everything To Everyone, by Joe Dunthorne

Is it fiction, is it poetry, is it truth — what are the rules here? Kirsty Dunlop tackles the difficult, yet illustrious art of the poet bio in this review of Joe Dunthorne’s All The Poems Contained Within Will Mean Everything To Everyone (Rough Trade Editions, 2018).

Whenever I read a poetry anthology - I hope I’m not the only one - I go to the bios at the back before I read the poems…it’s also a really strange thing when you publish a poem…you brag about yourself in a text that is supposed to sound distant and academic but is actually you carefully calculating how you’ll present yourself.

> It’s the middle of a night in 2019 and I’m listening to a podcast recording from Rough Trade Editions’ first birthday party at the London Review Bookshop, and this is Dunthorne’s intro to the reading from his pamphlet All The Poems Contained Within Will Mean Everything To Everyone (2018). As I lie there in that strange limbo space of my own insomnia, Dunthorne’s side-note to his work feels comfortingly intimate because it rings so true (the kind of thing you might admit to a friend over a drink after a poetry reading rather than in the performative space of the reading itself). Like Joe, and yes surely many others, I am also fascinated by bios - particularly because I find them so awkward to write/it makes me cringe writing my own/this is definitely the kind of thing you overthink late at night. Bios also function as this alternative narrative on the margins of the central creative work and they do tell a story: take any bio out of context and it can be read as a piece of flash fiction. When we are asked to write bios, there is this unspoken expectation that we follow certain rules in our use of language, tone and content. Side note: how weird would it be if we actually spoke about ourselves in this pompous third person perspective irl?! Bios themselves are limbo spaces (another kind of side note!) where there is much left unsaid and often the unsaid and the little that is said reveals a lot. Of course, some bios are also very, very long. Dunthorne’s pamphlet plays with this limbo space as a site of narrative and poetic potential: prior to All The Poems, I had never read a short story actually written through the framework of a list of poet bios. The result is an incredibly funny, honest and playful piece of meta poetic prose that teases out all the subtle aspects of the poet bio-sphere and ever since that first listen, I can’t stop myself re-reading.

> This work is an exciting example of how formal constraints in writing can actually create an exhilarating sense of narrative liberation. I see this really playful, fluid Oulipo quality to the writing, where the process of using the bio as constraint is what makes the rollercoaster reading experience so satisfying as well as revealing a theatrical stage for language to have its fun, where the reality of our own calculated self performance can be teased out bio by bio. The re-reading opens up a new level of comedy each time often at the level of wordplay. I’ll maybe reveal some more of that in a wee bit.

> It’s a winding road that Dunthorne takes us on in his narrative journey where the micro and the macro continually fall inside each other. So perhaps this review will also be quite winding. Here is another entry into the text: we begin reading about the protagonist Adam Lorral from the opening sentence, who we realise fairly quickly is struggling to put together a ground-breaking landmark poetry anthology. His bio crops up repeatedly in varying forms:

‘Adam Lorral, born 1985 is a playwright, translator and the editor-publisher of this anthology.’

‘Adam Lorral is a playwright, translator and the man who, morning after morning, stood barefoot on his front doorstep […]’

‘Adam Lorral is a playwright, translator and someone for whom the date Monday, October 14th, 2017 has enormous meaning. Firstly Adam’s son started smiling.’

The driving circularity of this repetition pushes the narrative onwards, whilst the language is never bogged down: it hopscotches along and we can’t help but join in the game. Amidst a growing list of other characters/poets- that Adam may or may not include in this collection he seems to be pouring/ draining his energy into, with just a little help from his wife’s family money- tension begins to build.  

> Although Adam is overtly the protagonist in the story, to my mind it is, in fact, Adam’s four-week-old son who is the real heroic figure. Of course this baby doesn’t have a bio of his own but he does continually creep into Adam’s (he’s another side note!). He comes off as the only genuine character: there is no performance, no judgement, he just is. Adam is continually amazed by his son’s mental and physical development which is far more impressive than the growth of this questionable anthology. The baby is this god-like figure, continually present during Adam’s struggles, with the seemingly small moments of its development taking on monumental significance. Adam might try to immerse himself fully in this creative work but the reality of his family surroundings will constantly interrupt. This self-deprecating, reflective tone led me to think about how Dunthorne expansively explores the idea of the contemporary poet and artist identity through metanarrative. In Ben Lerner’s The Hatred of Poetry (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2016), he writes ‘There is embarrassment for the poet – couldn’t you get a real job and put your childish ways behind you?’ In a recent online interview with the poet Will Harris[1], when asked about his own development as a writer, he spoke about how the career trajectory of a poet is a confusing phenomenon and I’ve heard many other poets speak of this too: there are perhaps milestones to pass but they are not rigid or obvious and, of course, they are set apart from the milestones of more ‘adult’, professional pursuits. I think Dunthorne’s short story accurately captures this confusion around artistic, personal and intellectual growth and the navigation of the poetry community, through these minute, telling observations and the rejection of a simplistic narrative linearity. The story doesn’t make any hard or fast judgements: like the character of the baby, the observations just are. Sometimes, it feels like this project could be one of the most important aspects of Adam’s life (it might even make or break it) and we are there with him and at other moments it seems quite irrelevant to the bigger picture, particularly as the bios get more ridiculous. Here, I just have to highlight one of the bios which perfectly evokes this heightened sense of a poet’s importance:

Peter Daniels’ seventh collection The Animatronic Tyrannosaurus of Guadalajara, is forthcoming with Welt Press. He will not let anyone forget that he edited Unpersoned, a prize-winning book of creative transcriptions of immigration interviews obtained by the Freedom of Information Act, even though it was published nearly two decades ago. His poetry has been overlooked for all previous generational anthologies and it is only thanks to the fine-tuned sensibilities of this book’s editor that has he finally become one of the chosen. You would expect him to be grateful.

> Okay…so I said above that there weren’t hard or fast judgements; maybe I should retract that slightly. The text definitely doesn’t feel like a cruel critique of poets generally (its comedy is too clever for that) but, yes, there are a fair few judgements from Adam creeping into those bios. I am so impressed with the way in which Dunthorne is able to expertly navigate Adam’s perspective through all these fragments to create this growing humour, as the character can’t help inserting his own opinions into other poets’ bios. Of course, we are also able to make our own judgements about Adam and his endearing naivety: shout out here to my fave character in the story, Joy Goold (‘exhilaratingly Scottish’) who has submitted the poem, Fake Lake, to the anthology. Hopefully if you’re Scottish, you can appreciate the comedy of this title. Adam Googles her and cannot find any trace of her, which feels perfect…almost too good to be true.

> Dunthorne plays with cliché overtly throughout the text. You could say all the poets in this story are exaggerated clichés but that certainly doesn’t make them boring: it just adds to the knowing intimacy that, yes, feels slightly gossipy (which I can’t help but enjoy). For example, there is the poet who has:

[…] won every major UK poetry prize and long ago dispensed with modesty […] Though he does not need the money he teaches on the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His latest collection is Internal Flight (Faber/FSG). He divides his time between London and New York because they are both lovely.

I am leaving out a fair bit of this bio because I don’t want to take away some of the joy of simply reading this text in its entirety but it is one of many tongue-in-cheek observations that feels very accurate and over-the-top at the same time (I feel like everyone in the poetry community knows this person). It is also even more knowing when you consider that Dunthorne actually has published a collection with Faber, O Positive (2019), a totally immersive read that also doesn’t shy away from poking fun at its speaker throughout. I always like seeing the ideas that repeatedly crop up in a writer’s work and explorations of calculation and cliché are at the forefront of this collection. I keep thinking of this line from the poem ‘Workshop Dream’:

We stepped onto the beach. The water made the sound: cliché, cliché, cliché.

Interestingly, there is this hypnotising dream-like quality to O Positive - with shape shifting figures, balloonists, owls-in-law – in contrast to the hyper realism I experienced in the Rough Trade pamphlet. However, like All the Poems, in O Positive, we’re always one step inside the writing, one step outside, watching the poem/short story being written. It’s this continual sensation of being very close to failure and embarrassment/cringe. (I can also draw parallels here between Dunthorne’s exploration of this theme and the poet Colin Herd who speaks so brilliantly about the relation between poetry and embarrassment- see our SPAM interview.) Failure is just inevitable in this narrative set up. It makes the turning point of the narrative- when it arrives- all the funnier:

As Adam typed, he hummed the chorus to the Avril Lavigne song–why d’you have to go and make things so complicated?–and smiled to himself because he was keeping things simple. Avril Lavigne. Adam Lorral. Their names were a bit similar. He was looking for a sign and here one was.

> If it isn’t clear already, this is a story that I could continually quote from but to truly appreciate the work, you should read it in its beautiful slim pamphlet format created by Rough Trade Editions. For me, the presentation of this work is as important as the form: this story would have a different effect and tone if it was nestled inside a short story collection. I think a lot of the most exciting creative writing right now is being published by the innovative small indie presses springing up around the UK. Recently I listened to a great podcast by Influx Press, featuring the writer Isabel Waidner: they spoke about both the value of small presses taking risks with writers and the importance of recognising prose as an experimental field, rightly recognising that experimental work often seems to begin with, or be connected to, the poetry community. Waidner’s observation felt like something I had been waiting to hear…and a change that I had noticed in writing being published in the last few years in the UK. I could mention so many examples alongside the work of Rough Trade Books: Waidners’s We are Made of Diamond Stuff (2019), published by Manchester-based Dostoyevsky Wannabe, Eley William’s brilliant Attrib. and Other Stories (Influx Press, 2017), the many exciting hybrid works put out by Prototype Publishing, to name just a few. There is also a growing interest in multimedia work, for example Visual Editions, who publish texts designed to be read on your phone through their series Editions at Play (Joe Dunthorne did a brilliant digital-born collaborative text with Sam Riviere in 2016, The Truth About Cats & Dogs, I would highly recommend!). But this concept of combining the short story with a pamphlet format, created by Rough Trade Books as part of their Rough Trade Editions’ twelve pamphlet series, feels particularly exciting to me and is a reminder of why I love the expansive possibilities of shorter prose pieces. Through its physical format, we are reminded that this is a prose work you can read like a series of poems without losing the narrative tension that is so central to fiction. The expansiveness of the reading possibilities of Dunthorne’s short story also reminds me of Lydia Davis’s short-short stories. Here’s one I love taken from The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (Penguin Books, 2009):

They take turns using a word they like

“It’s extraordinary,” says one woman. “It is extraordinary,” says the other.

You could read this as a sound bite, an extract from an article, a writing exercise or a short story, the possibilities go on; there is a space created for the reader and consequently it encourages the unravelling of re-reading (which feels like a very poetic mode to me). Like Davis, Dunthorne’s work also highlights how seemingly simple language can be very powerful and take on many subtle faces and tones. I think short forms are so difficult to get right but when you encounter all the elements of language, tone, pacing, style, space, tension brought together effectively (or calculatingly as Dunthorne might say), it can create this immersive, highly intimate back-and-forth play with the reader.

> All The Poems Contained Within Will Mean Everything to Everyone. The title tells us there is a collection of poems here that are hidden: the central work has disappeared leaving behind the shadowy remains of the editor’s frustration and the marginalia of the bios. We feel the presence of the poems despite not actually reading them. The pamphlet’s blurb states that this: ‘is the story of the epiphanies that come with extreme tiredness; that maybe, just maybe the greatest poetry book of all is one that contains no poems.’ The narrative, as well as making fun of itself, also recognises that poetry exists beyond the containment of the poems themselves: it can be found in the readings, the performances, the politics, the drafts, the difficulties, the funding, the collaboration, the collectivity, the bios.

> A friend of mine recently asked me: Where are all the prose parties?…And what might a prose party look like? We were chatting about how a poetry party sounds much cooler (that’s maybe why there’s more of them). I think prose is often aligned with more conventional literary forms, maybe closed off in a way that poetry is seen to be able to liberate, but I think Dunthorne breaks down these preconceptions and binaries around form and modes of reading in All The Poems. I want to be at whatever prose party he’s throwing.

[1] University of Glasgow’s Creative Conversations, Sophie Collins interviewing Will Harris, Monday 4th May 2020 (via Zoom)

~

Text: Kirsty Dunlop Published: 10/7/20

[textsacc]

prompt: i write all these stupid love songs about you and then i tear them from my journal and hide them away in a box with your name on the lid. maybe one day you’ll hear them. (unsenttextsuggestion)

its cute how she thinks she can hide things from me, yozora thinks as she mulls over the contents of the box. there's a scatter of ripped paper around her on the floor as she rummages through more litter in the container. it's painted black and gold, with a crescent sticker stuck on its lid. her kashiwazaki overlord was never one to stand by marking things with subtly.

of course she would've noticed it. her eyes ran through words on scrap pieces. the prose -- it's cute. like, sickly sweet kind of cute. some of the words come off sharper and aggressive, but in them yozora can still see the tenderness, light and pure and radiant, just as similar to the owner of the notes herself. she snorts at one, trying not to notice her flushed complexion as she stuffs it back in the box. it wasnt the first time she'd seen them; sometimes she’d liken herself to visit them, when she needed a bit of self-love in the quiet and dreary afternoons, her ego stretched thin by her mind’s loathing behaviour. needless to say, this definitely wouldn't be her last, either. yozora had already found herself addicted to her companion’s love.

haste made for waste, yozora tells herself, collecting the scatter and putting them back where they’d belonged. she only had so much time before her secret admirer got back, after all. lovely, she imagines, unable to help herself from stopping the compliment slipping through as her friend's image naturally came to mind. box in two hands, a slide stores the blonde's secret collection away, tucked neatly in a shelf found underneath her bedroom’s window sill. yozora’s delicate work made it seem as untouched and unremoved as it originally appeared to be. now all she had to do was soothe her burning cheeks, and everything would return to normal.

*

it was almost unfair how sincere her lyrics were. each rip torn at the papers' seams were unexpectedly fortunate, the lines yozora would craft from shifting them around forming neatly, new poetry crafted from fragments of another. something told yozora that her instructions were premeditated, but her gut instinct told her otherwise; after all, sena would never be this careful, the bumbling beast.

stupid cute idiot, she thinks, revising her friend's script again. she would know where the pieces would go, if she tried to pay attention to them. ink bled through paper, and remnants remained on their edges, blotted and broken. but it was way more fun to piece the phrases together to create something dastardly new. when she found herself done, it would be like a cacophony of memories, of all the times sena went through the song writing process, coming up with words and dreams that yozora herself could never admit to sharing. a symphonious torture, yes, that was what it would become, and a mischievous warm smile made its way to her lips. she was only lucky that her carefulness had gotten her this far in the past -- now, though, as she copied the words one by one into her book, she would have all the time in the world to peruse them to her own delight.

*

to say that her plan made her face red was... an understatement, now, in another frame of mind. after running through her notes line by line, a project she’d tended to almost every evening by now, yozora was surprised she couldn't even look the blonde in the face anymore. shed always had a problem with eye contact, that much she found herself sure, but even the best of her tricks couldnt help her as she’d turn her eyes away, even from the vague sight of her friend.

"you're acting really weird lately," sena observes one night at dinner. yozora thinks its funny how she’s invited to eat with the family unlike their previous servants. sort of like a housewife. "is everything alright? you know you can tell me anything on your mind."

yozora refuses. it was much too personal for them and for her. "it's none of your business," and she bites her tongue before she could say 'meat', glancing carefully at her love’s father. pegasus was never fond of that nickname, even though she thought it suited her princess just fine. "--but thank you." of course, she had to observe her manners. "i appreciate the offer."

a useless whimper, the girl puffing up her cheeks in retaliation. yozora fought the urge to smile.

*

the most recent entry, the most recent scatter of paper. she couldnt seriously have wrote that, could she? yozora could hardly believe it.

earlier, she'd made the mistake of matching them as the author had intended, before mixing them into pile. and just entertaining the possibility of those four lines, intent after another, was enough to send her under the covers even hours later, when her eyes weren't focused on pieces ahead of her. so brash, so unrestrained. wanting. yearning. how bashful it reduced her to, as her mind hummed over the words again, a repetitive melody she couldn't simply get rid of. she was only lucky sena rested upstairs and fell asleep early before she could be bothered to hunt for the servant today, as yozora holed herself up in her own little room. she needed isolation, she decides, foreseeing herself blushing red again, with equal intensity in the future. 

if she was to continue her own project like this, she had to ensure more moments of privacy for herself.

*

no knocks, just the door opening. yozora counts her lucky stars (just one, and she was right in front of her) that she hadn't been singing just yet, merely playing a few chords. "i’m here to listen," sena announces, a cheeky smile on her face (too cute). her butler shifts her eyes away from the room's entrance, but scooches closer to the wall; a mistake, as it gives her friend some space on the bed to sit on.

"what're you playing?"

"nothing of importance," yozora shrugs off, not meeting sena's gaze, pretending to retune her instrument. she wondered if the girl would buy into her lie, turning the knob only slightly in her fib. but it didn't seem that way when she’d given her pet a good glance, the star’s brilliant beam shining back in her face.

yozora swallows a breath, looking up. "don't you have some studying to do? a game to get back to?"

"studying?"

the servant notices her momentary slip up, and for a moment yozora debates keeping herself still like a frightened animal. instead, she rolls her eyes, and that gets their conversation to pass over the mistake.

"ah, but the new title that came out earlier today--"

good. sena's attention had been grabbed. "it was just way shorter than i thought it was going to be! what a let down. and they didn't even include a cg for cecilia, but they put in two more for lisa?!"

the princess huffs and folds her arms. for a moment, yozora wondered how lovely it would be to pull her in close for comfort.

"oh no," she replied, resting on her guitar, words dripping with sarcasm. "its not like cecilia's the main character, or that she hasn’t been in any other title before or anything, thus having more screen time than any other character in the series." a miracle, it was, that she remembered the series elements at all.

"are you kidding me?"

her friend's eyes come alive with untold fury. yozora secretly wanted more. 

"that should give them more reason to put more scenes with her in it! being in several games shows exactly how much we the fans like her!" by the sheets, sena pulls her fingers into a fist. "those cowards! i’d already gone to their forums and gave them a piece of my mind, though!"

"and so you're here to bother me instead?"

so long as she herself was being cold, the servant figured, it would be in due time before her mistress would leave her undisturbed.

"of course! i wouldn't want to miss what my best friend was up to these days!"

ugh. best friend.

"sorry, i dont know who that is," yozora mocks, wrist flapped off-handedly. "maybe you should check another room, for once. you'll find someone there."

"that's so mean!" (the telltale pout from sena. what a look.) "why cant you just take the compliment i give you?"

"compliment?"

her sideways glance appears more sly and dark than she'd wanted it, but the facade was entirely calculated; so yozora wouldn't be caught under scrutiny blushing like a lovestruck schoolgirl. that sinister aura was to mask her fluster. "you talk like its a privilege to be your friend."

"it is one!"

"more like a burden. come see me after you've grown up enough to take care of yourself."

of course, her servitude had always been a sore spot for sena, on the account that she wouldn't be seen as independent enough in the household. no, she didn't need to be to begin with, but now there was a reason for the star to hold some guilt. because it was yozora behind those duties now.

"i can do it just fine, thank you very much."

"you say that but you sure aren't showing it, meat," the butler remarks with a straightened back, fingers flicking at her guitar's strings. a strum. "try that again when you've found something else to do."

it turns out to be enough.

with a "hmph" and a toss of her hair (a soft wave of starlight, so pretty) sena gets off the bed and leaves.

wonderful. it would've been a perfect exit, except she forgot to close the door behind her.

again.

not that yozora minded getting up and chasing her beloved’s footsteps to shut it.

*

so, that song. that rearranged poem of scraps abandoned and hidden and lost.

well.

singing it had proved almost too tough to bear.

no matter how yozora found herself rearranging the letters, folding her notes' pages in half in an attempted rewrite, the thought of her unlikely confession had always bubbled up in a swarm up in her chest, bursting painfully against her lungs. and in those moments of frustration, she'd wanted to scream to the world in one chorus of finality, a head-spinning moment where she'd forget all her admirer's intentions behind it, just so she could put her emotions past herself, and wave off the project for having completed it so.

she couldn't, of course, without actually performing the piece live in front of her. a recording would be too insincere, and living through those seconds again in an editor was a nightmare that yozora had opted to spare herself from. it had to be done live, she persuaded herself, even after rational convincing just prior minutes before. at any moment now, her mistress would--

--footsteps trailed towards the entrance. then, the door swung open.

the concert hall was but sena's bedroom, and the guitarist had been unprepared to perform for an audience of just one. of course, changed out from her butler's outfit, the blonde did wonder what her best friend, off-duty, was doing in her room.

"yozora? what--"

the fingers the girl had on her strings were slow in shifting, underlining the tautness within its player.

"i-i was getting ready for something," yozora replies, finally turning around to greet her listener with a reddened face. there was no way for the star to have missed the guitar in her hands, cradled in a comforting hold in the girl's arms, and her digits never leaves its surface when she gestures towards the corridor using a shift of her head. "close the door behind you. i-it's not like this was meant for anybody else..."

in absolute curiosity and confusion, sena complied.

there had been a small space in her mistress' bedroom where a beanbag had been set aside. and though yozora often frequented it during her short breaks or moments of respite with her friend, so too would sena take advantage of its cushion just once, the duo shifting from the center of the room over to an open corner.

"o-okay, so what's this about...?"

"w-well, i..."

it was in a stammer that the vocalist lost her words. and in duress, she defaulted to some lines familiar, lines that would put her back into gear with the delivery of her performance.

after all, she couldn't afford to be worried about her lyrics, stolen as they were sorted through. not now.

"s-shut up and listen."

a gentle chord. fumbling of fingers on nylon, and a pacing of steps against the carpet, on the spot.

with one short breath, yozora parts her lips and allows the melody to flow through her, keeping her gaze shortsighted. vision blurred, the world spinning; it was how she imagined the leak of her emotions to feel, the room growing warmer with each sway of her torso, each swing of her head to one corner, then the next. her heart and her tempo were racing in unequal measures, the girl drawing out each line, keeping in mind to uphold the adagio of a ballad. 

and all the while, she didn’t have to wonder if she was the only one burning up in embarassment. body language was all the performer needed to read with her star kept within sight; raised cheeks, lips hidden behind a fold of her palm, each major fidget was enough of a signal to yozora that, at the very least, her audience was captivated.

for those few minutes, the girl decides, that was all she had to be.

she doesn’t trip up on her lines as she once expected from herself. there’s something in her performance she falls back upon, hours of practice culminated in a single moment, supporting each harmonious line, every tremble of her chords in her throat as she forces notes through second by second. it gets easier the further she performs, and the moon finds herself smiling after a minute, somehow registering the majesty of her craft while she’s delivering it to its intended receipient. it’s cute. like, a sickly sweet kind of cute. her love nearly overflows as she churns out the lyrics, slow, smooth and simple, bubbles of joy tucked away at the back of her mouth, near threatening to rise and take over her words as giggles had she chosen to stop. that realization of how silly, how foolish, how honest and vulnerable her song and dance was making her-- it could’ve swallowed her up whole in midst of her performance.

but yozora is made of tougher material, and with a gentle tap and piviot of her feet upon wool, she stops, with one final hum and a prayer for her success behind closed eyes. there’s nothing but the sound of her guitar strings reverberating in the air for a few seconds; it’s only when the wait for a response gets too much to bear that the girl opens her eyes, to finally put sena into focus, sena, right, the love she was confessing to, the one she couldn’t pay attention to this whole time--

the world stops for a moment when their eyes meet, faces awash with crimson and heat. neither of them move, still as statues save for a couple of blinks. yozora is out of words -- she’d already used all of them in the song, eaten up every other resource of her brain to keep herself functioning in that heart-pounding, adrenaline-rushed moment -- and her grip relaxing on her instrument is a beckon for her other to say something, something.

her response comes in a lean backwards, into the bean bag, bloating it up to hold her when yozora can’t. there is a mix of fear, shock, joy and anger all at once in those eyes, eyes that the girl can’t help but continue looking into, despite the fact that she’d wanted so desperately to look away in that moment, just as she often did in most others. the words take sena another moment to form, and they trickle out as a whisper, “when... when did you find them?”

and the guitarist didn’t need to be asked twice about the star’s secret stash. “i’ve known of it for a while,” she replies, finally tearing her eyes off her admirer. there’s something lodged in her throat as she continues to speak, yozora trying not to stutter over her words. “h-honestly, you should try to hide that box better. it was easy to find it while i was cleaning up your room, you know?”

“the-- the curtains should’ve hid it...” 

a low murmur, one that yozora barely catches. when sena rises, takes a few step to draw close to her servant, that drum beat grows louder in the performer’s ears. she spots a wavering frown from the blonde and a burning visage to match. delicate fingers, fragile and soft rest on the woodwork of the guitar, and they nearly meet yozora’s tight grips. she fights to steady her breathing, just as she sees her star struggling to justify her sudden approach.

“a-anyway, y-you sung them all wrong...! i-i honestly don’t know how you managed to jumble them up so bad, a-and the melody’s completely off-- the line delivery and everything--”

there was a part of yozora that had wanted to argue back, mention the amount of effort that she’d spent piecing together the broken puzzle pieces, solving a jigsaw that didn’t need to be solved. and on most days, in most circumstances, she would’ve opted for such a retort. but the graze of skin against her own and the trembles, the quaking from her mistress -- was sena offering to deliver the songs in their most primal nature, as she had originally intended? 

that clamouring for her guitar seemed to be telling. it’s nearly violent the way yozora thrusts the part of entertainer onto her confessed, restraint audible from the way she hisses out her challenge, trying not to trip on language, “t-then you show me, i-if you want to pick at my creative genius that much.”

“m-mm,” sena responds, taking the instrument in tow, agitation simmering down to a quiet. “j-just watch.”

yozora shifts, retreats, almost hastens her steps as she makes her way to the throne of the audience. and sena checks the scale on the instrument, humming anxiously and pacing on the spot --

the moon wonders, after taking her seat, if that had been exactly how she’d looked just a few moments ago. she contemplates this while avoiding bringing to light that memory itself, leaning forward, watching her other prepare herself.

she doesn’t have expectations, didn’t come in with any the moment she stepped into the room. but listening to her star’s opening lines, it was difficult to say that yozora had been entranced by the confession. sure, a poet her mistress might’ve been, pen marked on paper, but when vocalized paired with a shaken melody, something felt off about the performance. in a way that was telling it needed refinement. in the same way her mistress had always been raw, pure, unabashedly passionate.

it takes the girl everything just to stop herself from laughing, realizing the truth of that adorable personality shining through against all things.

the way her angel, too, had opted to block out the world with a shut of her eyelids. static movements where yozora herself had gone with the flow, felt free -- no doubt lived in her head that it was like watching an amateur’s performance right before their debut, but even then she couldn’t fault her star for her unbridledness. it had been in the spur of the moment that she decided to forge an act together, after all. and line by line, yozora starts to put the pieces together once again, in a different order this time, each keynote with its phrase once disassembled now under reorganization in her memory as she listens. against her fingertips, she feels it, the soft texture of ripped edges worn from handling. a smile graces her face as she tunes in.

though her amusement had subsided, her embarassment -- and heartwarmth -- had not.

only when the last of the songs were complete did it strike yozora as odd, how they practically traded confessions and left themselves devoid of proper confirmation, of responses. it was enough for her expression to wry, eyes trying to match her near-lover’s own if only to convey this perplexity in the moment. when sena finally resumes her sights, yozora makes deer caught in headlights out of her.

“m-meat...”

“w-wh-what is it? j-just so you know, i-i’m not performing them again...”

the star might as well have been the sun by now, glowing so bright with feelings said -- yet bond unconfirmed. she breaks their matching gazes, throwing her own to the side, clutching the guitar with noticable effort in her embarassment. it almost brings yozora to smile again, as she rises, pacing forward; that instrument was hers, and she was to collect it, but she had something else she’d wanted to see if she could retrieve in that moment.

footsteps slow to a shuffle. folded arms. her heated visage was only reflecting her centerfold. 

“y-your delivery could use some work, in my opinion.”

“h-huh?”

“b-but more importantly,” yozora hurries, and puts her hands on sena’s, if only to stop the rebuttals she knows would follow had she hesitated. their traded fevers only worked to dizzy the girl moreso than she already felt faint, the servant taking steady breaths in lieu of her mistress’ fraying composure. “-- t-that just means...”

“-- ...”

“...”

though a silence persisted between them, it was past a few seconds that sena nods, pulling her gaze up from the carpet. a hum. 

“y-yeah. i... i love you too, yozora.”

now it’s the moon’s turn to tremble, finally falling, humbled by her beloved careful and precious words.

“... i-- i love you too. ...meat.”

[heylabodega]

Books Read, Age 26

Previously: 25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20, 19, 18 (holy shit)

Enigma Variations–Aciman I talked to Robbie about this one a bunch bc he’s always looking for good novels about gay people by gay people and I thought this might be that but this is…not that. It had promise and the first section is really kind of lovely but it veers off and just…I don’t know, mileage will vary, but it didn’t feel True to me. idk idk either like he misunderstands love and sexuality or I do and it honestly could more than likely be me.

A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy–Adams One of those books I had just always kinda pretended I read. I mean not that people like frequently check to make sure I’ve read AHGttG but just like in my mind whenever it was mentioned I checked it off. You know the dealio you don’t need my thoughts on it (as opposed to most things, on which you definitely do).

All Grown Up–Attenberg My favorite of the Attenberg novels I’ve read. Of particular use and relevance to me, an aging single woman and unlikeable protagonist. I enjoyed this very much, it was sharp and warm and mean and tender.

Queen of the Night–Chee Hmm. Ok. I felt for most of this book that it like…thought it was a different, more important book than it actually was? It is overwritten–both in prose style and in that it could have been at least 100 pages shorter–and you know how sometimes you read a book with a female protagonist and you’re like ‘I can’t believe a man wrote this!’? Yeah this isn’t that. But the ending line is really good? idk. Someone else read it and tell me your thoughts.

Too Much and Not the Mood–Chew-Bose First of all, excellent title. These essays reminded me, and I mean in this in the lease self-important way possible, of my own writing. Just in that way where writing doesn’t have to be traditionally literarily linear. These essays are good and filled with the kind of sentences that make you know the writer loves words, you can feel her placing them carefully with the satisfying click of scrabble tiles, sliding them into the right order.

Who Killed Roger Ackroyd–Christie Typical Agatha novel and very good. I can’t tell you any more without spoiling it.

Murder in Retrospect–Christie This is one of my fave Christie’s. It was dark and smart and pithy.

Rule Britannia–Du Maurier I found this in a used bookstore in Portland, Maine, just after the Brexit vote. She wrote it in like the 70s and it’s speculative fiction based on if the UK left the EU and formed a union with the United States. It’s kind of really good but it also ends kind of abruptly, like maybe it could have been the first of a trilogy or something.

Plum Bun–Fauset This was my favorite book from my Harlem Renaissance class. I wrote my term paper on it. I love this book. I want to write it as a screenplay and someone to make it into a movie and I want Troian Bellesario to play the lead.

A Coney Island of the Mind–Ferlinghetti A book of (I think?) beat poetry that I found in a used bookstore in Saugherties at Thanksgiving. I love these poems, especially one called “The World is a Beautiful Place” which I read out loud to Robbie one night while we were walking between bars in the snow at like midnight.

Wishful Drinking–Fisher Carrie Fisher is one of those people whose very existence makes me feel braver and weirder and funnier. She’s a truly good soul and I don’t have anything else to say except that you should read this and also that you should Postcards From the Edge first it’s better.

Difficult Women–Gay I prefer Roxane Gay’s fiction to her nonfiction and these are very good, very interesting stories full of sadness and love.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X (as told to Alex Haley) I have never had so many people approach me while reading a book in public as this one. It is, unsurprisingly, an extremely compelling and upsetting book. But I was very surprised by it. I’m not sure quite what I expected from it, but it wasn’t what it was. I think about this book at least twice a week. I think everyone should read it and I think they’ll all enjoy it.

How To Be  A Person In the World–Havrilesky I think maybe Ask Polly columns are better in smaller doses than a whole book, but nevertheless, for better or for worse, she shaped a great deal of my early-twenties self esteem and the essays translate to the page much better than a lot of internet writing I’ve read. 

Girl on the Train–Hawkins This felt…cheap somehow. Like I got really into it and then felt like I’d been cheated or fooled because it’s truly not very good.

Bright Lines–Islam This is a fascinating book. It’s the most Brooklyn summery, felt the most like my Brooklyn summers despite describing a Bengali Muslim family and smoking weed and other experiences that are not specifically mine. I’d recommend it. Highly.

Intimations–Kleeman Man, I’ve recommended this book of short stories to so many people. It’s weird and interesting and it does something I think is hard, which is write surreal stories where the stakes still feel real, if that makes sense. She came and spoke to our class and she told an interesting question to ask of short stories which was, “what are the satisfactions of this story?” and all of these are satisfying and visceral. There’s one long one in the middle that I skipped and you can too, I give you permission.

A Swiftly Tilting Planet–L'Engle Hey, um, you know what’s p upsetting to read? A plot where a crazy dictator is gonna drop a nuclear bomb and start the end of the world (this isn’t a spoiler it’s introduced like five pages in). 

A Wind in the Door–L'Engle This was not as good as A Wrinkle in Time–what is–but it was a bright easy read, her books are so–loving, I guess. Good if you need a little palate cleanser.

Passing–Larsen We read a LOT of books in my Harlem Renaissance course. This a very good, short novel about, well, guess. It’s like a painting somehow, like a 20th century painting.

Sister Outsider–Lorde  I have taken none women’s studies courses so this was a pretty important text I had never read. It is very Good and everyone should read it if they have not already.

Cruel Shoes–Martin I LOVE Steve Martin and still on a few of these I was like “I don’t know, Steve.” But many others (they’re very short stories) are funny or clever or great.

Bright Lights, Big City–McInerney ughhhhhhh a book that is entirely written in second person and is about how womens’ existences and deaths have like ~made a man feel~ but it’s a short quick read and–I am E X T R E M E L Y reluctant to admit–the end is a really good image that did lowkey make me cry but also fuck this book

The Hopeful–O'Neill This I didn’t like much, in a way that I thought it needed a stronger editor and I want Eleanor or Robbie or someone I trust to read it to tell me if I’m wrong.

The Bed Moved–Schiff Weird and good little stories. I don’t think about them often, but they were elegant and sharp as I read them.

Eligible–Sittenfield It’s nice that they’re publishing Modern AU Pride and Prejudice fanfic now in a bound book. This was enjoyable tho tbh not the best Modern AU Pride and Prejudice fanfic I, a cool and chill person, have read in my life.

Swing Time–Smith I think this is my fave of the Zadie Smith books I’ve read. I wasn’t sure by the end quite what the point of it was, but I guess also what’s the point of anything? idk this is a useless description of a book. It was immersive and interesting but I’ve also not told anyone “you *have* to read this you’ll love it.” We did go see her read from it and in person she is enchanting.

The New Woman–Sochen Nonfiction about what I think we’d call first-wave feminism? It was really fascinating about an era I knew nothing about but also had some, um, glaring omissions ahem any mention of race whatsoever.

Action. A Book About Sex–Spiegel Ok look yes fine I am an adult sexually active woman who still reads books about sex whatEVER. I missed sex-ed and I also like to hear, in a non-prurient (or sometimes prurient w/e) way what other people are up to, sex-wise. I mean there’s no real like advice about sex in the world, I think, except that everything consensual and fun is fine, but I think it’s important to occasionally remind yourself of that. This was a good book.

Missing, Presumed–Steiner A crime book that I neither loved nor hated and generally enjoyed reading. Big enh.

The Girls From Corona Del Mar–Thorpe Robbie gave this to me for my birthday last year. A beach read with an edge, page-turner-y but sharp. Seems like it’s going to be a light read, but there’s a bite to it, a reminder of the cruel randomness of fate and of our inability to really know other people or ourselves. I loved this.

Cane–Toomer So this is an important text from the Harlem Renaissance and it’s kinda…never classified? It’s a series of related but not continuous short stories, as well as poetry, and little like plays? idk it’s very evocative and beautiful and dense and bears up to intense overreading. One of my favorite books I read for my Harlem Ren class.

The Blacker the Berry–Thurman Ok so Wallace Thurman apparently worried his whole life that his writing style was too journalistic and he maybe wasn’t…wrong. This is NOT a bad book and it’s well written and novelistic exCEPT when sometimes it feels pedagogical or expository. It’s a short, well constructed novel about colorism and worth checking out.

Killer–Walters Lovely and weird poems. I went to go follow the author on Twitter and discovered I already was. I love these.

The Underground Railroad–Whitehead An extremely. upsetting. book. Here’s the thing and I understand the presumption of my criticism of a book that won the national book award, but: if you’re going to make your conceit that the Underground Railroad is a real railroad, I think that you should do more with it. THAT SAID the rest of this is truly wonderful, somehow at once a page turner and viscerally upsetting.

Kiss Me Like a Stranger–Wilder I love Gene Wilder. I’d read Gilda Radnor’s memoir a couple years ago so part of this was sort of an interesting other side of the story. Anyways he seems like a genuinely strange, slightly neurotic, flawed but mostly warm and kind person.

[kurlykayaker]

gaping hole

So, FYI - this is not my typical entry.  In the long ago past, I tried a combination of writing poetry and prose (kind of stream of consciousness).  See how it reads. My confidence in prose is zero.  Haha, so if you have feedback (positive or negative), I have open ears. Thank you for reading. the world spins faster in grad school, but the days still feel long the more i stare at a screen/diagram i can feel my neural synapses tangling themselves together to find the right connection, “okay, i see how that works,” a semi-friend tells me “you lead an interesting life”    with disdain. lead implies choice, interesting means ambiguous i wonder what it’s like  “to be made” with just the right amount  of egg, milk, butter, vanilla flavoring     and flour, heated to the right temperature range. your mold never left the cookie cutter, you arrived “perfect” to this world, i rarely have negative feelings about my trans male identity these days, i embrace my pansexual orientation, and i don’t hide who i am, but why did i get angry? why am i hurt?  why am i frustrated? perhaps the lack of sleep and food does not help, but i can tell you it’s more than just these things, it’s more than just these things. ....(moving to prose) I don’t share everything with everyone.  I am selective about what I choose to share - ensuring that there is some level of trust between myself and the other person.  I have become very comfortable with my “circle of friends” in PT school, but it has taken so muuuuch time and so many baby steps with all of these beautiful people, and I wouldn’t do it any differently. Even among these friends, there is always some level of ignorance, poor awareness, and ability to understand on their part; note, that I am not angered by this nor upset. It just is - which can be hard for a highly sensitive person to digest.  I have traveled, I have walked and learned the ability to keep my heart neutral. Alas, there is emotion that still has to be released. Before I can reach that “well-balanced”/neutral state.  My friends do not know the depth that I can feel alone at times - especially when I fail an exam (which does happen), during breaks when most people travel home/go somewhere with their significant other, or sometimes just on a Friday night.  I prefer to be among smaller crowds - especially if I drink. The “being alone” is so multi-factorial. - being an ISFJ on the Myers-Brigg scale (not many of us), being very sensitive, having lost my father and aunt to suicide changes you ...being a trans guy (mostly attracted to other men), and add the whole graduate school thing on top. And please do not misunderstand, I absolutely love who I am.  I love the beauty and richness it brings to my life, but there are moments - particularly painful moments, being a cookie cutter seems okay...haha I have been dedicated to therapy and found it to be very helpful.  For the last 2 years, when I returned to therapy, I have been released twice now been told “I’m ready to fly free.”  I went to a drop-in session about 3 weeks ago after failing an exam that I DID study for, haha.  Words sometimes stick in my mind, from therapists - like they do for Bible verses from some people. Her words were, “It sounds like you have excellent coping strategies you’re using well..” and just like that, the smile erupts from my face... I know myself well - to know what works well for me, in life.  I know that I find incredible meaning from helping others in my career.  People freak out when they hear I have 3 part-time jobs, but each one brings SO much meaning to me - that I find MORE meaning in these jobs than what I find in some friendships and even some familial relationships - which is SO sad to admit, but truthful.  The random patients I meet at the hospital, am able to interact with, and have organic moments with - mean the world to me. I have friends- and some of them ONLY study, study study - work out, meal prep, and then drink; this is the stereotypical health-related student. I stay up late. I eat unhealthy meals. I write poetry - art, woaaah. I go to dances alone - and dance (without having to be drunk). I don’t necessarily enjoy the parties with my cohort. I enjoy the “awkward conversation.” Things I have had to explain to my mom in the last week despite being out to her for nearly 5 years: a) how a trans athlete is trying to help U.S. states to legally allow trans people to play for the gender they identify with   my Mom, “how is that fair?   me: Sighs on phone b) what the ACLU is (she teaches ESL) c) that having sex with someone when you first meet them can be intimate (but not in her eyes) - i didn’t try to explain this one d) Re- this conversation was about 4 months ago, but we had a lengthy conversation about how President Trump’s decision to define gender legally as someone’s biological sex essentially is his attempt “to erase trans people.”    My whole family - mother, stepdad, and older brothers ALL voted for him.    Meanwhile, my Mom, “Well, what’s wrong with that?”    me: very audible sigh, *rolls eyes*, and with fire, “REALLY, Mom? Does it matter that I came out to you as a trans guy almost 5 years ago and we had these hard conversations about gender then? Have you forgotten all of that?”    Mom: “Don’t attack me. I just....don’t understand. “    me (still upset): “You know...if I don’t stay in this country, you can’t say you didn’t know, because I have explained this to you before. I’ve given you recommended books to help you understand.  And, I’ll explain it again but you voted for someone who would prefer for me to use the female restroom. How would you feel Mom, seeing someone like me...in *your* restroom?   (She’s fired up now....)   The conversation continues. I calm down and explain it to her.  I was trying to review some orthopedic information that day, in preparation for my clinical week.  I couldn’t study after that- I recall going back to the coffee shop, sitting down and being so fucking frustrated.  The feelings sunk in like the weighted Titanic - anger, complete frustration, annoyed, tired, so emotionally tired, alone- very alone, and void of hope.  My hands are shaking, I can’t tell if I’m going to cry or hit something. I excuse myself from the coffeehouse, and go home - to cuddle myself in my bed.      After my dad passed away and when I got to high school, I was afraid to leave home and go to school.  It was a weird stage and feeling to experience at that age because most teenagers want to be the farthest thing from their parent.  I later realized - I was afraid that I would come home, after school, and she’d no longer be there in the physical form.  It was a rational fear; essentially, that’s what happened with my dad - I went to school (and never really left school) to find he .... was suddenly gone.      Essentially, I’m always aware - this could happen at any moment. Despite sometimes my mom’s lack of understanding, I love the hell out of her and put these differences aside (despite wanting to educate her and try to help her understand more)....      Yet, these are still things I continue to talk about with my mom - whom I consider VERY close to me.  The pertinence of this story is that feeling of being alone.  I can spend hours alone - studying, writing, meditating, listening to music and not feel alone.  The context of the word is important; I don’t like the word, “lonely.”  Lonely in my opinion, carries a connotation of co-dependency, unhealthy attachment, lack of self-resolve (emotionally, possibly mentally) and lack of self-comfort.       What the fuck is the meaning of my word, “alone” then?  I am comfortable in myself and my independence, but I feel so disconnected from the people around me- from some of my closest friends, from my very own mother, from my classmates.  A close trans guy friend of mine, who lives in NC is doing an internship in Ireland; and he jokes that, I should “move there with him” (that’s his plan to move there).  Which is a HUGE change; and I don’t normally place great emphasis on where we live.   I think that internal happiness and connection is more abstract than that- it’s about a state of mind, and how you see life.  But, maybe a change in culture would be healthy for me?       That is something, I am unsure of - and don’t have an answer to.  I know that when I go to my favorite Latino restaurant in Athens, I feel a sense of connection and love - that I don’t feel elsewhere. The waiters will just talk to me- they’re not in a rush, and I enjoy this greatly.     ... The hardest aspect of writing sentences/prose to me is that I feel so academic and feel I need a sound “ending.”  Poetry allows me to end the poem with a beautiful decrescendo.  You’re not getting that here, haha. People try to tell me that “I’ll find someone” (re: partner) or ...”to just have faith.”  I’m not looking to find someone tomorrow or even in 3 years - it’s so much more than being in a relationship.  It’s about feeling connected to the people around me. When people provide this kind of “broken record” of a response, I’m tempted to start a conversation with this- the words you’ve been reading, what I’ve been expressing in this entry - but even with people that are close to me, when I’ve attempted, only so much is absorbed and understood. And so this, entry ends with a hole -  a fucking gaping hole in which my Mom replies, “That is life, Jordan. Life is hard.” I laugh to myself, “You don’t think I don’t know that Mom?” ....

[abigailzimmer]

Top 2016 Reads

Looking back over the books I’ve read this year is its own record of time. In the way that a song evokes a memory, I remember that it rained the day I read Ongoingness and texted my new-mother friend the passages on time and child-rearing or that, sitting exhausted in my hotel room after a work conference, I was re-energized by Elisa Gabbert’s The French Exit. I read several books by Tomaž Šalamun in late winter/early spring but Alejandra Pizarnik’s work was definitely a September read. With these memories in mind, here are the top books that shaped my year.

1. Elena Ferrante’s four-book series (I’ll count as one since books aren’t really bound by spine and volume anyway). I don’t remember the last time I’ve loved two fictional characters more than I’ve loved Lila and Elena, was equally frustrated and charmed by them, and longed to know the choices they would make next. An extra pleasure was Ferrante’s writing about writing, and I’m eager to fall into Frantumaglia next.

2-3. Among the many giants we lost this year, I was most affected by the passing of CD Wright last February, a giant in the poetry community and an inspiration as a woman in indie publishing and translation. She left us two last books, published posthumously. The Poet, The Lion, Talking Pictures, El Farolito, A Wedding in St. Roch, The Big Box Store, The Warp in the Mirror, Spring, Midnights, Fire & All (such a great title!) is a love note to the friends, artists, and books that she loved, to words and Robert Creeley and gentleness and a humanizing eye on poverty. Thank goodness for poets writing prose!

Shallcross, too, was a pleasure in its studied intention on the prison system and in her varying forms. To write simply a few lines (as below) or dozens of pages—she was a master.

4. Bright Dead Things by Ada Limon is a rod of fierce strength through loss of mother, of lovers, of time. Every page calls out to being alive, despite the heartache which comes with it. “We all tip our lonely hats / in one un-lonely sound,” she writes in one poem. And in another: “But [the horse] went straight from wild thing to wild thing, approving of its wildness.” 

5. I heard Ocean Vuong read from Night Sky with Exit Wounds in August. I’ve never heard anyone speak with such love and care towards language. He is young, but that doesn’t matter. His attention towards his craft and work gives him wisdom and makes me return to his poems again and again as a reader, as a student, as a listener.

“How ruin nested inside each thimbled throat / & made it sing.”

6. My love of poem-as-story and of chapbooks means Pattie McCarthy’s little chap from Bloof Books scenes from the lives of my parents must be included on this list. Each page offers a glimpse into the parents’ lives, including several versions of how they met, some of which contradict each other. Even the speaker begins to doubt the truth of these scenes. By luck or by fate, I came across this sold-out book at a used bookstore, but you can read this one for free here or in an anthologized collection of other sold-out Bloof chaps here.

7. Kate Greenstreet’s first book case sensitive shows the beginning of her fragmented, long-form way of writing. The poem “[SALT]” mixes the many uses, history, and attributes of salt while processing the grief of a now-gone mother. Throughout the book her fragments, associations and repetitions, seemingly so disparate, lead to new insights and recognition of the moments we all feel when lost. “I don’t know, experiment,” she writes in frustration. “See the minute turn / break it on the way out.”

8. entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate by Johannes Goransson. What a weird book. What a weird, vulgar, intricate, surgical, funny, male-part/woman-part, plagued, play-like book. A list of just a handful of characters with monologues: the Passenger, the Revolution, Mother History, Birth (#2), the Ghost of the Repulsive Man (Miss World), the Daughter, the Genius Children, Hollywood, the Prom Queen.

9. “I have several theories as to what, exactly, music is,” begins Kelly Schirmann’s Popular Music, an exploration of music, memory, technology, and how it all binds us into community. Through essays and extended poems (again, when poets turn to essay. . . !), she leads us seamlessly on.

“Music gives me permission and encouragement to experience the feelings I have never had, that maybe I never will. The words themselves do not need to be mine, or even true, for me to understand them, to learn from them. I can memorize them, repeat them, and carry them with me for as long as I need to. They are practice. Whenever I’m ready, I can leave them behind.”

10. This year was the year of Elena Ferrante and Patti Smith for me, at least in my reading. Why it took me so long to pick up Just Kids, after it had been gifted to me and sat in my to-read-pile by my bed for months, I don’t know. I was swept into her world within the first few pages. Then I dived into her music, her poetry, M Train, and on her birthday, December 30, I got to see her perform her first album Horses in a packed theater. Through the intimacy of her writing and her kind, thoughtful, humble, and punk persona on stage (how to be all those things at once?!?), she has quickly become a hero. And Just Kids is a beautiful tribute of friendship for and to Robert Mapplethorpe and a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how each created and created each other. Grateful we have artists and revolutionaries in the world. Of him and his struggle with his sexuality, she writes: “Often contradiction is the clearest way to truth.”

(Patti Smith on her 70th birthday at the Riviera Theater in Chicago.)

[limejuicer1862]

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

  James Carter

is an award-winning children’s poet. He travels all over the cosmos (well, Britain), with his guitar (that’s Keith) to give lively poetry performances and workshops.  James once had hair, extremely long hair (honestly), and he played in a really nasty ultra-loud heavy rock band. And, as a lifelong space cadet, James has discovered that poems are the best place to gather all his daydreamy thoughts.  What’s more, he believes that daydreaming for ten minutes every day should be compulsory in all schools.  His poetry titles include Cars Stars Electric Guitars and Orange Silver Sausage (Walker Books) and Time-Travelling Underpants and Greetings, Earthlings! (Macmillan). James was the major contributor to the recent Cbeebies TV series Poetry Pie. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.

The Interview

1. What inspired you to write poetry?

It’s a number of things. I’ve always really loved words – reading everything from comics/non-fiction as a child to novels as a teen/young adult, and now mainly non-fiction/poetry/plays. I’ve always been a bit imaginative I guess, and as soon as I bought my first electric guitar at 15, I just started writing lyrics to songs. Actually, I wrote my first lyric/poem thing, The Electrified Spiders, aged 8 or 9. I played in bands all through my 20s, writing and recording music. But as soon as I went to uni aged 29 I knew I wanted to write, to be a writer. I tried fiction at first, but it was the poetry/non-fiction that took off.

I’m a bit of an outsider (I’ve often been called ‘contrary’, and I certainly do question everything), always have been, and poetry fits in well with this sensibility, as poetry should show you the world from a different/fresh perspective. In a poem I have to be as original as possible – I feel that I’m implicitly saying ‘Hey look at that – but look at it like this…’. Also a poem has to say something, communicate something, even simply present you with a thought, an idea or a single image.

I like writing for children as it disciplines me. I can’t indulge myself too much, I have to ideally keep my young invisible reader interested. For me, children for me are the best age group to write for. I have no interest in writing for adults per se, but if adults ever like a poem I’ve written with children in mind, then that’s nice! This happened with a kind of eco poem I wrote for a school for World Book Day last year – Who Cares? – it went on the National Poetry Day website (I’m one of their ambassadors), and it was picked up by Radio 3 for their prose and poetry series. I never saw that coming! As a writer, you never know who will read your work, or how it will be received. I even had an email this morning from a woman asking if her 9 year old child could read my poem Love You More (it’s at my website – www.jamescarterpoet.co.uk) at her wedding. How lovely is that? As a poet I couldn’t ask for more.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

School – Macbeth / Canterbury Tales at O level, Philip Larkin at A level, then much later as a mature student, the lecturers at Reading Uni (on the B.Ed degree) were very passionate about poetry. It was the Craft of Writing course in particular that got me writing. In my twenties I went to a fair few John Hegley gigs. Great poet, great comic, and a wonderful person. He showed me you can write about literally a n y t h i n g…

3. How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?

Weird question! Actually, I’m now an older poet myself. And still I’d say the children’s poetry world is led by older poets – but thankfully we have lots of younger voices coming through. And crucially, I very much believe the poetry world is far more welcoming to new poets than it ever was. But I think that writing for children is not something that most people consider anyway until they have children / grandchildren or worked as a teacher or have been on the planet for a while…

4. What is your daily writing routine?

Don’t have one! I write anywhere, anytime. In a sense, I’m always writing. On trains, in cafés, on hilltops, in car parks. Depends what I’m writing though. If I’m writing a poem, I can even write/re-write aspects of it in my head, and then I’ll have to make a note of it on my phone or the envelope I keep in my pocket. (Worked for Paul McCartney when writing Hey Jude!) I often get obsessed with a poem as I’m writing it, and will run lines/phrases over and over in my head, chanting them, mouthing the words until they really flow – and every single syllable/word etc is just right. But if I’m writing a non-fiction verse book, say like Once Upon A Star / Once Upon An Atom, I need to either work on my laptop, or better still, on paper. I will take the manuscript with me wherever I go, making a great many tweaks/edits/changes.

5. What motivates you to write?

Two things – a) a love if not obession with words and the music of language, b) a fascination with the world – and a need to make sense of it, and I find writing a poem on a topic will help me to explore and express something on that subject / idea / memory. I’m always thinking about something or other, so a poem is a great place to put or distil my thoughts.

6. What is your work ethic?

I’m a workaholic. I’m always writing, at least always thinking about writing. Perhaps tweaking a line, refining a title, developing an image, or mulling over an idea for a new non-fiction book.

7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

As Morris Gleitzman so nicely expressed it, everything you read / think / observe / experience goes into the ‘mulch’ from which your writing grows. Specifically, I know that many rhyming things I write are to the rhythm of lines from Macbeth, or my favourite picture book Where The Wild Things Are (a massive influence on me) or even Tom Waits’ spoken word piece ‘What’s He Building In There?’ But I’m sure I’m influenced by lots of things I’ve read without even realising it.

8. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

As poets go, I really admire the Americans Billy Collins, Mary Oliver and Lilian Moore. As children’s writers go, I like Shaun Tan and Oliver Jeffers – and a great many others. But in the main, I try and read more widely, away from poetry so I can be inspired by other things – so it’s often plays and non-fiction.

9. Why do you write, as opposed to doing anything else?

I have done other things from teaching to lecturing to office work, but writing / working in schools as a work shopper and performer is by far the most rewarding thing I have ever done. I so enjoy working with children and teachers and librarians. Performing – all that showing off is fine, it’s great fun, but for me it’s all about switching children on as writers. I love the finales we have at the end of a visit, where the children read their poems. I was actually very close to tears yesterday when we had a Year 6 finale in one of my very favourite schools, in Newbury. The poems were quite brilliant. I feel that what I do now – my writing / workshopping and performing – is a culmination of all I’ve ever experienced, plus my two degrees – my teaching degree and my Masters in Children’s Literature.

10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

Write. Write. Write. Write. Read. Read. Read. Read. DON’T expect to get the first/second/third thing you write to be published as chances are it won’t be. Only JK Rowling was published immediately, everyone else pretty much has to serve an apprenticeship of years of writing in the wildnerness. Don’t be too inspired by what you read as a child, look to see what is published right now. If you are writing for children, make it modern. Don’t trust your own children as readers/listeners – of course they’ll love it as they will want to please you. Even more writing, even more reading… Find out through trial and error, not only what you want to write, but what you are best at. I thought I’d be a novelist, but I’m actually a poet/non-fiction writer – and I’m more than happy with that!

11. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

A kind of best-of poetry book for 7-11s – Weird, Wild & Wonderful – to be published Jan 2021 by Otter-Barry Books and illustrated by the fantastic Neal Layton. I literally just finished the final new poem to go in the book. The book is a round up really of all the most popular poems I have written, published and performed over the last twenty years. But there’s a selection of brand new ones too. As with all my books I’m aiming for a real range of poems in terms of forms / tone / topics. What I want from one of my poetry collections is a book in which a child reader will not know what they are getting next. I want my collections to read more like anthologies, as if they were written by many different poets. WW&W is divided into three loosely-themed sections Weird (more upbeat humorous and daft poems) / Wild (nature/animal poems) / Wonderful (memory poems/quiet, reflective pieces) – but even within those there is a range.

When I began writing in the late 90s (1990s, not 189s, obvs..) there was too much emphasis on humorous poetry I thought, and I’ve tried to resist that in my books. I want a real range. And actually I find it’s often the quieter poems that really stick with children, and mean more to them. When I perform for 7-11s I’ll mainly do the more serious poems, but I’ll also do some improvised comic stuff in between, even some music – piano, melodica and guitar. I still write instrumental music to this day.

Apart from Once Upon An Atom (Caterpillar Books/Little Tiger Press) – a book on science in verse for 5-8s, I have another book in that same series (as yet untitled!) which is being illustrated right now and that is on the subject of palaeontology – going back in time, exploring various extinct creatures from the past – from woolly mammoths to trilobites to T.Rexes. I really love writing non-fiction. Researching a topic for months, and then finding an interesting angle to tell the story of that subject. I don’t want too many facts. Other books do facts, so instead I try and establish a narrative thread of some kind that takes a reader into or through a subject. Once Upon An Atom is slightly different in that it has three sections – Chemistry / Physics / Biology, and in very simple poetic language explains/explores each of these. It was probably the toughest book I’ve ever done – explaining science to an infant isn’t easy! The illustrations by the Brazilian artist Willian Santiago are just brilliant – very vivid, slightly retro sci-fi at times.

12. Why did you write Once Upon An Atom?

I’ve always been fascinated by science. Biology was my favourite subject at school – until I did a week of it at A level and decided it had effectively turned into chemistry and physics, which I wasn’t happy about it, so I dropped it! Instead, I got into English big time – Shakespeare, Larkin etc. And later at uni I studied English with education – but I’ve always had an interest in science, particularly natural history and anything space-related.

I’d already written six or so books in this series for Caterpillar Books, and each one, though non-fiction – and in verse – told a linear story – eg Once Upon A Star (the Big Bang/formation of our sun) / Once Upon A Raindrop (the story of water on this planet, including water cycles) / Once Upon A Rhythm (the story of music). This time I wanted to write about Science, but however I thought about it, there was no actual simple and direct story, just a very complex/interconnected  sequence of inventions/discoveries etc from the last 10,000 years, and that wouldn’t do for a younger children’s picture book. I’d read – rather tried to read – Bill Bryson’s (and I’m a massive fan of his usually) impenetrable The History Of Nearly Everything. I couldn’t read it. It was too dense. Too clogged with facts. I don’t gravitate (ho ho) to facts, as essential they are – for as a reader, I like some kind of coherent narrative. And I had that book at that back of my mind for the many months I was writing this one.

So for a structure for Once Upon An Atom I ended up with three basic parts, which were effectively chemistry, physics and biology. Initially I explained what they were without actually explicitly naming those disciplines as I thought it would be way over the heads/comprehension of 5-8s, the target audience of this series. It took ages to get it right – to find simple enough concepts for each scientific area without losing the real essence of what each is. I finally handed the manuscript in and the wonderful editors at Caterpillar said that they liked it, but that I HAD to include the terms physics, chemistry and biology. I tried to fight my case, but lost! I’ve learnt to trust editors 99% of the time, as they have the objectivity that I don’t, and crucially, they know the market. So a massive re-write followed and unfortunately, Pat and Isabel at Caterpillar were totally right – once again! – and I think/hope it became a better text for it. For the illustrator, they chose Willian Santiago from Brazil. (All the illustrators for the series are from around the world – Spain, Japan, Italy, Northern Ireland…) I was thrilled. His bold, bright exuberant style brought so much to the book.

I’ve since written a related book on inventions for the series, which I didn’t have space to cover in Once Upon An Atom. My editor Pat gave me the challenge of writing a book on materials (wood / glass / metals .. etc.) as her daughter, an Infant teacher, had told her that that is what she’d need for her class. And actually, that was an easier book to write as I simply wrote about the sequence of materials that homo sapiens have used over the millennia – and how each of these have helped us to build the modern world. I would never have thought to have written a book on inventions in that way –  ie through the prism of materials – but it gave it a fresh perspective.

When you write for younger children, you can never lose sight of your reader. I simply now try and write books that I would have wanted to read at that age. I had a few nature books – typical 60s fare – The Observers Book Of British Birds/Mammals etc.. – but nothing on generic science. The two things I try and consider when writing this series are – is the language inviting enough? Am I enthusing / entertaining my reader somehow? And is this interesting / relevant enough? How can I make it more enticing/fascinating? To this end, I often find I spend more time on the first few pages than any other in a book – to get the tone / feel / voice / music of the language just right. You have to grab your reader literally from the first syllable… and that’s a challenge I really enjoy!

I visit a lot of schools, and I see a lot of non-fiction books in school libraries and in topic displays in classrooms. Apart from books like the Horrible Science/Histories series, I do wonder to myself how many of these books are actually read. I know that many non-fiction books we dip in and out of anyway and wouldn’t dream of reading chronologically, but with every non-fiction book I do I love the idea that the reader might experience the book from beginning to end, and follow a linear thread. The books in this series are short, snappy and meant as a taster books for a subject. (If a reader wants to know more, there will be many other books that go into greater detail.) And this certainly affects the way I structure and shape what I am writing. It’s all about the story for me – though I do always have a factual acrostic at the back to include a few dates, a few figures and background information. Facts can get in the way of a good story, so where better to place them than at the back of a book?

And oddly, I’m probably one of the least knowledgeable people I know. In theory, I shouldn’t be writing non-fiction! As a person, I have my own limited interests, but as a writer I’m into E V E R Y T H I N G. It’s not WHAT you write about, but HOW you write about it. And what I do have in abundance is enthusiasm! I’m absolutely hopeless at retaining facts, and because of this I have to do a lot of research. But I guess it does mean I come to every subject as a non-fiction writer reasonably fresh, and I’m literally learning as I’m researching and then writing – and I try to then distil that initial fascination/passion for learning into the text of whatever book I am working on.

13. How did you collaborate with Willian Santiago?

Apart from my forthcoming poetry best of collection Weird Wild & Wonderful (Otter-Barry Books, Jan 2021) – for which I cheekily requested – and got! – the utterly fabulous Neal Layton – I never get to choose illustrators. Caterpillar books are brilliant at trawling the world for new talent and matching my text with an illustrator’s images. With every book they have found e x a c t l y the right person. And this must be the case as the second book in the series, Once Upon A Raindrop – the story of water – illustrated by the incredible Nomoco – is longlisted for the Kate Greenaway award! And I’m absolutely over the moon for Nomoco, Myrto (the book’s designer) and all the wonderful humans at Caterpillar Books. They really deserve it as their books are so fresh, vital and innovative. It’s a real honour to work with such a creative/dynamic team.

And I never have contact with an illustrator during the process. I may have a few very occasional responses, but in general, I trust the editors/designer/illustrator. Visuals are not my area. I’m primarily and solely concerned with the words inside. Plus, too many cooks…

14. Page or Stage?

Although I do strongly believe – as a white, 60 yr old middle class male – in the craft – I’m very much into page rather than stage poetry, but I equally love the fact that there are younger poets coming through, a variety of ages, a wide mix of races.

15. Accessibility?

I also enjoy stage – but that comes much, much later in the process. I’ll often write a poem and not actually ever read it for months/years. I write primarily for readers. Also, I try and make my work so simple and uncluttered and direct that it is as if it has just flowed out…craft is trying to make it look easy. Which it certainly is NOT!!!!

16. How do you think being a musician helps your poetry?

Great question, Paul! Apologies if my answer comes over a bit pretentious.. it can get a bit la-di-dah when you’re talking about such things!

In a sense, a poet IS a musician. A poet orchestrates the music of a poem – using consonants, vowels, syllables, alliteration, assonances, rhyme/half-rhyme – line breaks/lengths – all this is linguistic music. And I do think to be a music-musician (guitarist/terrible keyboard player) for me is both a curse and a blessing. A blessing in that it helps me to feel my way along each line of a poem, to instinctively know what works/doesn’t work as I weave words/sounds, syllable by syllable. But it does mean that I sometimes procrastinate over even a phrase for many months. It means I tweak/edit/re-write obsessively. It means I find it very hard to read or even finish a rhythmical rhyming poem by another

Poet that doesn’t scan. A rhyming poem that doesn’t scan is akin to driving down a bumpy road. You keep trying to

Avoid the bumps, and you don’t quite know when/where they are coming. If a poem doesn’t scan, it isn’t finished.

If a poet ever says ‘Oh, it depends how you read it’, I don’t follow that. (But if it’s just performance stuff, spoken word that is not published on the page, just done in a live context, that’s very different). As a poet on the page you are giving your reader a poem that has implicit instructions on how it is to be read, and if they have to keep stopping to adapt/adjust because it doesn’t flow, then the poem isn’t fully doing its job. With my non-fiction verse series, I often imagine my readers as either busy parents/teachers/librarians reading aloud to a young child. If the text doesn’t scan, they have to work harder at delivering it to the child. And I don’t want that. I want it to be an easy, positive experience, so the words just readily sing and flow off the page. Also, if I have a 7-11 yr old reading one of my poems themselves, I don’t want them to struggle with a poem,I want them to enjoy it, to get it, to know what it’s about, and be moved/inspired/enlightened or whatever. Bumpy lines will not help this experience. Children more readily read fiction/novels, so I don’t want anything to deter them from reading one of my books. Instant readability is ESSENTIAL! But that doesn’t mean I want my poems to necessarily be superficial or lightweight all the time – which some indeed are, but I do want a great many poems to be re-read, and stimulate a bit of thought or reflection.

And overall, for this very reason I generally avoid reading rhyming verse nowadays and mainly read free verse, which I absolutely love. I try to start many of my poems as free verse, but invariably a rhyme, metrical pattern slips in. Some poems just demand to rhyme. Others will let me be more loosey-goosey and play with a free verse form, but even then I may play around – do free verse and make it into a midline acrostic as well. Depends on the subject/age group I’m writing for. With younger children, 98% of my stuff rhymes, for older readers, I’d say it’s about 60%. And in a sense, rhyming stuff is easier for me as I know how it should flow/sound, but free verse is not so obvious, is prose’s half-sibling, and has a quieter, subtler music. Writing rhyming verse is akin to a pop song in 4/4 in a major key. Free verse can be more like a very slow piano piece in waltz time in a minor key!

Whenever I read a poem (ie one by another poet) for the first time, I’ll be listening solely to the music, the soundscape.

I’ll trace the rhythm however blatant or subtle. I’ll listen to the vowels, the consonants, rhymes, alliterations, all of the tricks the poet is using. On second and third readings I’ll be processing the meaning, the message, the narrative or idea that the poem is expressing.

And that’s the same for writing for me. I’m initially concerned with the soundscape – but ultimately and clearly both are equally important. Above all poetry as far as I can see is language at its most musical and memorable – therefore the soundscape has to be well constructed. A poem built with craft is a poem built to last!

As daft as it sounds, when I’m working on a poem I will often carry it around in my head and I’ll be sounding the words out loud, all the while listening for opportunities to tighten the rhythm and the flow – but equally looking to see where I can include extra assonance alliteration and rhymes or half rhymes. All the while I’ll be ensuring that the poem says what it needs to say and I don’t care if it takes months because I want it to be the best it can be. I love words, so working with them like this is a real joy. I scrap far more poems than I keep. In one of my poetry collections I might write many hundreds of poems but keep only 40-50 or so. I want to minimise filler! In theory, I’d rather write just one single poem that I’m really happy with than thousands I have dashed off. This is why I won’t ever read a poem to an audience for many months even years as I want to ensure it’s totally finished. And even when I do eventually read it, I may well find extra tweaks I need to do!

And I’ve observed that children write in a very different way to adults. They’re far less self-critical and therefore they can write more quickly and freely. A child’s first draft will invariably be much better (relatively speaking) than an adult’s. Adults often write very slowly and cautiously knowing they can tidy it up later on. Not so children. Children I have discovered (having worked in over 1300 Primary schools!) write with verve and freshness and also very swiftly and will have no interest (unless without adult encouragement) in writing for any more than the 40 mins or however long that first version takes. Picasso said he wanted to paint like a child. I know what he meant. I certainly try to write is as openly as I possibly can in the first version. I tell teachers in INSET that you have an angel on one shoulder telling you ‘hey, you’re the best writer in world, go for it!’ but then later the devil on your other shoulder pipes up and says ‘Dream on, matey! What were you thinking of? What you’ve just written needs A LOT of work!’ And that analogy works for me!

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: James Carter Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

[autumnblogs]

Day 2: Symphony Impossible to Play

Picking up from yesterday, we just met Rose.

https://homestuck.com/story/220

Right out of the gate, here’s something interesting - another one where a character interacts directly with her medium! I wonder whose eyes she feels on her. Are Rose’s Seer powers allowing her to detect us watching her? Later on, it turns out that Kanaya was watching her all along during her intro. Maybe that’s who she senses? I think it’s possibly both of those, and a third option - Rose is a paranoid girl who doesn’t feel very secure in her own home, or comfortable in her own skin.

More after the break.

https://homestuck.com/story/223

John does a lot of roleplaying, and this is one of the earliest spots in the comic where he does this. Specifically, John performs a lot of his favorite scenes from different movies, and no surprise to anyone, almost all of the times he does, he’s performing either the role of a lover, or of a father. Malo, who I respect a lot, talks a little about John’s appreciation for signifiers here, along with some of their chums. I was going to say something about other points where John’s inner voice comments on the necessity of signifiers to make a thing itself (OR ELSE IT’S A PRETTY PISS POOR EXCUSE FOR THE THING) yesterday, but I didn’t have the thoughts fully formed at the time. Luckily, Malo will call attention to it for me.

This is another one of those weird things about the way that reality works, and it might all retroactively work that way because John expects it to work that way. Homestuck is full to bursting with symbols - everything in Homestuck is extremely abstracted as part of the art style, and also as part of the storytelling, often rendered down to some basic elements that make it recognizable. An example of something Homestuck uses as a symbol would be like, Mustaches - a symbol associated with Grandpa. Swords, symbols associated with Striders. The symbol doesn’t have to have any kind of literal logical association with the thing it represents, but we associate the two things with each other because of cultural context.

https://homestuck.com/story/225

I always liked Rose’s house best out of the group. There’s something deeply romantic to me about the premise of a wooded retreat far away from civilization. I’m pretty sure the Lalonde residence is based on Falling Water but I could be mistaken. As long as I’m thinking about Symbols, by the way, Cats are a Lalonde Symbol. Their presence in the story always evokes Lalondes even when they’re not in the room (which is not very often, as it turns out!) and by association, witches. Both of the Lalondes are witches in the sense of being powerful women who attain to that power by consorting with dubious and transgressive sources.

Rose is up front and melodramatic about her not so great relationship with her Mom, and it’s pretty much literally always on her mind. (Rose’s Mom is an alcoholic, and I should be clear that her relationship has lots of reasons to be not great, but Mom Lalonde deliberately being spiteful to Rose is not one of the reasons). I like to think there are a lot of these misunderstandings between parents and children and if that we were just a little more open with each other, we’d find that we didn’t have as much to be afraid of in each other as we think. But I might never know. Another one of my favorite series that has the inability of Parents and Children to communicate with each other as a central theme is Hideaki Anno’s Neon Genesis Evangelion and if you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend you go do so.

https://homestuck.com/story/231

The presentation of the Guardians is so unsettling that in my first readthrough, I thought they must be some kind of monsters artificially imposed into these characters’ obviously artificial lives to create difficulty for them. Clearly, I thought the story was going in a completely different direction than it actually ended up going.

https://homestuck.com/story/236

Rose does not always think her cunning plans all the way through, something she has in common with her biological father.

https://homestuck.com/story/271

I probably could have mentioned this funny little guy earlier than I did, but Wayward Vagabond is in the story now. I’m not totally clear on whether the Carapacians have any greater meaning, but they sure are charming, and like just about everything that isn’t specifically John and his friends, they exist on a layer of the story that is just a little further away from just the text, and a little closer to the audience - they can enter narrative prompts, much like you or I would have if we were involved in Homestuck’s earliest pages. As a rule in Homestuck, the more influence you personally have over the narratives which change the material conditions of the characters’ lives, the more sinister and ambiguous you become. Luckily, WV turns out to be a pretty benign guy, but if you’re the sort of person to be reading this, you are no doubt aware of the fact that most of Homestuck’s narrators don’t turn out to be nearly so friendly. The Carapacians introduce us to the idea that characters in the story are allowed to be audience members and narrators too. So I guess, really, that’s the greater meaning of the Carapacians.

https://homestuck.com/story/272

Always enjoy Rose’s long, outlandish metaphors. Any chance to read more of them is a good chance to. (Although the main one on this page is a holdover from some of the cringy stuff in MSPA’s early days - some of it slightly racist, some of it slightly homophobic.)

https://homestuck.com/story/287

Andrew’s insistence on having characters like Dave rap at us, the audience, actually reminds me a lot of JRR Tolkien’s tendency to pepper his stuff with songs that he wrote for his in universe stuff. And while both are legitimately talented at their craft, as one of my friends put it, “I’m not a rapper... so stop rappin’ at me!”

https://homestuck.com/story/293

Jade is another character whose first post I forgot to mention, but here she is having a bit more to say than before! I think I remember my initial impression of Jade being pretty favorable, and then gradually declining until she got a bit more exposition. Perky people bother me.

https://homestuck.com/story/307

Another one of Andrew’s cool prose poems. I don’t mind these as much as the rapping, clearly. Rain and Strings are another pair of symbols pretty strongly associated with Rose, although I hardly need to tell you that. This obviously alludes to Rose’s mythological quest. I think it also foreshadows a lot of her worst decisions. Rose overthinks and overthinks and overthinks, and then by the time she should have acted, it’s too late, and she overreacts instead, usually in catastrophic ways.

https://homestuck.com/story/312

Dave’s room isn’t nearly as messy as Rose’s, but his bed isn’t made, same as every other Derse Dreamer. This is also probably the first place that we get hints of Dave’s fascination with death (he collects dead things). He’s specifically fascinated with his own death, and fantasizing about self-sacrifice, something that he ends up doing twice over the course of the comic, is one of the ways that Dave experiences masculinity. Thanks for that, Bro.

https://homestuck.com/story/320

Dave almost immediately fails to uphold his irony schtick within just seconds of our getting to know him. For all that he pretends to the same extreme aloofness as his brother, I don’t think there’s an insincere bone in Dave’s body. Then again, maybe he’s just getting distracted by food, of which there is a significant dearth in his household. Thanks for that, Bro.

https://homestuck.com/story/326

I will never get back the time I spent reading Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. Was it worth it?

Yeah probably.

https://homestuck.com/story/332

I think this is the very first time I’ve noticed that Dave has a nifty gaming computer with the transparent glass pane and the interior lights and everything. Like, this readthrough, this panel. I’m sure I mentioned somewhere that I get more out of this webcomic every time I read it.

https://homestuck.com/story/333

Dave and Rose are another character relationship I just enjoy tremendously. Their verbal sparring is one of the highlights of the webcomic.

https://homestuck.com/story/344

Bro’s puppet fascination tells us pretty early on that this is a hands-off, manipulative kind of guy. While Bro isn’t in a metanarrative layer the way that the Carapacians are, positioning him as a puppetmaster, controlling things from behind the scenes, still gives him the same kind of sinister ambiguity as one of the comic’s actual narrators.

https://homestuck.com/story/357

Far from being the kind of chill cooldude who kills with a straight face and doesn’t look at explosions, Dave kills a random bird and immediately feels remorseful about it. Poor kid.

https://homestuck.com/story/360

There is almost nothing worse than having someone perform interest in something you enjoy to try and influence you. Unfortunately, that is not what is taking place here. Rose is quick to assume malicious intent as she does a bit earlier when she tucks her journals under her bed because she feels like she’s being watched.

https://homestuck.com/story/369

Mom, sadly, giving your daughter oodles of presents and showering everything she does in ostentatious displays of affection is sadly not a substitute for earnest communication with her and your emotional presence. These two need to learn each other’s love languages. (Note to self. Not everybody enjoys lavish presents as much as I do.)

Roxy is a giver. That’s something that shows up time and again, especially when we meet her in person much later.

https://homestuck.com/story/377

Mom Lalonde performs femininity.

https://homestuck.com/story/382

Jade sees right through Dave.

In other notes, I think most of these kids would be way happier if their Guardians were more emotionally available, and less badass.

I’m going to come back to that and write more on it at some point instead of just alluding to it repeatedly. Maybe after Dave Strifes with his bro.

https://homestuck.com/story/389

Is Mom’s compulsive gift-giving because that’s her love language? Is she performing capitalism by giving her daughter extremely expensive gifts as a show of affection? Is it both things? (Roxy is never exposed to Capitalism except by the awesome powers of Dirk’s cached wikipedia archives, and her gift-giving tends to be significantly less ostentatious than Mom’s.)

https://homestuck.com/story/404

John roleplays some more.

https://homestuck.com/story/414

Here’s where I’ll say one of the things that I think is like a big deal, because I guess now’s as good a time as any. A lot of the roleplaying that John does, and the one-upsmanship that he and Dave do with each other, and Dave and Bro do with each other, and Mom’s ironic housewife routine, and the burial of Jasper in a mausoleum are rituals. Like symbols, they’re cultural touchstones that are ultimately empty when they no longer point to the thing that they signify. Funerals are grieving rituals. When a funeral doesn’t functionally serve the purpose of helping with grief, it becomes an empty signifier. Maybe this is how Mom grieved for Jaspers - I’ll have to check and see what Roxy thinks about it when I get that far, because I forgot.

We do a lot of stupid things in a monkey see monkey do fashion because we’ve just always done them that way, even when they were built for a completely different society, and no longer serve the same function that they used to serve. Big ostentatious funerals are like that, I think. Ideally, they’d give big families an opportunity to come together in mutual support, celebrate the joy brought to them by the deceased, demonstrate compassion to the grieving, and so on and so forth. I’m not prescriptively saying “don’t have a funeral” here, my point is just that funerals are one of those cultural narratives that I mentioned in the first post.

This funeral does not serve the function of helping Rose to grieve. It’s just kind of fucked up.

https://homestuck.com/story/415

Oh hey, Rose has more fish language attached to her - she earlier makes reference to her knitting-needle tech by saying that she thinks she could probably filet a fish with them. Here, she talks about having bigger fish to fry. Rose is associated with Water through her planet, the Land of Light and Rain, and with fish through Cetus. She’s also attached to other deep sea creatures in the form of the horrorterrors.

https://homestuck.com/story/420

I’m going to pause for now and post this since I’ve read through another roughly 200 pages of Homestuck this evening on the fortuitous page of 420. It probably helps that I started earlier than I did yesterday. Nanna’s about to give some exposition, and I already wrote my big brain take for the day so for now;

Cam signing off, alive and not alone.

[lorenzoandmaria-blog]

from maria // 042719

Hi there :) Before anything else — I’d like to ask if your schedule is free on May 11-12?

I organized the school strikes for the Philippines last 15th March (they were mostly just my friends from all over the archipelago so it was just a matter of contacting them and following up on the plans), and we’re planning to join the 2nd global strike again this 24th May. In line with that, we’ve been in close contact with Ate Bea from 350 and she’s been cooking up a training workshop on climate strikes and mobilizations for key youth organizers before the date of the 2nd global strike. To sum it all up: her proposal has recently just been approved by 350 Global, so now we’re putting together a list of youth organizers to fly into Manila for the training. Of course I put you in the list (your mob skills are admirable, and I’m pretty sure your organizing skills are far better). Would you be up for it, if ever? 

The workshop schedule will be May 11-12, but we’re flying people in by the afternoon/evening of the 10th. We’re flying back to our respective places on the afternoon of the 12th so we can make it back for the elections on the 13th. Sorry to dump this on you at short notice (!!!) but things were only finalized yesterday afternoon -- would need your response on this as soon as possible, though, so feel free to reply here or drop a quick message on my mobile once you finish reading this part :) You can message me at 0927 461 8620 (Sorry for the rush! Trying to keep my work, advocacy, and personal life in balance ) Anyway, hi again :) Just want to say -- thank you for writing me, by the way. Don’t know how else to say it, but our exchanges are one of the very few things I look forward to these days. I like leaving things unexplained, if only to have something to mull over for later, so I guess I’ve yet to get to the bottom of my current emotional turbulence. Wanted to respond a little bit earlier, but today was a little on the heavy side of things for me! Waking up to your greetings, life crisis, and the promise of a portrait in prose was honestly the only thing that got me through this day. So thank you, really I’m a pretty stubborn person, so I’m quite unsure if I’m glad to stumble upon someone whose persistence is at par with mine  Thank you for remarking yet again on my knack of evading questions -- not denying, but it’s mostly on the grounds of me not being able to go through the process of thinking it through yet (I have a lot of stuff put aside to think about for later, which I always convince myself I have the time to). When I do find the time to get thinking, words would get lost in the grey skies. It always ends up in frustration and/or a bit of self-loathing, which explains why I actively leave things behind and focus on what’s ahead instead. Am I speaking in riddles? I feel like you’ve been sharing a lot of good stuff with me but all I’ve done is go round and round with the same jumble of thoughts. My apologies. It’s the only way I can speak without, again, spilling my life all over the place (trust me, it isn’t deserving of what little time you can spare). But I guess if I have to give you a bit of context... I’m overly anxious about the interpersonal troubles within the advocacy -- we’re very close-knit, which adds to the frustration that this isn’t solving itself easily when the problems have been surface-level at most. But of course, being myself, I’ve been psychoanalyzing people and I’m aware it’s gone beyond superficial reasons now. I’m a pretty direct person when dealing with troubles, but I haven’t had the chance to voice out my concerns lately and find solutions, what with all the hectic schedules. It’s been almost a month of constant worry, blanking out, and going through other forms of anxiety. I’m so frustrated that I still haven’t gotten to the bottom of this. Apart from that, I’ve also just gotten out of a long-term, really toxic (and I don’t say that lightly) relationship, which largely explains why I was able to say I haven’t felt this peaceful in a long while (doesn’t mean I’m downright bereft of troubles, though!). It’s been almost two months since this happened, so I’m gonna answer the hanging question: yes, I am alright, and no, I’ve never been better. The relationship weighed me down for the past 3 years (we were together for 4, but I was actually happy in the first year of it) and I’ve seen the end coming for so long -- was probably only waiting for it to happen, actually. Would run out of things to describe the feeling, but it is freeing in so many ways. I haven’t looked back since, and my friends have been on cloud 9 the moment they knew I finally put my foot down. There’s usually a template of questions one asks to another who has just gone through a break up, so let me just put into writing that it’s completely unnecessary to dive into before you predictably contest my conviction :)) (how do I combat your stubbornness when I like seeing your persistence anyway?) I guess that’s where I end the context-giving I would apologize for the late response, but I echo your sentiments about writing for necessity. Our exchanges have been somehow therapeutic. I’m now finding the time to sit down and translate my thoughts into physical matter (that being in the form of these letters) at least once in a while, which is more than I’ve been doing for the past years. I’ve been swimming with my jumbled thoughts for so long -- maybe as a form of denial, since putting things into writing make it real. An excerpt from a 2017 journal entry: “Without physical proof of its existence, one can fool oneself into thinking pain is fleeting — easily blown away by other, more convenient forms of distraction. It is out of reach until it pins you down. It does not become the whole of you until it draws close enough to consume you.” Props to my 19-year old self for explaining it better (and more dramatically ) than I can now. I’ve also written a poem about lost thoughts — will definitely share once I remember where I have a copy of it  I go back to it once in a while since it resonates heavily with me despite the changing times. To answer your question, what keeps me going is my fierce belief in the future and the lack of fear of oblivion. The future exists beyond myself, anyway, and it’s the lack of fear that powers me through the impossibilities. What is there to lose, after all? Life is transient. If we do things right and create the spark the world needs, the flame will burn on without us. I assure you things haven’t arrived at a life-or-death situation yet, I just like being dramatic.  Pretty sure you get what I mean, though. Would like to hear updates about your confrontation with your boss if it happens! I’ve had my share of being under mushroom management. Hands down one of the worst experiences ever.  I’m still actively trying to repress memories up to this day. I'm a firm believer of good leadership, and stuff like that drains the life out of me. Let me know once you find the inuman place you’ve been looking for -- it’s becoming more apparent that drinking plays a huge role in your life, eh? When I’m sad, I listen to a lot of music to clear my head, read a few pages from books (can’t really find the time to finish one nowadays), and sleep. Talking to friends help, too. Just not really used to it for the most part, as I said I don’t like it when people fuss over me. Maybe this is why I’m more comfortable opening up to strangers, as there are limitations to your reactions and responses, unlike friends in close proximity with me. And maybe also just the general comfort of talking to a stranger who knows nothing about your life? The titles sound interesting -- might check them out in the unforeseeable future (time is always the question, isn’t it?). I’m still finishing a huge number of books I’ve been collecting in the recent months, all acquired from physical and online bookstores, secondhand shops, book fairs, and loaned/given to me by friends. Reading is one of the things I’m painfully trying to get back to, after the deluge of advocacy work that left me little to no time at all for (and have drained the life from) any personal interests. (Mindful) consumerism of books has been one of my coping mechanisms, a way to lull myself into a sense of connection into whatever life I had before the advocacy. The smell of the pages usually do the trick of transporting me back to younger years. That being said, I am falling back into reading and writing bit by bit, and our exchanges are helping me ease back into it. I’m looking forward to that portrait, too!  There’s nothing more interesting than reading about a life well-lived (that, and the fact that it’ll come from you). Advocacy work has also been a form of coping mechanism from the aforementioned toxic relationship, loneliness, and my search for purpose, I guess. One of the struggles I’ve always had was my burning passions lacking purpose and direction. I’ve been dancing, painting, taking photographs, writing poems & screenplays, making/directing films, and creating digital content for fun for years (couldn’t really do it all professionally since I’m stuck with reality and school work as a Psychology major), and the advocacy has been a really good outlet for these skills. For the first time I’ve felt like I wasn’t just throwing my art and thoughts into the void -- it actually helped change things. Helping out a cause and trying to make little changes in the world is pretty straightforward, if you ask me. I find it weird for people to try and find back stories. I probably have one if we really wanna flesh it out, but for the most part, I’m just a concerned human being with skills people can exploit, so I’d rather have it used for good causes. I think I’ve said enough for you to piece together my response to your question about how much of ourselves we should set aside for the “greater purpose”. I have zero fear of nonexistence, advocacy work has become my daily grind and coping mechanism, and I have nothing else to do with the skills I’m equipped with anyway. Your question warrants me to rethink these sacrificial tendencies, I guess? I’ve always wanted to pursue art professionally, but at this point, pursuing art outside of all this seems self-serving and vain. How do I invest many years of my life honing a skill or two, when it also means leaving behind campaigns that need urgent attention and action? I’m pretty sure it’s a choice I have to make, but I’m setting it aside for now. What do you think of it? And how much are you setting aside for all of this? It’s been a pleasure to write you. Rest assured that these exchanges aren’t merely one of my coping mechanisms, but one I genuinely enjoy taking part in  I’m skipping out on asking questions for now, so feel free to rant or be sad or write me anything under the sun. I’ve talked too much today, so allow me the pleasure of listening to your unbridled thoughts I hope my troubles haven’t spilled over to yours. If I can bottle up all the light, warmth, and sweetness from this smiling city and sugar town, I would gladly send them over to you. I hope your days are as bright as your smiles and as warm as your wishes. It would comfort me greatly to know you’re allowing yourself some respite after long hours of waking -- let the stars witness you dreaming. Good morning and good night  

[limejuicer1862]

F WORD WARNING

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Amanda Earl

is a Canadian poet, publisher, prose-writer, visual poet and editor who lives in Ottawa, Ontario. Her first and only poetry book so far is Kiki (Chaudiere Books, 2014). Amanda is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the fallen angel of AngelHousePress. Connect with Amanda on Twitter @KikiFolle or visit AmandaEarl.com for more information.

The Interview

1. What inspired you to write poetry?

I didn’t even realize I was writing poetry until my mid thirties. I scrawled on pads of paper from my parents’ workplaces, all kinds of confessional stuff and complaints and lists. I made notes on index cards about everyone I knew and filed them in a metal box. I just wrote. I didn’t label it. I heard nothing but poetry by men from early childhood and up, whether it was in school or recitations by my father: Shakespeare, Victorian morality poetry, Edward Leer. I liked the rhyming and the sound play, and the images, but I rarely related to it. I dismissed the thought of poetry from my head.

In my mid-thirties, I was going through a period of depression and searched the Internet for solace. I came across the poet Mary Oliver’s poem, Wild Geese, Lorna Crozier’s Carrots (https://jeveraspoetryanthology.weebly.com/carrots.html) poem and also Gwendolyn MacEwen’s fascinating and dark mythological poems. These excited me and made me realize that perhaps I was also writing what could be called poetry. I still wasn’t sure.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

My father, I suppose, but it didn’t feel like an introduction. He was always reciting poetry to me as a child.

3. How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?

More like the domineering presence. Since school curricula for literature were dominated by dead white men, I knew nothing about women poets until I found them in my Internet search in the 90s.  I wish I’d known about Plath and Sexton in my teenage years; although what darkness I would have dredged up back then under their influences… When I first started to realize I was writing poetry, it took me some time to find out about poets like Anne Carson who is willing to step out of traditional form to make poetry out of the long lost fragments of Sappho, accordion books about grief, little chapbooks placed in a box so readers can rearrange at will. Or Caroline Bergvall and her mesmerizing engagements with Old Norse. There’s just so much possibility out there for poetry and yet quite often the same white men, dead or alive, have their work published again and again and win prizes and are taught as the poetry that matters.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

According to Mason Currey in his book, Daily Rituals: Women at Work, the photographer Diana Arbus ritual was sex. (https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-daily-routines-10-women-artists-joan-mitchell-diane-arbus?fbclid=IwAR2fXdj7OUukk2c_-RUU8mxIhor8FRPaSWU3yJ0_f_W0t_DzUR8LQ3y3ej0) I usually start my day off with a good wank and at least an hour of pervy chat with a few random strangers. I shivered this morning after a particularly good orgasm. After that I drink Irish Breakfast tea, burn some incense and write or go outside, if it’s not too hot or cold, and wander about until I have no choice but to write. I carry a red journal with me for snippets of overheard conversation, some weird sound play that comes to me, or a doodle. My red journals are smeared in paint and tea stains.

5. What motivates you to write?

1. Lorca’s concept of the duende (https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Spanish/LorcaDuende.php) Death is near. I don’t want to be immortal, I just want to continue the conversation. I’m influenced by ghosts, such as Oscar Wilde and Djuna Barnes, Leonora Carrington, Jean Cocteau and Beatrice Wood.

2. Alienation. In some ways I live the standard North American life, but in others I don’t. I write and publish others full-time. I don’t have a nine to five job. I don’t drive. I don’t own property. I live downtown. My husband and I are in a passionate and open marriage. I write to reach out to that one kindred misfit in hope that they feel less alone. The Tragically Hip song “It’s a good life if you don’t weaken,” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwNVxvczgCs&feature=youtu.be) comes to mind. “Let’s get friendship right.”

6. What is your work ethic?

I follow three principles: whimsy, exploration and connection. I want to play; I want to learn new stuff and I want to write things that connect with those alienated by convention and the lonely. I punched a timecard as a late teen and I saw my parents punching those same damn cards. I loathe systems and routines and any attempts by external authorities to dictate my time, so I rebel against any system. I write because I breathe. It’s just part of me. Writing isn’t as tough as plumbing or surgery.

I serve the work rather than dictating what the work will be. I once spent three months learning about the sonnet because the manuscript I was working on had to be made up of sonnets, not because I wanted to but because the content required it somehow.  I wrote three of the damn things and gave up. They were awful. That manuscript remains unpublished.

I try to remain grateful and humble to have the opportunity to write. Sometimes my work gets published, which is a huge honour. I try to be careful not to let my ego tell me how great I am, because I’m not. I’m just in the right place at the right time and have found the right publisher somehow. This happens rarely.

I try not to take up too much space and leave space for writers who do not have the benefits granted by white colonialist publishing policies and attitudes that continue to prevail. I try to promote and publish 2SLGBTQIA, BIPOC, and D/deaf and disabled writers and look for ways I can support them when I can. I don’t do this enough.

7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

I read the Exorcist, Mad Magazine, Archie Comics and Harlequin romance novels as a youngster. These works gave me a sense of irreverence that is important for my writing. In high school and university I studied French, German and Italian and finally got excited by literature. Dante made me fascinated with Heaven and Hell; Kafka made me fear insects; Baudelaire made me want to drink red wine. Rimbaud showed me that synaesthesisa, which I have, was not just something I experienced. Later I read Milton’s Paradise Lost. Early influencers of the long poem, I suppose, and the epic. I am writing an anti-epic these days. Red wine isn’t something I can stomach easily anymore. Now and then I’ll have a little Lagavulin in the tub.

8. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

Nathanaël for Je Nathanaël, for working in the spaces between genres and writing so beautifully of the body. Sandra Ridley for her ability to write long, mesmerizing poems and read them as if they are incantations. Christine McNair for syntactic daggers, sounds that are bitten off, and charm. Anne Carson for her sense of play and versatility. Canisa Lubrin for Voodoo Hypothesis, which is the only book she’s written so far, and it’s brilliant. I am awed by the skill in these poems, not just on a poetic level (diction, imagery, lineation, structure, balance) but also by the power of one writer’s willingness and ability to so effectively dismantle and bring to light the ongoing effects of racism while offering in-depth and tangible illustrations of the othered. Alice Notley for the Descent of Alette, a most extraordinary long poem. rob mclennan for his prolific writing and quiet poetry and bizarre wee stories. Amber Dawn for brave femme truths and incorporating subjects that are traditionally taboo in mainstream CanLit, such as sex work. Joshua Whitehead for the sheer invention and brilliance of Full Metal Indigiqueer which takes down the literary canon so skillfully. The writers in the anthology Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back Edited by Sandra Alland, Khairani Barokka & Daniel Sluman (http://ninearchespress.com/publications/poetry-collections/stairs%20and%20whispers.html) for the versatility and beauty of their writing. It’s good writing and more people should be aware of it. Ian Martin for self-deprecating comedy. Erín Moure for Elisa Sampedrin. Lisa Robertson for the gift of the sentence. Gary Barwin for his whimsy and willingness to play in numerous genres and media.

I wish Djuna Barnes was here. I’m always looking for a modern-day equivalent. Nightwood was an exquisite and poetic novel.

9. Why do you write, as opposed to doing anything else?

I don’t just write. I also play with paint, make visual poetry, which some might say is a form of writing, run two small presses, which do a bunch of things. I spend too much time on social media. I make countless lists. I watch a lot of films and tv. I listen to music. I wank. I fuck my husband. We cook glorious meals together. I go on long rambles and spend a lot of time in cafés. I cry and worry every day for the persecuted in this topsy turvy era where the Ogre in the House of White is making us all fear that the end of the world is close.

All these activities and emotions enter into my writing in some way.

10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

I don’t know. I focus less on being a writer and more on writing. Writer sounds like a title and titles have a bunch of preconceived expectations I can’t satisfy. Same with poet. I just write.

But I guess, I’d tell them to be gentle on themselves, surround themselves with books, art, film and whatever inspires them. Ignore prescriptive rules, such as write what you know. Heather O’Neill, a fiction writer I admire, once said that for her to write, she has to be angry about something. At least that’s what I remember her saying at an Ottawa International Writers Festival event.

For me, I have to feel emotion of some sort, whether it is anger, sadness, love… I guess I would say to the person who wants to write that they are going to have to make sure that they don’t numb themselves. It’s easy in this era to want to numb ourselves against all the pain and suffering and power games going on, but when we numb ourselves, we don’t feel and if we don’t feel, it’s hard to respond. Writing, whether it’s directly political or not, is a response to what’s around us. I think it takes a great deal of empathy to write. It takes close listening and close watching.

Find a mentor. I’ve been fortunate in that rob mclennan has been extremely supportive of my work. He’s been honest when the stuff is shite. I still remember taking my first of his poetry workshops in 2006 and him telling me I was writing zombie poems.

He’s published many of my chapbooks through above/ground press and my book, Kiki through Chaudiere Books. He always encourages me to write and he has introduced me to many of the poets I mention in my list of influences and more. He does this not only for me, but for numerous others. It’s amazing!

11. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

I was fortunate to have received a grant from the City of Ottawa for Beast Body Epic, a long poem that I began a few years after a major health crisis in 2009 and have been tinkering with ever since. So I’m going to finish tinkering and submit the manuscript for the fourth time toward the end of the year.

I have a smaller manuscript called The Milk Creature and Mother Poetry, inspired by Diana di Prima, one of the women active in the Beat poetry scene.

I’m working on The Vispo Bible, a life’s work to translate every chapter, every book, every verse of the Bible into visual poetry. I began in 2015 and have completed about 300 pages so far.

In 2018, I began work on a novel. Its working title is The Nightmare Dolls’ Imperfect Reunion. It’s about women, health, ageing, friendship, gender, and it has a helluva soundtrack. (https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5B1GAgN046EdtrBLXiNoni?si=NIbexI5mQqKnr54qfmJ7ZQ)

Amanda Earl is a Canadian poet, publisher, prose-writer, visual poet and editor who lives in Ottawa, Ontario. Her first and only poetry book so far is Kiki (Chaudiere Books, 2014). Amanda is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the fallen angel of AngelHousePress. Connect with Amanda on Twitter @KikiFolle or visit AmandaEarl.com for more information.

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Amanda Earl F WORD WARNING Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.