In April I started a 12-week writing intensive called The Visceral Self with Jeannine Ouellette of Writing in the Dark over on Substack. This intensive was a bit more intense than I anticipated and made me realize that I really need to do things at my own speed. I started off participating fully but had trouble keeping up with the extra reading, and then participating in the comment section fell by the wayside, then I had an infection that meant writing and reading weren’t possible at all for a couple weeks so I had to accept that just doing the main exercises on my own time was all I could manage. I felt that I was missing out by posting things late and not really participating in the comments, but my disability means I have to choose what works for me both physically and cognitively.
I do think even just doing the exercises alone was very worthwhile and it felt good to work on my writing craft again. I had to rely on minimal feedback because the intensive wasn’t set up for someone living in crip time. I suspect I’ll continue to see changes in my work for a few months now that I’ve completed all the exercises.
Here is the final exercise from the intensive which involved cutting up all my previous work from the intensive and creating new poems with new connections. I can only manage 20 minutes at a time of such a physically active task, plus my cognitive function has been less than stellar due to roadwork on our street the past few weeks. I also remember too well the other poems so it would have been ideal to let the work sit longer before doing such an exercise, but I wanted to complete the intensive to clear mental space for other work.
floating
the canal rose and muddied
the koi's orange, black, and white patterns
clamouring at the surface for bits of bread
the old black bike I pedalled alongside
learning how to balance my red umbrella
floating through wet drops
koi kites in the sky on children's day
this widening sky eats time
spreads it thin on flat surfaces so we float heavy
gravity that one undeniable thing
we cannot trust the warm sun or the cool ocean
they change with each rotation
your wrist rolls under my hand to intertwine our cold fingers
to warm each other's skin
salt on our lips an ancient taste from swimming away
the minerals we carry liquid inside us
we are weighty beasts of water the buoyancy of our lungs
craving the sea
I am learning to love the possibility in this
after years of languor and roughness
years of leaden and purpled feet
each song stolen from the strings of my throat
understanding now how the key of my music is spread within me
a wandering ghost an electric venation
branching tributaries
my blood in the estuary of my lungs
learning to breathe easily again
allowing my hands to dance
winged along my hollowing bones
my fingers speak what my throat cannot
its tangled nest
an architecture I can wonder at
place each tone in its down lining
a red jewel
my heart tells me when I need silence
my heart tells me when I need the dark nest
my heart teaches me how I can expand through slowing
how a lack of light
is like floating
I collect
beauty in my chest
shards of ice carried north over the weir
their path a jagged and cracked line
tree roots slower and stronger
than any manmade substance
when the world is too sharp I imagine
myself on the ocean floor the heaviness of water
holding me
the world muted
the salt inside me
singing
You can read my previous writing from The Visceral Self over on my Substack newsletter, The Slowest Thread:
Weeks 1 & 2: Tea & Sung Memory
Week 3: I remember Tobata :: Matyroshka
Week 4: curtains . birds . windows
Week 5: linen :: camp
Week 6: dark red nest
Week 7 & 8: throat then tongue
Week 9: The Details Matter, but So Does Time
Week 10 & 11: salt windows
My next projects are to clean up my completed vagus nerve embroidery, to set up the spring mitosis embroidery and write a pattern for the seasonal mitosis sampler set, and, for this space, write and post a long overdue creative work update. So much has happened the past few months—much of it work involving other people and organizations—so I’m looking forward to focusing on my own projects for a while.