Poefictiontry 3.0

Image from dance performance Gathering Light, choreographed by Michelle Olson and put on by Raven Spirit Dance, a Vancouver-based dance company. They had a show in Dancing on the Edge Festival, but unfortunately I wasn't able to attend. The show was about how we carry landscape in our bodies-- I mean, come on... I was sold at the concept. I chose this image because this is what I do when I move like a raven, kaw-kaw.

Lately I’ve been exploring character voices… a means to get around my holdfast with ‘style’. I was told recently that I need to have a voice that reaches an audience, and that if I’m not doing this with my writing, then I’m just writing for myself. Well that’s one perspective, I guess… but the author is dead, anyway, so.

I asked the person who told me this, Who is Daphne Marlatt’s audience, besides the political flare for feminism, lesbianism (I’d say there's a oneness of a sort… only better), but stylistically, who’s she writing for? And the answer was, Other poets.

….ahhh, other poets.

...Me too, then.

Simple evasion, only not-- because it’s true. Everyone has an audience, everyone. and my bet it isn't just one category either, like poets.

And then I was asked if I only read literature written in the style I like to write. My response was yes. Or at least, sort of… there’s many styles I enjoy, but I’d say that most of those styles are targeted towards a specific audience: again, the poet, literature that challenges the traditional perspective of the reader. Often this kind of writing makes use of the metaphoric tangibility of poetry and weaves it with the narrative beauty of prose, and actually begins to stylistically present writing that mirrors the ways in which we occupy the everyday.

Clearer examples of this explorative approach to writing, I think, can be seen from an author’s use of dialogue. For example, Stephen Marche’s novel Love and the Mess We’re in has three main characters, and one who is actually fleshed between the dialogue/reflections of the other two. An example from the dialogue in his book can be seen here-- this read had me raptured and dog-earing many deeply, quieting pages. With this technique, what the author was able to establish in only a few pages (the setting, tone, inner world/disposition of each character in relation to their individual selves and each other) most novels take up two-three chapters at least.

To continue, the writing I enjoy attempts to make agency of the transient spaces of our mind, how it flows between inner reflexivity, how a person knows they’re reading a body without taking up that knowledge verbally or even consciously-- where do the words fall-- when a hand slips up the silk of her shirt, and a breast is being touched for the first time yet the mind starts thinking about the summer you were seven, when you found that kid throwing rocks at a frog down at the pond. How does writing explain the space between two fingernails digging anxiously at one another-- tick tick too late, tick-too late for telling good news, tick tick-tumour-tick tick-timing human organ bombs. And that expression is challenging because readers want the answer… no one wants to read their own mind, do they? especially since it’s only ever asking questions, rearranging them into attempted answers.

but if you don’t like that kind of a read… there are other ‘kinds’ of writing out there. you’ll find your writer, reader writer.

And to touch on writing for oneself-- I just don’t see any solid argument that writing, or any form of creating in part (or more) doesn’t provide self pleasure. (I’m saying provide in place of for because I think we often decidedly assume that if one does something for the self, that becomes the main intention wherein everything else is then an extension from, when in fact, self pleasure can be a result of producing, than from process or vice versa… and from personal experience, sometimes that pleasure never does arrive… sometimes, there is even a great deal of pain involved throughout the whole creation process, from the making to presenting). This that doesn’t mean that pleasure and necessity can’t be harmonious, either. My pleasure is within the breadth of my practice-- there’s an incessant need to do, that is perhaps a form of pleasure, sure, but I think for many artists the bond between pleasure and necessity extends beyond Maslow’s hierarchy or any monetary lure (even when Maslow’s hierarchy is flat out depleted), and therefore in a way, creating extends beyond any need for an audience. But, thankfully many of us are creating or have feelings (haha) or enjoy a little culture and connection or a little bit of all that… we find those extensions like magnets between the vastness of perception.

And, just to state: a writer once told me that they write because the nonsense has to go somewhere. I took it as advice, even though it wasn’t. And now I’m insane. hah, no, I’m kidding, but I write like a ban-s(he)e (sanskrit) shiva queer trickster warrior. A sample?:

I live with my family of strangers. Sometimes when I’m bent over about to pee, I listen to their feet travelling down the staircase above me and out out and gone. Always I miss them, never see their faces but hear them. Might as well be ghosts, might as well be pretend friends, but they’re real since I can’t make them appear at my will.

No, I see them sometimes, I’m just being dramatic, and when I do see them, I’ll and stop and watch. It’s creepy, no doubt, but I never hide myself while watching, because I know that while people desire to be voyeured, they’re constantly knit-picking themselves silly until back inside the safety of their four walls (and even then, the question, Is someone still watching me?). Yet, they never catch themselves in the windows where people would be watching and so I do, I watch them for as long as I can stand it, or until they’re gone and out.

But I suppose I enjoy the moment when I’m peeing the best. Seriously. That moment of hesitation, knowing just how well sound travels along these papered walls. Then I let it flow, giggling in my pissing soundscape that serenades my family out out and gone from the door.

alone, my smile loosens to a lesser one.

maybe a sneer.

doessss it matter ?

sssssssssssssssssshed my smile

sssssshed a skin

shed shed shed to the red of raw taw taw,

ka-aw ka-kaw!

maybe I’m a Raven, trickster swoop into the soul of the picketer and priest. Again, dramatic. Maybe I’m a Raven, sure, but I’ve only ever perched not flown and birds don’t have eyelids.

Ka-kaw.

#automatism #malloryamirault #creativewriting #poetry #fiction #poefictiontry #carvemagazine #blog