Thanks Maureen, see how you go with sending just one email. We can
always re-visit this as the workshop goes on. I want it to work for
everyone (the "admin" should be as minimally stressful as possible).
Sorry to hear about your eye - I can only imagine how frustrating that
must be, and I hope the operation is successful this time.
Andy Jackson
http://amongtheregulars.com/
On Tue, Jan 22, 2019, at 5:37 PM, Maureen Sexton wrote:
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.
Cheers
Maureen
*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:>
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 to sincerely 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 just one week. I
also think all the poems submitted were original, thoughtful
and committed, and I expect I may well see a few of them
published, once they're honed and matured.>>>>>>>> Second, I just need
to let you know that Ian has bowed out of
our group. He thanks you all very much for the feedback, but
has had a few things come up in his life which have to take
priority, so he'll be doing the Autumn workshop.>>>>>>>> Third, there
have been a few issues with the group email
system. A few people reported being unable (or unsure how) to
check if their emails reached the group. I think most if not
all of those issues should be resolved, as we get used to how
it works. I hope so, anyway. Please let me know if you're
having any trouble, still. If these things get in the way, we
can revert to just using group emails instead, from next week
on.>>>>>>>> On a related matter, do people have strong preferences for
how
to give feedback? That is – replying to each individual poem
within that email, or collating your feedback on all poems in
one email? If there's a consensus, I'd like to go with that.
Let me know.>>>>>>>> That's admin out of the way. Now... where are we
going this
week? Well, wherever you are. Or, wherever you have been. Or
will be. Place. Places. Your place. Other places. Displacement.
Placing, as in the opposite of “I just can't place that”. All
those kinds of knowledge, which are bodily, situational,
environmental. Which includes that kind of knowledge that is
hard to articulate, perhaps because its unique to you and
you're not sure if you can communicate it to anyone else. Also,
that kind of unknowing. I'm thinking, too, of how we can know
something without being conscious of it, how something has to
change – subtly or profoundly – before that knowledge can be
unearthed.>>>>>>>> All that's quite abstract. I'd rather be concrete.
I remember
sitting in an airplane as it taxi-ed into the terminal, after a
long journey back from Chennai, India, where I'd been for about
two months. The airport staff on the tarmac prepared to remove
luggage from the hold, leaning against trolleys and punching
and slapping each other on the arm with a kind of laconic,
masculine warmth. Australians suddenly seemed huge, lumbering
and slow, physical with each other, yet somehow awkward in
their bodies, wanting to maximise the spaces between. Back in
Melbourne, the trains and the streets seemed empty and quiet,
with hardly any rubbish tumbling through the city. Of course,
as soon as I moved to Castlemaine, when I visit Melbourne it
seems hectic and crowded, full of advertising and bustle. A
change of place made a place new, or strange.>>>>>>>> Around a hundred
years ago, Viktor Shklovsky coined the word
*defamiliarisation*, to explain (if it can be explained) what
poetry does, or could do. What is familiar – what we might see
every day – through poetic language and form, becomes strange,
while remaining very close to us. This includes home, work,
cities, all kinds of environments. Place is unsettled. I can't
completely explain how poetry does this. What I do know is that
there are as many places as there are consciousnesses, and as
many consciousnesses as there are forms of poetry, which is to
say perhaps infinite. How I experience place – as a 40-
something white man who is visibly different – is not how
others experience place. Some move through the world with more
anonymity, more vulnerability, more difficulty, more ease, more
confusion. Defamiliarisation is not just about how we use the
language, but about perspective, where the voice comes from and
how it sounds.>>>>>>>> Anyway, so, yes, it wasn't easy to restrict
myself to just six
poems this week. Here, we have poems of the moment, of public
transport, the natural world, of memorials, work and home. None
of them are representative of any particular school of poetics
– ecopoetics, experimental, lyrical, traditional, etc. In a
way, each poem borrows from multiple approaches, and is also
utterly itself.>>>>>>>> In the classic Tang dynasty (8th century CE)
poem by Tu Fu
(this translation by Kenneth Rexroth), there is a measured
evocation of place – the scents and images that coalesce around
the poet's mood, a mood which is both profoundly still and
subtly disturbed. Things resound more intensely at night, or
perhaps in the wake of this visit to an abbot. Things, also,
simply are what they are. The water. The bells. The iron
phoenix. The prayers. Intruding into the moment is tomorrow,
that the poet knows he will walk in the fields and weep. Where
do these thoughts come from? How do they come out of this
place?>>>>>>>> Scent, too, is a dominant presence in Gieve Patel's
poem –
“human manure / Vague and sharp... [which] does not offend”,
but also “station odour... seeping into your clothing”. The
poet cannot help but be penetrated by this world – even if you
haven't been to Mumbai, you can imagine how the place might
stick to you, climb inside you – but this is at the same time a
kind of detached portrait, curious and (somewhat)
unjudgemental. The odour is both “a divine cushion” and not at
all “the beginning of a meditation / On the nature of truth and
beauty.” The poem carves out a personal space within a public
space, as we often do on crowded trains.>>>>>>>> As a side note
(though a crucial question, in a way), think
about the form of these two poems. Tu Fu's is one solid stanza.
Patel's is two stanzas, each line capitalised. Why? Is there a
relationship between the shape of the poems 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 knows this well. It
is about, among other
things, place as layers, as sedimental histories overlaid on
each other. Colonial violence is considered in the light of
Christian remembrance. A map is sketched on an oval, a sporting
arena made into a place of memory. “Late evening we came …
while the stories were told until day”. The poem knows that the
sheer weight and depth of these stories is hard, perhaps
impossible, to tell. The poem knows, too, that invoking weather
as sympathy or consolation might be “a cliche”. Instead, mostly
on the right hand page, we have a field of marks on paper, as
if the poem were another map, a visceral history of sorts.>>>>>>>>
There's a similar – though also quite distinct – kind of
unsettlement in Stuart Cooke's poem. Loosely speaking, this is
a poem of landscape, of place beyond the city – though such
places cannot escape the human. Among acacia and eagles,
vineyards and groves, and a very human way of being within
place and not quite belonging. The lines slide and leap across
the 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'm joining / with the split”, and
by the “snake coiling ( ( ”. Punctuation and line-breaks here
reinforce an unresolved and ambiguous sense of place.>>>>>>>> Another
ecopoetics is in 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 “the building”, “a desk”, “data” and
“ceremonies”, all of it spoken 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 sky seems strange,
a kind of foundation.>>>>>>>> Finally, Quinn Eades takes us home.
Well, to his home, and in
particular to their kitchen table and what surrounds it, what
it supports literally and figuratively. In this place – the
poem and the table – family and writing come together. I've
included this because writing about place is not always exotic
or ambitious or universal, but by attending to the intimate, it
somehow does touch something much bigger. It also reminds us
that associations and memories attach to objects in their
place.>>>>>>>> This week, I want you to write while dwelling in a
particular
place. It may be a train carriage, your own workplace or office
or bedroom, a park, shopping centre, vacant lot, library,
bushland, laneway, swimming pool, creche, desert, waiting room,
church, mosque, art gallery. It should be any place you know
well. You have two options – to write absorbantly or with
resistance. In other words, you could write as if taken over by
the place, absorbed, as if your words are channelling the heart
of the place, like how a dancer embodies the music. Aim for
embodying it, rather than just describing. Think sensory, but
if ideas come, let them. The other option is to write *against*
the place, to resist it, pull the loose threads of it, see what
dwells underneath it. This could be a dark history, your own
ambivalence or aversion, even perhaps how hard it might feel to
capture this place in 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 Gieve Patel poems are absorbant, and the
Anne Elvey, Stuart Cooke and Jill Jones poems are resistant.
Pick one approach, and see what happens.>>>>>>>> I should also say I
came up with this idea before reading your
poems this week – and some have already written place poems (eg
Mike's), though most are based in memory. The key to this
exercise is – as I say – the present experience, and how your
langauge interacts with that, in the moment. You might need to
write a whole lot of rough draft while there, and later go back
and edit it into shape. Or it may all come in a flow while
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 doubt it'll be really diverse! Good luck!>>>>>>>>
Andy.
Andy Jackson
http://amongtheregulars.com/
--
Emilie Collyer
0425 761 594
*www.betweenthecracks.net[1]*
*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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