Hello all
Sorry for the delay in responding. I just got home from hospital a couple of
hours ago. I was just in overnight to have surgery on my left eye, my retina
seems determined to stay detached, but we'll see how it goes this time. This is
my seventh operation to reattach it. Luckily I can still see fairly clearly out
of my right eye.
Anyway, enough about that. I've just read the email and looking forward to
re-reading it and getting stuck in to this week's reading and writing. Thank
you so much Andy. I loved last week and know I will get a lot out of this
course.
I too will miss Ian. I loved his poem 'fireflight' and wish him well also.
As for giving feedback, I also prefer to look at one poem at a time and really
take it in, but I don't see any reason why I can't put all the feedback in one
document when I've finished the feedback on each poem, and then send them in
one email. I also found the emails overwhelming and prefer all the feedback
from each person in one email.
I hope you all take care and have a wonderful and creative week.
CheersMaureen
Maureen Sexton
0435024616
maureensexton@xxxxxxxxxxxx
'The haiku has this rather fantasmagorical property: that we always suppose we
ourselves can write such things easily.' Roland Barthes
LIFE IS DRAWING WITHOUT A PENCIL
On Tuesday, 22 January 2019, 1:49:09 pm AWST, Andy Jackson
<andyjackson71@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
#yiv1696058994 p.yiv1696058994MsoNormal, #yiv1696058994
p.yiv1696058994MsoNoSpacing{margin:0;}Hi all,
And thanks Wahibe - it's been just as stimulating for me! Hope your birthday
was full of refreshment and love, and that that continues for the year ahead.
And, hmm, it looks like the "vote" is a little bit divided between people
sending one feedback email vs people responding individually to each poem. I
appreciate how willing you all are to be flexible, that's fantastic. I wonder
if the best option is to just do what you most lean towards. Perhaps if you
don't care either way, send one feedback email. If a good portion of us respond
with just one email, then the amount of mail people get will still be reduced.
But, for those who prefer to let the moment take them, respond individually,
that's fine, too. I'm sure we can all handle what happens.
Others who haven't let me know what they'd prefer, feel free to do so -
otherwise, we'll go with the flexible approach.
Thanks for putting thought, heart and patience into this. It's the first
workshop, so it's a little bit "guinea pig".
Best,
Andy Jackson
http://amongtheregulars.com/
On Mon, Jan 21, 2019, at 10:16 PM, Wahibe Moussa wrote:
Hi Everyone. Andy thanks for another thrilling provocation. Place has
definitely been on my mind in the past week as I feel myself pulled toward
Lebanon’s snowy winter (my cousins sending me pictures has really not helped)
and I can’t put into words yet my sense of a life stretched across the world,
because I was born in Beirut and yesterday I was really aware that my birthday
couldn’t happen until it was 11am on 20th of Jan in Lebanon… Oh! yes, it was my
birthday yesterday.
Sorry to hear Ian’s had to drop out. I really enjoyed his Fireflight and was
looking forward to reading more of his poetry. I wish him luck with everything.
In terms of how we give feed back, I like replying separately to each person.
Especially as some poems give me an immediate buzz, and I feel I really have to
respond now, because right now everything is fresh and I can respond without
questioning myself.
But if the majority feeling is for one email responding to all the poems, then
I’m happy to meet a new challenge. I mean it did get a tad confusing with
emails criss-crossing over the weekend.
I’m really sorry I haven’t responded to everyone’s poems yet. Some poems I need
to think about because they are dense with imagery and my responses are deep or
layered and need to be deciphered, the appropriate words aren’t easy to find.
Also, Between house hunting, a funding acquittal and the heat making me so ill,
its been difficult to focus on words.
I’ll try to pull my sox up from here though.
Wxx
On 21 Jan 2019, at 4:07 pm, Rachael Mead <meadipus@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Andy,
Thank you so much - what a brilliant first week! The next exercise and the
example poems are incredibly inspiring so I’m very keen to get my teeth stuck
into ‘place’ this week.
Because I’d made the decision to do all the reading and commenting in a single
session at the close of the week, I ended up being a little overwhelmed by the
email volume. I think condensing all the comments into one email is my
preference just because it fits with the way I’m trying to manage my time at
the moment. But, that said, I’m also happy to go with the group and tackle each
poem as they come in this week. Now that I know what to expect, it will
definitely be easier to manage!
Thanks again,
Rachael
On 21 Jan 2019, at 3:22 pm, Jessica C <j.cohen2031@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Andy,
Thank you for an amazing first week, I feel stretched (in a good way) and
nourished from the readings, the variety of responses, and from the feedback.
Re. feedback / emails - I too was overwhelmed by the volume, and on a more
practical level, found it challenging to work out who / where / how to respond
and ended up worried I had skipped someone or responded to the wrong thread. So
my preference would be to combine feedback in one email - but of course happy
to go with majority.
All the best,
Jessi
On 21 Jan 2019, at 3:13 pm, Tru Dowling <purplepoet@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Andy, I like to respond to each poem after I’ve read it so my feedback is
fresh & immediate, like Emilie. It feels too forced when a combined email. But
I’m happy to concede to the majority. Btw, apologies I didn’t intro my initial
poem or say how much I’m looking forward to the varied poems we’ll all write,
people. We had five minutes to submit my poem before the library closed, & had
to wait for the sole pc in Apollo Bay library to be vacated; I have had trouble
picking up the internet signal on my laptop too. Anyway, am enjoying the group
immensely! Thanks everyone, esp Andy. Care, Tru
Sent from my iPhone
On 21 Jan 2019, at 12:57 pm, J V Birch (Redacted sender "jvbirch" for DMARC)
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Andy
Yes, what a fab group we have! The work has been amazing, love reading all our
different responses. And thank you to all those who fed back and of course
yourself Andy, plenty to think about.
As regards feeding back, I actually found the volume of emails a little
overwhelming to be honest (sorry!), so my preference would be to circulate it
in one email like Rach and Kirsten did, as I tend to collate the poems, read
and feedback all in one go. But happy to go with the majority.
With this weekend being a long one, we’re heading off into the Flinders Ranges
staying in a very remote place with no signal! But will circulate my draft poem
before we go and print off what’s been circulated so far to read and feedback
Monday evening, all in one email if that’s okay as will be easier. That’s the
plan anyway, let’s see how it pans out! ;)
Julie
On Mon, 21 Jan 2019 at 11:29, Emilie Collyer
<emiliecollyer@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Andy
Re the feedback question: I like doing it in response to each poem / email so I
can read and immediately respond. I also quite like the cascading feedback that
comes through the in-box as it informs and adds to my thinking. BUT I can just
as easily collate this into one document if others prefer that.
Emilie
On Mon, 21 Jan 2019 at 09:23, Andy Jackson <andyjackson71@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
First of all, I want tosincerely thank you all for your wholehearted and
generous feedback.It seemed to me that people looked carefully at others'
poems(without being overly analytical), and gave their opinions honestly,based
on their own intuitions. That's great, especially after justone week. I also
think all the poems submitted were original,thoughtful and committed, and I
expect I may well see a few of thempublished, once they're honed and matured.
Second, I just need tolet you know that Ian has bowed out of our group.
Hethanks you all very much for the feedback, but has had a few things come up
inhis life which have to take priority, so he'll be doing the Autumnworkshop.
Third, therehave been a few issues with the group email system. A few
peoplereported being unable (or unsure how) to check if their emailsreached the
group. I think most if not all of those issues should beresolved, as we get
used to how it works. I hope so, anyway. Pleaselet me know if you're having any
trouble, still. If these things getin the way, we can revert to just using
group emails instead, fromnext week on.
On a related matter, dopeople have strong preferences for how to give feedback?
That is –replying to each individual poem within that email, or collating
yourfeedback on all poems in one email? If there's a consensus, I'd liketo go
with that. Let me know.
That's admin out of theway. Now... where are we going this week? Well, wherever
you are. Or,wherever you have been. Or will be. Place. Places. Your place.
Otherplaces. Displacement. Placing, as in the opposite of “I just can'tplace
that”. All those kinds of knowledge, which are bodily,situational,
environmental. Which includes that kind of knowledgethat is hard to articulate,
perhaps because its unique to you andyou're not sure if you can communicate it
to anyone else. Also, thatkind of unknowing. I'm thinking, too, of how we can
know somethingwithout being conscious of it, how something has to change –
subtlyor profoundly – before that knowledge can be unearthed.
All that's quiteabstract. I'd rather be concrete. I remember sitting in an
airplaneas it taxi-ed into the terminal, after a long journey back fromChennai,
India, where I'd been for about two months. The airportstaff on the tarmac
prepared to remove luggage from the hold, leaningagainst trolleys and punching
and slapping each other on the arm witha kind of laconic, masculine warmth.
Australians suddenly seemedhuge, lumbering and slow, physical with each other,
yet somehowawkward in their bodies, wanting to maximise the spaces between.
Backin Melbourne, the trains and the streets seemed empty and quiet, withhardly
any rubbish tumbling through the city. Of course, as soon as Imoved to
Castlemaine, when I visit Melbourne it seems hectic andcrowded, full of
advertising and bustle. A change of place made aplace new, or strange.
Around a hundred yearsago, Viktor Shklovsky coined the word defamiliarisation,
toexplain (if it can be explained) what poetry does, or could do. Whatis
familiar – what we might see every day – through poeticlanguage and form,
becomes strange, while remaining very close to us.This includes home, work,
cities, all kinds of environments. Place isunsettled. I can't completely
explain how poetry does this. What I doknow is that there are as many places as
there are consciousnesses,and as many consciousnesses as there are forms of
poetry, which is tosay perhaps infinite. How I experience place – as a
40-somethingwhite man who is visibly different – is not how others
experienceplace. Some move through the world with more anonymity,
morevulnerability, more difficulty, more ease, more confusion.Defamiliarisation
is not just about how we use the language, butabout perspective, where the
voice comes from and how it sounds.
Anyway, so, yes, itwasn't easy to restrict myself to just six poems this week.
Here, wehave poems of the moment, of public transport, the natural world,
ofmemorials, work and home. None of them are representative of anyparticular
school of poetics – ecopoetics, experimental, lyrical,traditional, etc. In a
way, each poem borrows from multipleapproaches, and is also utterly itself.
In the classic Tangdynasty (8th century CE) poem by Tu Fu (this translationby
Kenneth Rexroth), there is a measured evocation of place – thescents and images
that coalesce around the poet's mood, a mood whichis both profoundly still and
subtly disturbed. Things resound moreintensely at night, or perhaps in the wake
of this visit to an abbot.Things, also, simply are what they are. The water.
The bells. Theiron phoenix. The prayers. Intruding into the moment is
tomorrow,that the poet knows he will walk in the fields and weep. Where dothese
thoughts come from? How do they come out of this place?
Scent, too, is adominant presence in Gieve Patel's poem – “human manure /
Vagueand sharp... [which] does not offend”, but also “station odour...seeping
into your clothing”. The poet cannot help but be penetratedby this world – even
if you haven't been to Mumbai, you can imaginehow the place might stick to you,
climb inside you – but this is atthe same time a kind of detached portrait,
curious and (somewhat)unjudgemental. The odour is both “a divine cushion” and
not atall “the beginning of a meditation / On the nature of truth andbeauty.”
The poem carves out a personal space within a publicspace, as we often do on
crowded trains.
As a side note (thougha crucial question, in a way), think about the form of
these twopoems. Tu Fu's is one solid stanza. Patel's is two stanzas, each
linecapitalised. Why? Is there a relationship between the shape of thepoems and
the sense of their places? I'm not looking for a “right”answer, just wondering
how the way a poem looks on the page – open,drifting, enclosed, formal, wild –
might itself evoke, reinforce,complicate, how we feel about place. These
questions, of course,relate to the rest of our poems, too. A poem is a place
itself.
Anne Elvey's poem knowsthis well. It is about, among other things, place as
layers, assedimental histories overlaid on each other. Colonial violence
isconsidered in the light of Christian remembrance. A map is sketchedon an
oval, a sporting arena made into a place of memory. “Lateevening we came …
while the stories were told until day”. Thepoem knows that the sheer weight and
depth of these stories is hard,perhaps impossible, to tell. The poem knows,
too, that invokingweather as sympathy or consolation might be “a cliche”.
Instead,mostly on the right hand page, we have a field of marks on paper, asif
the poem were another map, a visceral history of sorts.
There's a similar –though also quite distinct – kind of unsettlement in Stuart
Cooke'spoem. Loosely speaking, this is a poem of landscape, of place beyondthe
city – though such places cannot escape the human. Among acaciaand eagles,
vineyards and groves, and a very human way of beingwithin place and not quite
belonging. The lines slide and leap acrossthe page, moving as the eyes move,
both meditative and overwhelmed.Words are broken in two or mashed together –
“mag / nificent”,“r / attling b / ack to the coast”, “itdoeswhatitdoes”.You'll
notice different aspects than I will, but I was struck by “I'mjoining / with
the split”, and by the “snake coiling ( ( ”.Punctuation and line-breaks here
reinforce an unresolved andambiguous sense of place.
Another ecopoetics isin play with Jill Jones's poetry, but it's much more about
the human,urban world. It's not explicit where we are, but there is
“thebuilding”, “a desk”, “data” and “ceremonies”, all of itspoken of by a
collective “we”. It gives me certain visuals,concrete and steel and human
bodies together, almost de-personalised.Again, you'll have your own take on it.
I'm interested, here, though,in how the “we” shapes our sense of place, how
even the blue skyseems strange, a kind of foundation.
Finally, Quinn Eadestakes us home. Well, to his home, and in particular to
their kitchentable and what surrounds it, what it supports literally
andfiguratively. In this place – the poem and the table – family andwriting
come together. I've included this because writing about placeis not always
exotic or ambitious or universal, but by attending tothe intimate, it somehow
does touch something much bigger. It alsoreminds us that associations and
memories attach to objects in theirplace.
This week, I want youto write while dwelling in a particular place. It may be a
traincarriage, your own workplace or office or bedroom, a park, shoppingcentre,
vacant lot, library, bushland, laneway, swimming pool,creche, desert, waiting
room, church, mosque, art gallery. It shouldbe any place you know well. You
have two options – to writeabsorbantly or with resistance. In other words, you
could write as iftaken over by the place, absorbed, as if your words are
channellingthe heart of the place, like how a dancer embodies the music. Aim
forembodying it, rather than just describing. Think sensory, but ifideas come,
let them. The other option is to write against theplace, to resist it, pull the
loose threads of it, see what dwellsunderneath it. This could be a dark
history, your own ambivalence oraversion, even perhaps how hard it might feel
to capture this placein language. I think our six poems this week have elements
of both(yours might too), but you could say the Tu Fu, Quinn Eades and
GievePatel poems are absorbant, and the Anne Elvey, Stuart Cooke and JillJones
poems are resistant. Pick one approach, and see what happens.
I should also say Icame up with this idea before reading your poems this week –
andsome have already written place poems (eg Mike's), though most are based
inmemory. The key to this exercise is – as I say – the presentexperience, and
how your langauge interacts with that, in the moment.You might need to write a
whole lot of rough draft while there, andlater go back and edit it into shape.
Or it may all come in a flowwhile you're there. Either way, see if you can
somehow use the page,puncuation, line-breaks, etc to reinforce your sense of
that place.Hugely looking forward to seeing what you come up with – I've no
doubtit'll be really diverse! Good luck!
Andy.
Andy Jackson
http://amongtheregulars.com/
--
Emilie Collyer
0425 761 594
www.betweenthecracks.net
Twitter: @EmilieCollyer
I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which I live and work. I
pay my respects to their Elders, past and present. I acknowledge that
sovereignty was never ceded and that the complexities of living on this land
that remains stolen and occupied are many and are unresolved.
Wahibe Moussa.
Navigating
Words
Action
Direction
☎️
+61 405 604 465
📥
wtmoussa@xxxxxxxxx
yawahiba@xxxxxxxxxx
I ACKNOWLEDGE THE AUSTRALIAN AND ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDERS AS THE
FIRST INHABITANTS OF AUSTRALIA AND ACKNOWLEDGE THE TRADITIONAL CUSTODIANS OF
THE LAND WHERE I LIVE, WORK AND LEARN.
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