Containing Multitudes: Notes on lectures by Dora Malech & Tarfia Faizullah

I really enjoyed these two linked lectures, in which two poets put forth theories that you can see them engaging directly in their own poetic craft. Dora Malech focuses on “inconstancy” and the excitement that happens when the speaker of a poem changes her mind. Tarfia Faizullah talks about vulnerability as a key tool, an issue that I’ve also discussed in relation to writing personal nonfiction (link to downloadable essay, here). They use these concepts as ways to think about bringing multiple selves into our poems.

The assignments at the end relate mostly to Dora’s lecture. Tarfia’s portion starts at 12:11.

[This post is part of a series of my notes on a video lectures from the free How Writers Write Poetry e-course from The University of Iowa’s International Writing Program.]


Part 1:
On Syntactic Turns and Multiple Selves

Dora Malech = two collections of poetry + Ruth Lily Fellowship

“The word” is a promise, a contract, faith and constancy. This urge can carry over into our writing, but is not always helpful. It can stand in the way of discovery.

“No tears for the writer, no tears for the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” 
—Robert Frost 

In “the poems that excite us and that become touchstones for us in our own lives, we find that there’s an element of inconstancy, of change, of going back on one’s words. And that is, in a way, the kind of hallmark of a writer like Shakespeare.” His sonnets are full of coordinating conjunctions, “that I like to call hinge words, words where you watch a mind change.”

So we watch a mind not giving us a clear stance, but “wrestling with an issue, a question, an emotion, a state of mind.”

Example: Woman’s Constancy by John Donne

“In our myths, that idea of inconstancy is so often negative. Orpheus turns around and he’s punished. Lot’s wife looks back and she’s punished. And so poetry becomes this place where we can go to dignify and find beauty in the ways in which we can’t keep our word, the ways in which we are unfaithful and that’s part of the human condition on some level.”

Ways to create change of mind in a poem:

  • hinge words: or, but, though, if, unless. 
  • break the metrical contract — change the expectation
  • the nature of the metaphor

Example: Sailing to Byzantium by W. B. Yeats.  Uses both: the meter changes after the word unless.

Example: Free Union (L’Union Libre) by Andre Breton uses multiple images/metaphors for the wife, to demonstrate the shifting nature of the bond.

Example: Facing It by Yosef Komunyakaa. Notice the turn after the word No. It’s beautiful to inhabit multiple truths at once; you don’t have to choose one or the other.

“In a world in which fact and reason are valued, in which politicians are called flip-floppers if they change their mind, in which our word is our bond, we’re supposed to be men and women of our words, poetry is a place where we can go to find the thrilling plurality of our words, in which we can be men and women of all of our words. … So I would encourage you to give me, your reader, not only your word, singular, but the thrilling plurality of your words. … You can show the reader that they’re not alone in their stumbling, in their stuttering, in their confusion, in their uncertainty.”

Part 2:
On Syntax and Vulnerability

Tarfia Faizullah = editor of the Asian Literary Review + winner of awards + Fulbrighter + lives in Detroit + author of Seam on Bangladeshi war rape survivors

[I’ve written about Tarfia’s beautiful work in my blog series about reading as a writer, right here.]

“Syntax is identity.” – Li-Young Lee

Poetry allows the self to be multiple. “As an individual, for example, I am a Bangladeshi- American, Brooklyn-born, raised in West Texas, currently living in Detroit woman. And as a self, I am somebody who is very concerned with how to both, how to live outside of those prescribed categories while also allowing those categories to remain as fully intact as possible.”

That’s why we say “the speaker” not “the poet” when talking about the voice of a poem; it allows for the fact that it could be a multiple aspect of the poet.

Distinction between confessionalism (subjective) and autobiography (objective). Vulnerability = owning the various phases and multiple histories we’ve been through, and how this can allow us to write in many different modes. Break through categories and ideologies.

Globalization is happening but we are not all learning/globalizing at the same rate. Delving into our own inner lives enables us to be more empathetic to each other and also ourselves.

Key questions: “How do we write a truly vulnerable poem that is informed by our experiences and our perspectives, but not necessarily beholden to them? … How do we marry content and form in order to create a truly human poem?”

Vulnerability is what’s really happening in American poetics right now. It enables poets to use a lot of different techniques and tools, not fidelity to one aesthetic or movement.

Example: In Black and White by Erica Dawson. She is a neo-formalist and fearless in what she brings into a rigidly formal structure. Pop culture, vernacular language, gestures come into the poem.

You don’t need to just rely on description. Syntax can create atmosphere, orient the reader — not just in time and place but also in a set of concerns, emotional or intellectual.

Example: There Are Birds Here by Jamaal May. Uses a single word to describe the phenomenon of looking: “no.” Talks back at the reader to transcend the stereotypical idea of what Detroit is. There is an “I” but it describes the full self that is paying attention, not a personal/individual history. It asks us to consider a landscape in a very expansive yet precise way.

“All earthly experience is partial.”
—Louise Glück

“I can only define it as kind of gradual accumulation of information and as a specialization. You can know more about one thing but you can never know everything about one thing. It’s hopeless – so that we live surrounded by more or less ghostly objects.”
—Nabokov

Vulnerability allows us to accept this uncertainty and that we’ll never fully know everything, and still talk about multiple possibilities of the “ghostly objects.”

Two assignments:

• A sonnet which has a major change/turn – voice, style, sonic possibility, attention, argument.
• Write a poem with six hinge words — such as and, but, or, nor, yet, so, until, except, unless, no, not, or any other word or phrase that turns the logic of your sentence.

Prosody (Meter): Notes on a talk by Richard Kenney and William Trowbridge

Here are my notes on another in the series of University of Iowa lessons on poetry craft.

Part 1: Nuts and Bolts

Richard Kenney = MacArthur genius + poet who deals with evolution, physics, time.

So the first thing to note here is that Richard Kenney is totally hilarious to watch. He has a very excitable speaking manner and talks himself into random corners. My favorite part of the video starts around 1:45, when he’s talking about counting syllables in a line of poetry, and somehow he says:

“You could count unicorns. Five unicorns in a single poetic line would, would, uh, …well you see the problem… it would, its sentimentality would be the least of it.”

That was enough to get me started on my writing assignment for the week!

He also has a great schtick where he uses actual nuts and bolts to demonstrate syllables and stresses. Pop in at 3:00 to see a haiku about turnips counted out with nuts, and at 4:10 to see a rendition of an Olde English poem about Sir Galahad recited with bolts, and then a whole bunch of nursery rhymes, and then a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, and on and on.

In English there are really just two rhythms that we’re trying to approximate: one is the heartbeat (double rhythm), and one is the hoofbeat (triple rhythm).

Out of these, you can build a line of a poem in two ways:
• the iambic pentameter, which approximates speech, or
• the shorter line, which is like a song rhythm.

The meter is mechanical, “made out of nuts and bolts like this,” and sounds robotic. But human speech varies the stresses according to emotion and feeling. So “don’t worry about it,” he says; “the meter goes along under the surface without any problem,” as long as you revert to the pattern strongly.

“Read the great poems and you’ll find these effects happening all the time.”

“Is it possible to write this way and sound anything like a normal human being? Will it necessarily sound like some sort of faux Shakespearean? No, it isn’t very difficult at all to do this day and night. The fact is I could speak that way for a long time without you noticing.”

“These meters don’t exist in the world. They exist in your nervous system. … It’s not about numbers and counting at all. That’s just the mind trying to understand it at a level of detail which is, in practice, all but irrelevant. The truth is, these things are biological effects.”

Meter didn’t originate just because it enhanced memory, but because it’s inherent to us.

William Trowbridge

William Trowbridge = Missouri poet + Academy of American Poets Prize winner

This part of the talk is all about using meter in free verse. He cites Poetic Meter and Poetic Form, by Paul Fussell.

Free verse still involves meter (syllabic stress), rhyme (often internal to the line), and other elements of “formal” verse. If you’re not paying attention, your poem could “fall into” a metrical pattern that
• you fail to take advantage of, missing an opportunity, or
• undermine/works against what you’re trying to say.

Alexander Pope: “The sound should seem an echo to the sense.” (An Essay on Criticism, Part II)

So it’s important for free verse writers to learn how to “scan” a line.

He reads a whole bunch of poems to demonstrate how to scan them, and why the poet chooses certain syllabic effects.  There’s a lot of technical information about the six types of metrical units, etc., which are in the full video transcript.

My favorite example poems were Kinky by Denise Duhamel, from her book which is all about Barbie and Ken (!!), and Apartment by Rae Armantrout.

His advice: Run home and “scan” all your lines and see where you can make them more effective — don’t use an overly heavy beat for a light romantic subject, for example.

References for the technical stuff:
Rhyme and Meter Glossary
Best Words, Best Order by Stephen Dobyns — chapter on free verse

EXERCISE:

Try writing a poem with the heartbeat (double) or hoofbeat (triple) meter, or with both.

Building a Poem: Notes on a how-to talk by Daniel Khalastchi

Here are my notes on another in the series of University of Iowa lessons on poetry craft. (To see last week’s notes, click here: Sketching for Poets by Robert Hass.)

Lecture: Building a Poem

Khalastchi = on staff at the University of Iowa + co-founder of Rescue Press + born in raised in Iowa + 1st gen Iraqi Jewish American.

In this talk, he shares some ideas for moving into what he calls “the wild construction of possibility” — building on the sketches/notes and turning them into something bigger. There are many ways, not just one way. He says it’s like building a house.

[Note from self: I don’t really think so. It’s more like building a space dragon.]

5 tools to build a poem

  1. Image. A visual or sensual description.
  2. Figurative language. If every image were literal, that would be boring. Images that represent something else or create comparison/connection make the language come to life.
  3. The line. Use to create emphasis, pacing, mood. (For example, line breaks can create emotional hesitation.) The line gives us a double meaning: itself, and then whatever it means in relation to the lines before and after. Consider, what is the line doing? How can I get a new meaning out of it? If you’re not sure why you’re breaking a line, don’t break the line. You are the one in control of your words that make the line.
  4. Sound (repetition, rhyme), the music of poetry. Line breaks are one of many tools to create music, rhythm. Rhyme creates emphasis and changes mood. Rhythm changes the pace, tone. Can signal the “turn” of the poem.
  5. Form. Constraint can help the writer. Experiment with forms (sonnets, quatrains, etc.) if that works for you.

What a poem is

Quotes/paraphrases from other poets that he cites:

  • James Wright: Poetry is the crucial relation between craft and the imagination.
  • Robert Hass: A good image makes something so real, it’s like being alive twice.
  • Denise Levertov: When you (as the reader of a poem) get to the end of the line, you give the the writer the respect of giving it a half comma. You pause for a second to take in what that line was, and you look at the line as a unit, what it’s doing on its own.

Model poems

“Feared Drowned” by Sharon Olds — for image that is figurative language
“The Funeral” by Norman Dubie — ditto
“The Language” by Robert Creeley — for use of the line
“White, White Collars” by Denis Johnson – for rhythm/music in the lines. Note the misery in the first part of the poem, then at the “turn” (But in my belly’s flames…) he introduces a rhyme scem, AABB, to make it musical and dance.

We work in this building and we are hideous 
in the fluorescent light, you know our clothes 
woke up this morning and swallowed us like jewels 
and ride up and down the elevators, filled with us, 
turning and returning like the spray of light that goes 
around dance-halls among the dancing fools. 
My office smells like a theory, but here one weeps 
to see the goodness of the world laid bare 
and rising with the government on its lips, 
the alphabet congealing in the air 
around our heads. But in my belly’s flames 
someone is dancing, calling me by many names 
that are secret and filled with light and rise 
and break, and I see my previous lives.
“The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe — for rhythm/rhyme in the line
“Sonnet” by Srikanth Reddy (which is not a typical sonnet at all)

Exercise:

Construct a poem however you want (maybe in a form). Consider using some of the sketched or collected lines from previous work as your building materials. Include at least one image and one metaphor.


Classmates, I look forward to seeing you in our class forums 🙂 and please also feel free to poke around this site or connect with me elsewhere:


New e-course now open!

 

Sketching for poets: Notes on a how-to talk by Robert Hass

So, I’m taking this amazing free online course, How Writers Write Poetry from The University of Iowa’s International Writing Program.  We get twice-weekly video lectures that are all available on YouTube, and we write new poems twice a week to workshop.

I’m finding that I want to channel my inner undergrad and take real lecture notes!  So, I thought I’d share — I also had fun looking up the links to the poems that were quoted in the talk.

My aim is to take notes on at least 30-50% of the lectures this way; I’m assuming some will be more compelling or info-heavy than others.  This first lecture was a real treasure trove; thus, a loooong post!

I’m already finding these exercises incredibly helpful as I put the final touches on my poetry manuscript which is coming out very soon. 🙂


These notes refer to a video lecture by Robert Hass that is part of the free How Writers Write Poetry e-course from The University of Iowa’s International Writing Program.

Please note that the poet quoted many poems from memory, and some quotations might be paraphrases. Where I have looked up a quotation, I’ve included the link/citation.

Please let me know of any corrections at minal [at] minalhajratwala [dot] com . You can also read the closed-caption transcript on YouTube.

Lecture: Sketching Techniques

Robert Hass = Former US Poet Laureate + 7 books of poetry + founder of the Northern California eco-poetry festival Watershed + winner of MacArthur/Pulitzer/etc. Married to the poet Brenda Hillman.

*

Hass says “sketching” is a technique for sitting down to the blank page — “which I’m not very good at.”

The painter, Degas, ran into his neighbor, Stéphane Mallarmé. Degas said he was having trouble writing poems; he had ideas but couldn’t turn them into anything. Mallarmé said, “Ah, the problem is that poetry is not made out of ideas, it’s made out of words.”

Sketch 1 line, 2 lines, 3 lines, 4 lines, then a paragraph.

1 line

The basic unit of poetry is a single line.

Some forms are single-line poems. In Japanese, haiku are often written in one long line.

In this world we walk on the roof of hell gazing at flowers
—Issa, 19th c.

That’s the English version. In original, literally, a series of possessives: This world’s hell’s roof’s flower gazing.

Looking for a parking place I can’t find to meditate
— rough paraphrase of a poem by Allen Ginsberg.

The line can be identical to the sentence, or the line can spill over into the next sentence. You get a pause, or you get energy.

The boy walked out into the field to see the white horse.
— paraphrase of a line by DH Lawrence. 

In a single line, it creates a sense of peace. If you broke it other ways, you could create anxiety, or suspense.  [Here is the actual poem, which is a bit different: poets.org/poetsorg/poem/white-horse ]

Examples of wonderful single lines:

All things that love the sun are out of doors.
— William Wordsworth poetryfoundation.org/poem/174814

Felix Randal the farrier, O is he dead then?
—Gerard Manley Hopkins. bartleby.com/122/29.html

Half my hundred year life is gone.
—a Chinese poet <?>

O Rose thou art sick.
— William Blake poetryfoundation.org/poem/172938

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
—Theodore Roethke  poetryfoundation.org/poem/172106

Exercise/sketch: 

  • Write down 20 sentences that might be lines from poems / first lines. Look around the room  you’re in now, and write sentences that are descriptions of things. Look around, check out your feelings, and try writing sentences that are a single thought or phrase. Begin with an image, some record of a feeling, something that takes you inward, a strange metaphor, an image of the adequacy or the inadequacy of the world.

2 lines

One is about identity, two is about relation.

The most famous 2-line poem in Latin:

I hate and love, you may ask me why,
I don’t know but I feel it and suffer.
— Catullus  [several translations of Odi Et Amo here: http://blogs.dickinson.edu/latin-poetry-podcast/2013/01/16/i-hate-and-i-love-catullus-85/

It’s two lines but each line has 2 parts.

Look to the blues, spirituals, call & response.

Examples:

What is it men in women do require?
The lineaments of gratified Desire.
—Blake poetryfoundation.org/poem/246230

Who is it knows the trouble I’ve seen?
Nobody knows but Jesus.
—spiritual

Emptiness! my bride!
Who whistles? who listens?
— Tomaž Šalamun  http://creative.sulekha.com/their-guru-an-emptiness_54677_blog

The wind that blows
Is all that anybody knows.
— Thoreau

Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me,
Why should you not speak to me?
—Walt Whitman

Last winter I observed the snow on a spree with the northwest wind
And it put me out of conceit of all fences and other imaginary lines.
—Whitman

Soft as the massacre of Suns
By Evening’s Sabres slain
— Emily Dickinson http://emilyeveryday.com/2009/07/22/soft-massacre/

What’ll I do if you are far away
and I am blue. What’ll I do?
—Irving Berlin

Study of the work songs of the Bantu [in Technicians of the Sacred, ed. Jerome Rothenberg, ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520049123]: Someone says a line and someone responds. The 2nd line must not be obviously related to the 1st.  For example:

1st person: The elephant was killed by a small arrow.
2nd person: A lake dries up at the edges.

Skillful relationship between the lines: A large thing defeated by something minor. And, the dried lakebed resembles elephant skin.

Exercise/Sketch: 

  • Write a question and then write an answer. Answer in a surprising way.  Or make a statement and then ask a question.
  • Look at your one-liners and see if you want to add a second line. Let the second one surprise you in relation to the first.
  • Consider 2 lines as a game you can play with yourself — quick flash free association to get to the second line.  Try it with the same first line a few times. See what happens. Go Salt: Pepper. Then, Salt: Wound.

3 lines

Here you have the whole world of haiku.

Suma village / A urine-stained quilt / drying on the line

—Busan

Also think about the rhythm of the body and the rhythm of the mind.

3 is about weaving together different things or parts.

Exercise/Sketch:

  • Write something out that’s fairly long: description of your day, a vivid dream you’ve had lately. Then try setting the phrases dancing in a  three-line stanza.

4 lines

Humans organize the world into fours. North/South/West/East.  The world of knowledge — like a strong table on all fours.

Models: Chinese quatrain / English ballad.

Yesterday we climbed stony mountain.
The rocks on the trail were the color of trout.
We talked about our lives, about loneliness.
On top, in the fog, we couldn’t see a thing.
—Tu Fu

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
—Robert Frost  poetryfoundation.org/poem/171621

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.
—Theodore Roethke  poetryfoundation.org/poem/172103

This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
Climbing the mountain height,  …
—Elizabeth Bishop  poets.org/poetsorg/poem/armadillo

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
— W.B. Yeats  poetryfoundation.org/poem/172055

Make a proposition/ask a question.

Often three lines set up the situation and then the fourth line/leg sets the thing down.

Four brushstrokes of what’s in your consciousness.

Can play with rhyme.

Listen to the singing inside four. We are form-seeking, meaning-seeking, symbol-making creatures to the core of our being. This desire fuses with the sets of four, the order and play of numbers – so this is often where poetry really comes alive.

Exercise/Sketch:

  • Make a four-line gesture that comes to some kind of peace, or question, or disturbance at the end.
  • Write a line. Then write a pair of lines—see how many odd ways you can make relation of twoness: grammatical parallel, rhyme, same idea, contrasting idea. Then try the dance of three’s: take perceptions you have and see what they look line in a three-line stanza, set your imagination skipping. And then maybe for the task of definition, the four line stanza would be appropriate.
  • Hass shares an exercise that his wife, the poet Brenda Hillman, assigns: Write a four-line poem that completely sums up your view of the world.

Whew! That’s plenty to do!

Classmates, I look forward to seeing you in our class forums 🙂 and please also feel free to poke around this site or connect with me elsewhere:

#ReadWomen2014: Her Name Is Kaur

Her Name is Kaur

I was honored to be asked to blurb this first-of-its kind anthology, and here’s what I said:

Her Name is Kaur pushes past the boundaries of romance to illuminate the love at the very heart of the faith. In this groundbreaking book, Meeta Kaur has gathered a diverse and fresh group of stories of growing up Sikh and redneck, Sikh and queer, Sikh and daydreaming, Sikh and heartbroken, Sikh and deeply beloved.

Whether discussing the everyday (mother-in-law conflicts) or the taboo (mental illness), these women writers share colorful, intense, and engaging adventures that range from Los Altos to Toronto to Chandigarh.

Title: Her Name Is Kaur: Sikh American Women Write About Love, Courage, and Faith, edited by Meeta Kaur

Recommended for: Everyone interested in South Asian cultures, women of America, and stories/perspectives you’ve never heard before.

Hey, what’s #ReadWomen2014?

In response to lots of disheartening statistics about the gender gap in literary publishing, zillions of people are posting their favorite women writers on Twitter.  I love getting so many great recommendations of what to read, so I’m joining the fun! You don’t have to have a Twitter account to browse what people are posting at the “year-long celebration of women’s writing.” 

Logo of #ReadWomen2014 with five women authors

Desire + Need + Unpacking Power = #MyWritingProcess

This Monday’s post is part of a blog tour called My Writing Process. Please feel free to copy the questions and join the fun!

My Writing Process – Blog Tour: INSTRUCTIONS

Step 1: Acknowledge the person (& site) who involved you in the blog tour.

I met Joshunda Victoria Sanders when she was in my memoir class at VONA, writing this incredible, brave, powerful prose. I love getting her emails (you can, too, right here) because they’re always wise and generous. Her answers to the #MyWritingProcess questions are right here.

Step 2: Answer 4 questions about your writing process…

1) What are you working on?

• Finishing up a poetry collection that will come out this year from The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective. The title will be … (uh oh! coming soon … titles are hard!).

• Working on a top-secret novel. I could tell you more, but then I’d have to kill you. No, seriously. All I can say is that the novel is gory and politically scathing, and the plot offers me plenty of opportunities to kill off people who irritate me, which is super satisfying.

• Occasional freelance articles like this and this, including several pieces on craft for The Writer magazine.  I keep wondering if I should go back to a more regular journalism gig. Not like a j-o-b, but maybe a column? Should I? And if so, on what?

• My Ask the Unicorns advice column on living the creative life.

• Writing curricula and prompts and critiques and love notes for the writers in my courses. I love teaching and coaching because it keeps me in this ongoing, amazing conversation about process, which only other writers can truly understand.

2) How does your work differ from others’ work in the same genre?

I work in a lot of genres, and all of my writing is deeply informed by a social justice ethic plus a quest to understand the power dynamics of societies as well as individuals. I’m always trying to understand and un-cohere the power structures that create suffering.

When I write a lesson for my students about overcoming writing blocks, for example, I’m really talking about how to undo internalized oppression.

In my poetry I’m deeply interested in the power of language. I don’t think it’s so important to self-consciously be different from others’ work; I’m happy to have influences and be part of the long stream of literary conversation, while also exploring whatever lights a spark in me.

Also I write about unicorns.

3) Why do you write what you do?

I’m driven by both desire and need.

Desire: Writing can be a deep pleasure. Poems are so fun, so satisfying. Fiction: You can make anything happen! How wild is that? Nonfiction: Nothing is more mysterious than reality.

Need: Writing is how I figure things out. Honestly, if I didn’t write, I wouldn’t understand people at all, not even myself.

4) How does your writing process work?

Layers. I start with research. All those links below to other people’s answers to these questions? Research. I don’t know why I thought their answers would help me, but I needed to read them before I started writing this.

When I’m ready to write, I draft almost everything longhand (except blog posts). Then I go back through my notebooks and type in the things worth typing.

Then I “edit” forever.

By “edit,” I mean that this is actually the real writing, but I fool myself that it’s going to be easier than writing because it’s “just editing.” In this phase I re-write, merge fragments from various notebooks, separate sections, mix in new bits of research, cut out old bits, and freewrite entire new sections that I then integrate into the whole.

By “forever,” I mean until everything finally gels. Usually I don’t know this until the second it happens. Until then, I oscillate between hope that it’s almost done, and despair that it will never be done.

That’s the “first draft,” although in reality, almost everything in it has been drafted and re-drafted at least 20-30 times. At this point, I turn it over to my editor and/or beta readers for feedback, have a mimosa, go to a movie like a normal person, and wait to begin the next round.

The “second draft” goes fairly quickly, but often involves some large structural or organizational shift, resulting in the “final draft,” when I feel a final “a-ha.”

Another week of small tweaks, fact-checking, parting twangs, and waves of fear about finally letting go of the work, and then it’s off to the editor on the way to publication.

So basically, sometimes I’m all glamorous like this:

Joan Crawford, with glam typewriter.

Joan Crawford + fountain pen + typewriter

But mostly I’m like these guys:

58562e9abcdb8dc58cf0b423b15ebf63

I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I have more to say about my writing process and writing-as-activism over on the Hedgebrook website, right here.

Step 3: Say who is on the week after you are (your chosen two writers). Give a one-sentence bio of each and link to their websites. There’s a #mywritingprocess Twitter tag you can use, as well as linking to your blog post from your Facebook page.

#1) Kristy Lin Billuni, the Sexy Grammarian, is going to have something hot to say about this next week! www.sexygrammar.com/ #2) Oops! I failed to recruit a second blogger. So if you’re a writer and have a blog, please consider yourself tagged!  Post your answers on your own blog next Monday and spread the fun.


L-bracket-greenR-bracket-greenNeed a fairy godmother for your own writing process? Check out what I can do for you, and then schedule a free 30-minute consultation. Email me with a bit about your needs, and some good times/dates to talk.

 


A sampling of other posts in the #MyWritingProcess tour:

Tayari Jones. “I like to whip out my typewriter and bang away for a couple of hours. I have written each book differently, but here are some things that are consistent: I don’t outline and I write the first chapter last.”

Tananarive Due. “Sometimes it’s less horrifying to imagine a supernatural entity at work than it is to reflect on our casual human monstrosity.  Demons make more sense of the nightly news.”

Serena Lin: Drunken Whispers. “I’d like to gather up my courage to submit to literary journals. I tried to post WANTED: COURAGE TO SUBMIT posters in Prospect Park. The drum circle distracted me…”

Safia Jama: A Poet’s Notebook in Progress. “Clearly, the ladybug and I were both working within the same genre—that of sitting on a bench near the Hudson River—yet our work differed vastly.”

Lindsey Mead: A Design So Vast. “The reason I write: so I don’t miss my life…”

Stacie Evans: Process of Elimination. “I like writing challenges. Each year, starting in 2009, I’ve chosen one form and written that each day for the whole [National Poetry] month: tanka, rhyme royal, nove otto, zeno, arun…”

Alejna: Collecting Tokens. “I will assemble previously constructed chunks of my research and stitch them together … then infuse this mass with my sweat, tears and lifeblood. Finally, I will run large currents of electricity through the resulting body of work in hopes that it will take on life…”

Sarah Piazza: Splitting Infinitives. “It is an itch I have to scratch; it is a young child tugging ever more frantically on my sleeve…”

Pamela Hunt Cloyd: Walking on My Hands. “I write about military life from a slightly different vantage point, as I am much older than the typical military wife and I married my husband despite the fact that I used to believe that most people in the military were violent, right-wing, rednecks.”

Dana Talusani: The Kitchen Witch. “Freelancing requires a bravery that I’m not sure I have…”

Shannon Duffy: Deepest Worth. “My best writing comes quickly and leaves me drained and a little high…”

Elizabeth Marro. “I have found that the finish line is where I must be my most patient, my most humble. I’m never done when I think I am.”

Lisa Hsia: Satsuma Bug. “I create to capture a particular something that will no longer be available later in time: a flower, a human (or feline, or canine) individual at a given moment, an emotion, a frustration, a conversation…”

Celestine Nudana: Reading Pleasure/My Journey with Words. “In my country incest is a taboo subject … I’ve always stood up for the downtrodden and marginalized.”

Tish Farrell: Taking the Slow Road/Tarrying Not Typing. “As you talk, the remedies to stuckness will likely pop out of your mouth. Listen out for them. A passive listening post is thus an essential aid. Your dog, cat or canary would be a good choice.”

Vashti Quiroz-Vega. “I’m a pantster when it comes to short stories. I get an idea in my head, and I run with it until it arrives at whatever end.”

Cynthia Manick: Poetry Is What Makes the Invisible Appear. “I write like a convict. I’m scurrying with torn pieces of paper, words are scribbled in horrible handwriting, and I’m trying to capture something?”

Daniel José Older. “Urban Fantasy has, in its mass-market published form anyway, been a very white genre, and I write work that actively degentrifies it. Of course, people of color have always told amazing, fantastical stories about The City…”

Rebekkah Ford: The Musing Writer. “Vampires and werewolves are cool but what about a new mythology?”

Bianca Sloane. “I needed her to tell me how off base it was before I put on my surgical scrubs and took a scalpel to it. I’m finally falling in love with it, which is a wonderful feeling.”

M.L. LeGette: By Candlelight. “My eight year old heart would sing when it saw a bookmark or poster with a dragon or unicorn on it.”

Kuukua Yomekpe: Being a Writer with a Bipolar Brain. “There’s nothing like the feel of paper gently rubbing the first third of my pinkie as it does a waltz across the page…”

Loads more links via Twitter: #MyWritingProcess.

Subject: From your biggest fan

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I just finished a beautiful session with a client who has been totally blocked, on and off, for several years. Today, she managed to write deeply despite numerous barriers, critical voices, and traumatic history. I felt moved afterward to write her this note. It applies to so many writers, since it often feels as though no one knows the hard work we go through. Please feel free to take it personally if it applies to you, too. 🙂

Dearest ______,

I just want to send you a love note seeing the brave and beautiful work that you’re doing. Your voice is unique and urgently needed in the world. Whenever I hear and read your words, I see persistence, beauty, and a depth of untold stories that are relevant not only to you, but to all of our community which suffers under the heavy myth of the model minority. Your work is to break the silence and push up against the oppressive strictures and limitations of that dominant story, to resist it with the full might of your precious desire to write & speak. When you sit and try to write over these next couple of weeks, please know that whatever the outcome, I am here and cheering you on. I look forward to every word that comes from you.

Warmly,
Minal

Writing isn’t therapy, but…

First of all, I have to brag. Two of my workshop students are coming out with really important new books that expand the conversation around trauma. Knowing a bit of what went into these projects, I could not be more proud of them. Congratulations, Lisa and Jennifer!  I hope folks will support their brave work by going to their pages and clicking “buy,” “like,” “share,” etc..

dearsister_newcover_1

Dear Sister: Letters from Survivors of Sexual Violence, ed. Lisa Factora-Borchers. Available now!

Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Sexual Violence Movement, ed. Jennifer Patterson. Coming out this fall from Magnus Books.

#ReadWomen2014: Poetry witnessing historical trauma

Tarfia Faizullah

Interview with a Birangona
2. Where did the Pakistani military take you, and were there others there?

Past the apothecary shop, shut
down, burned flat. My heart

seized, I told it to hush. They saw
its shape and weight and wanted

it too. Past the red mosque
where I first learned to touch

my forehead low, to utter
the wet words blown from

my mouth again and again. Past
the school draped with banners

imploring Free Our Language,
a rope steady around my throat

as they pushed me toward the dark
room, the silence clotted thick

with a rotten smell, dense like pear
blossoms, long strands of jute

braided fast around our wrists.
Yes, there were others there.

I met this poet, Tarfia Faizullah, when she was a Fulbrighter embarking on her research among the Birongana — women who suffered from the mass rapes during the brutal 1971 war which split Bangladesh from Pakistan. The poems informed by that research form the body of this book, interspersed with poems from the point of view of the interviewer—a necessary and insightful intervention. The result is a stunning collection that won a first book award and honors the survivors’ stories with beauty Book cover of Seam: Poems by Tarfia Faizullahand restraint, never melodrama. Tarfia exercises skillful restraint, allowing the images to do most of the work, so that — as in the poem above — when the women’s actual words do come in, they land with tragic power.


Title
Seam by Tarfia Faizullah.

Recommended for: Poetry lovers and other humans interested in stories of resilience. Writers whose material includes deep trauma, whether historical or personal or both. Nonfiction writers interested in structures that open up the narrative, creating a structure with emotional logic rather than a strictly linear or chronological telling.

Hey, what’s #ReadWomen2014?

In response to lots of disheartening statistics about the gender gap in literary publishing, zillions of people are posting their favorite women writers on Twitter.  I love getting so many great recommendations of what to read, so I’m joining the fun! You don’t have to have a Twitter account to browse what people are posting at the “year-long celebration of women’s writing.” 

Logo of #ReadWomen2014 with five women authors

Want a writing breakthrough—fast? The amazing Writing from the Chakras workshop starts May 31! Click here to find out more and reserve your spot.

Writing from the Chakras logo

 

#ReadWomen2014: From milkmaid to rebel poet

Ann Yearsley

“Ann Yearsley (1756–1806) wrote as ‘Lactilla’ because she was a milkmaid. … Taken up as a working-class prodigy by Hannah More (whose table provided scraps for her pigs), she went from poverty to overnight literary stardom, her first book attracting over a thousand subscribers including seven duchesses, sixteen countesses, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Horace Walpole, and most of the bluestockings. Her poems challenge military aggression, identify with the oppressed, and advocate rebellion.”

I love it—a milkmaid writing poetry that outsells all the elite writers of her time, knocks the socks off countesses (do countesses wear socks?), AND speaks truth to power!  She looks pretty sly too, right?

One of Yearsley’s long poems tells the agonizing story of a slave burned by his master, in which she calls “shame, shame/Upon the followers of Jesus!” who perpetrate or stand by and watch the horrific act. She lived in the slave port of Bristol, which made it even more risky to be so outspoken. She fought with her patron over the money coming in from her book sales, and after the first book, she kept full control of her literary career, publishing two more books of poems, a play, and a novel, and eventually opening a library.

It’s just one of the many gems in this hefty, impressive book:

Poetry_of_Witness_jacket_30057_0TitlePoetry of Witness: The Tradition in English 1500-2001 (ed. Carolyn Forché and Duncan Wu).

Recommended for: Aspiring rebel writers in need of inspiring role models. Poets who want to examine how formal poetry can hold anti-establishment ideas. Anyone who wants to see the past five centuries through the eyes of English-language poets. Teachers of American and British history and literature; you could get a whole year’s worth of lessons from this anthology, I think, since it covers all of the major wars and civil unrests, and includes the classics (Milton, Whitman, Dickinson) alongside lesser known treasures.

Why: Gorgeous poems that provide insight and passion at key historical moments. Great context that makes the poems easy to approach. Well-curated selections from poets whose work I never would have known otherwise.

Hey, what’s #ReadWomen2014?

In response to lots of disheartening statistics about the gender gap in literary publishing, zillions of people are posting their favorite women writers on Twitter.  I love getting so many great recommendations of what to read, so I’m joining the fun! You don’t have to have a Twitter account to browse what people are posting at the “year-long celebration of women’s writing.” 

Logo of #ReadWomen2014 with five women authors

Want a writing breakthrough—fast? The amazing Writing from the Chakras workshop starts May 31! Click here to find out more and reserve your spot.

Writing from the Chakras logo