FreshFriarFairAir: a review of Stephen Nelson's 'YesYesY' (Little Red Leaves textile series)

so
metimes I snow ear snare
               sneer at the des
                                        crip t(i)on

o fan object
                   not st
raight f or ward ly 'poem' as

pure poetry. Butt hen Ire ad

o bey obese base save serve
                                            observe

(t ex tile   co lo ur   (c)raft)

so me thin gas
love ly as St
                   ephen Nelson's
YesYesY
and
remem(amen)ber

wh y(e)t he
design
           at
                ion ex ists.

Press, Open: more notes on Lever Arch

Lever Arch (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press) will soon be here. It's a purgatory: me flexing tools and reminding myself / learning afresh / destroying what they can do. It's me forgetting how to write a poem and reteaching myself; showing all my working-out like a good maths pupil. There are poems about disability, faith, love, (non)nature, (dis)place(ment), 'queerness'. If you can't tell where one theme ends and another begins, it might be about intersectionality. Here are three other inspirations:

The Tarot

The first thing I looked at was the Tarot. I'm interested in the idea of exploring 'what's on the cards' not so much to predict the future (I don't believe in fate or predestination), but to reflect on and explore the past and present. Events create themselves by chance. Poetry isn't a camera; it doesn't just freeze, mono-angled, on another event, or picture, and comment on it. Poems are always new events for the reader, made of bits-and-pieces of old ones. That's what deja vu is. So the book ended up as a Tarot of 'visual text', with five suits instead of four, with no art other than front and back covers (I'd originally planned to illustrate the suits, but decided against it -- I don't think you can so easily separate exegesis [drawing meaning out of] from eisegesis [putting meaning into]). The other thing left over from my initial dabble into the Tarot idea is the occasional appearance of The Fool, either as himself or as a sudden injection of bathos in the poems. He hopefully keeps them from becoming too sincere or sentimental. There's a lot of play to counteract the darkness (I enjoyed the fact that this old European card game, made purely for leisure, gradually became loaded with symbolic, esoteric and occultic meaning, all thanks to a priest obsessed with the 'hidden things').

"Open Field"

Charles Olson's 1950 essay 'Projective Verse' was the main practice of the Black Mountain Poets, one of whom was Larry Eigner. He had Cerebral Palsy, and the formal presentation of his poems reflects that disability (in retrospect, he never announced it -- was it because he felt the literary world wouldn't accept him if he did?): his laborious speech, with plenty of breath and pause, and his struggle to type on a heavy-keyed typewriter, are reflected in short snatches of fragment and syntax, and quick changes of subject and diction.

My own disabilities, Spina bifida and Hydrocephalus, are hopefully present in some formal / aesthetic choices I make. Hydrocephalus ("Water on the Brain") presents various cognitive / psychological difficulties which are hidden to others but a daily reality for me. For example, because parts of my brain were damaged at birth, other parts have had to overcompensate for the loss. Those parts tend to concentrate on emotion, feeling, imagination. I often have to find emotional 'bridges' into dry and logical tasks, like admin, form-filling,  or trying to read a map or a train timetable. These can drive me into an unfathomable panic. Finding those 'bridges' can mean the difference between me completing a task or giving up.

In "Open Field" poetics, the page is thought of as an infinite compositional space without edges (like on a DLA application: if there's not enough room, just staple more paper to the form...). So some poems are stretched across the page, with white space instead of punctuation. A few poems spill onto the next page, sometimes by chance, but sometimes as that page break creates a point of emphasis, acts like another 'stanza break'. My interest in scale ('page as field' is such an interesting phrase and idea) is also there in the poems, where an arch is a defining aspect of a church building; a lever is part of a well. But both are part of the file's mechanism as well. "Open Field" lends itself well to landscape, so I've taken inspiraation from the radical landscape poetry in (for example) The Ground Aslant (Shearsman), once or twice using my local landscape (Hengistbury Head, Bournemouth Beach).

The pwoermd ('poem word'), the one-word poem. Poets like Stephen Nelson inspired me to play with not just the form and ingredients of poems but the composite parts of words themselves. And sometimes I'll split a word in order to create two words (dropping the latter part(s) of a word to the next line), which might shed more light on the poem -- two words for the price of one. If this interrupts the reading, good; I'm trying to look at where (in a poem / in life) we should pause and think, and whether it's always where we're told to pause and think.

The Contemplative Tradition

No matter how my faith has changed and developed as I've grown, the contemplative (or 'monastic', or 'mystical') tradition is probably the one 'stream' that's most often passed through my 'bullshit detector' without making it go off. At its best, it's pure, clean, genuine. It reaches the Divine, 'the other', directly rather than having to go through several walls of human paraphernalia to get there. It says: 'Come to me, all of you who are weary...', and delivers on that invitation, meeting the receiver at his / her most depleted and depressed. The contemplative mood / tone, whatever it is, hopefully offsets the displacement, panic and anxiety that are also part of this book. The 'Keep Calm' meme has been interestingly prophetic. Being calm is more vital than ever.

Lever Arch

With just two days to go before Fit to Work: Poets Against Atos is launched online, this is to say how pleased I am that my second pamphlet, Lever Arch, was accepted yesterday for publication by the generous, risk-taking and experimental The Knives Forks and Spoons Press. So many writers I admire have been published with them (some of whom we're featuring in 'FTW', as it happens) that it's a real boost. Naturally, the manuscript will probably not stay exactly the same from now until publication (do they ever?) but to give you a hint, it inadvertently asks more questions than it answers: how do I further explore and develop in terms of subject-matter and form (there is minor deconstruction, breaking language apart in order to figure out how to build it into something else); where am I 'travelling'; how do I get there if I don't know what 'there' is or even 'here'; and, most crucially, what is a poem anyway? (There was a point there when I just plain forgot; I was 'winging it'.) So the pamphlet's a bit of a purgatory. But whatever 'experimental' means -- and I have a different (inadequate) answer depending on the day -- The Knives Forks and Spoons was the perfect place for it.

The Next Big Thing

I was tagged by fantastic poet and all-round nice guy Matt Merritt to take part in the ongoing blog project The Next Big Thing. A writer answers a series of questions on an existing or forthcoming book, and then tags four other writers to do the same thing on their blog (or other Internet venue of choice!). You can read Matt’s interview here. I’m shockingly late with mine, but better late than never, right?

 

Where did the idea for the book come from?

 

Fit To Work: Poets Against Atos is an online ‘rolling’ anthology that I’m editing, as we speak, with Sophie Mayer and Daniel Sluman. The idea has been gradually becoming more concrete over the last year or so. It's a culmination of the seemingly endless news articles, experiences of good friends and colleagues, and petitions and campaigns which I’ve come across over the last two years. Countless individuals and organisations (including in the poetry world) have protested the Coalition’s welfare reforms already, but I felt it was time that specific attention was given to Atos, the firm employed by the government to assess disability and capability for work on behalf of the DWP.

 

Under the government's witch hunt for ‘skivers’, Atos has been wreaking havoc. Our message: end the Atos contract, end it now, and, if the system was broke in the first place (I have my doubts), at least rethink the reforms directly and negatively affecting the disabled and sick. The poets contributing to FTW are joining a protest which has been relegated to the disabled community for too long. On one hand, the damage is being done among the disabled and the chronically sick; but on the other, an intelligent, nuanced and compassionate welfare system is something we, the people, should be rallying to protect. We can’t afford to dismiss any kind of oppression as a ‘special interest group’ concern. Oppression is everyone’s issue. I guess the project is part of my ongoing need to see whether poetry can make something happen.

 

What genre does your book fall in?

 

Poetry and political protest writing, in a similar vein to other political poetry anthologies, like Emergency Verse: Poetry in defence of the Welfare State, The Robin Hood Book: Verse Versus Austerity, Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot, and Binders Full of Women. I wanted to include both known, practicing poets, and people who wrote as a hobby but were directly affected and wanted to speak out publically. I also wanted to build myself a bridge from the ‘poetry community’ into the disability arts community, since the anti-Atos voice screaming the loudest is (naturally but frustratingly) that of disabled and chronically ill people.

 

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

 

I might find some way of answering this question when I know which poems we have. Fit To Work: The Movie. I’ll definitely keep it in mind.

 

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

 

Cripple-poet-editor gets angry, and gathers an army of other poets to sharpen their tools, don their anon masks, paint their signs and go on a proetest march.

 

How long did it take to write the first draft of the manuscript?

 

We created a Facebook group, to gather an initial number of submissions to launch with, before Christmas. The deadline for that ‘first wave’ is February 15th. But as it's a rolling anthology online, it will hopefully be an organic and evolving process with updates made to the site as we go along, as more people want to get involved. We’ve already had great support from Disability Arts Online and are working on eventually having an e-book or print book to represent the project.

 

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

 

I’ve already answered that, probably. Erm… OK, how’s this? The Triune Muse of Anger, Despair and Hope.

 

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

 

Being online, I’m hoping that these poems will be accessible to various audiences, particularly disabled people who use assistive technology and software to read books. That’s something a lot of the e-book vs. print book debate has missed, I think. Ultimately the debate shouldn’t be about what shape a ‘real book’ is, but how many people are able to access literature, and, in this case, who is given a voice to protest and who is made to sit up and hear it. And the book isn't all explicit angry-punk-protest; there will also be exciting and beautiful approaches to poetry by disabled people, and about the disabled body and experience.

 

Is your book self-published or represented by an agency?

 

I'm probably repeating myself, but it will begin life as an online ‘rolling anthology’, eventually becoming a database of those ‘fit to work’ against ruthless welfare reform, but specifically Atos’ part in it (and by extension, all outsourced private firms helping to contribute to the problems as reported by, say, Panorama). We are looking into the idea of eventually having an e-book and / or print anthology, possibly representing a selection of the best of the work we featured during FTW’s online incarnation. Or we might just chuck everything in. We’ll see.

 

 

 

The writers I'm planning to tag are:

 

Charlotte Henson

John Clegg
Maria Gornell

Ben Parker

 

Binders Full of Feminism

And now Sarah Crewe and Sophie Mayer, editors of Binders Full of Women, speak out against Julie Burchill's faux-feminism in an excellent open letter.

Suzanne Moore / Julie Burchill, Transphobia & Intersectionality

I'm not going to say much about the saga of transphobia and mud-slinging unfortunately created by this article, furthered by this article, and then hideously whipped up by this article. But I wanted to say I'd noticed it, and then point to a couple of excellent responses, which, unlike the articles above, further two particular conversations in a helpful way: the limits and boundaries of transphobia and transphobic language, and the wider issue of intersectionality. Far from being a middle-class, ivory-tower-academic issue (as Moore claimed, citing her working class credentials), intersectionality is actually a practical tool, a weapon against prejudice, a practical way of thinking for anyone who has lived as a member of more than one minority group at a time, and suffered prejudice for it. The description of such groups as 'special interest groups' (which I've not directly quoted but is implicit in both articles) is inherently part of the problem. Those of us who are part of any of these minority groups know this instinctively and experientially, not just academically. We might not know what 'intersectionality' means as a word; we might not have studied all the theorists, critics, thinkers; but we sure as hell know that ignorance and prejudice are flying at us from all directions. Facts like this do not need to be belittled.

Anyway, I said I wouldn't say much. So firstly, this from Roz Kaveney. Secondly, this from Catherine Baker.

Short addition to the above, written on Facebook the day after, and added here: 1) I concede that 'intersectionality' is often more helpfully expressed by a simple explanation of what it is, in as much as one is possible (Eli Clare's 'Exile and Pride', I think, talks about it without ever using the word). The word does sometimes block certain people out of discussions: frequently men, actually. As has happened here, so far. Everything can be / is being dismissed as a 'feminist' (ie. 'female') issue. When in fact, the issue here is hate speech. From both sides. From square one, Moore's writing had a whiff of an old-fashioned 'faux-feminist' entitlement, and she did not speak for progressive feminists. 2) Rape and death threats towards Suzanne Moore should never have been accepted or acceptable, and I hope that the horrible comments she had to answer to on Twitter are addressed, along with any talk of writing and publishing which results from this. Hers and Burchill's responses were unacceptable as they were targeted at the entire trans community, a terrible mistake. But I CAN understand an angry reaction like 'If you trans-people can direct threats of rape and murder at me, then I am a better woman than you'll ever be.' A flippant remark like that on Twitter would not have been noticed by anyone important. But it was published in the Guardian, so it was.

Andrew Philip on the Huff, and Atos

Here is Andrew Philip thanking Robert Peake for his mention as another of the Huffington Post's 5 British Poets to Watch in 2013. Andrew also says some very kind things about my own work, which I'm doubly grateful for, and humbled by, as I once took a Poetry School online course for which he was tutor (and have just enrolled for another in February, called On the Line, which I'm really looking forward to).

He also mentions one of the things I'm currently working on, alongside my own poetry: Fit To Work: Poets Against Atos, which is currently open for submissions and will (to begin with) be an online resource collating the work of poets who wish to protest the involvement of Atos in assessing disability and capability for work. I've been pretty quiet about it on here, for various reasons: 1) I had the urge to *do something* before I knew exactly what that *something* looked like, and 2) I wanted to start receiving submissions before things were set in stone, because quite honestly, I didn't know how many poets would be interested, and I didn't want to begin something I couldn't finish. It turns out that the project has more support than I ever thought possible. So it's on.

Also on the editorial helm are Sophie Mayer, co-editor of Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot, and Daniel Sluman, author of Absence Has a Weight of its Own. Both poets have a stake in disability rights and 'identity' politics themselves, so their involvement is exciting. Rather like Catechism, we've decided that the online campaign approach will allow for a longer-term impact than a single book. The protest doesn't end with one private firm; there is an entire context of ill-advised benefit reforms to contend with, and none of it is going away any time soon. The project may end up as a traditional printed anthology if we can find an interested publisher, but until then, I trust writers will get involved simply because they want to add their voices to what is already a sea of protesters.

 

We're working on the 'online anthology' concept at the moment, which is involving some thinking-outside-the-box, but the final product will be something exciting, unusual, and (if I have anything to do with it) a bit bitingly satirical. I will say more when I know exactly what it looks like.

Writers interested in submitting poetry can register their interest by joining this Facebook group, where they'll find submission guidelines (on the 'Files' tab), and more headlines and stories than you can shake a walking stick at.