Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?
Of course. Maybe not. No, I don’t think so. I think it remains an ineffable reality. Often I forget how nourishing and essential poetry is to my life because it cannot be discerned through the layers of stress and depression. But when I can reach it, that relationship exists, in some strange way, exactly as it first appeared. So, poetry has remained the same, but how and through what I need to pass through to get to it has changed immensely.
Showing posts with label Sacha Archer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sacha Archer. Show all posts
Friday, 18 January 2019
Friday, 11 January 2019
Sacha Archer : part four
How did you first engage with poetry?
I guess it was authors like Shell Silverstein, Denis Lee, and Dr. Seuss. But the first book of poetry that I bought was Sylvia Plath’s Ariel. I don’t remember what prompted me to buy it, but I do remember that I decided to check out a little used book store in Dundas (the town, not the street) where I lived at the time. I looked through the poetry section and randomly chose that book. I took it home and read it—and re-read it and read it again. That book changed my life. The darkness in it—the voice that I didn’t expect in the least. From that book I knew I wanted to be a poet. That was some time ago…
I guess it was authors like Shell Silverstein, Denis Lee, and Dr. Seuss. But the first book of poetry that I bought was Sylvia Plath’s Ariel. I don’t remember what prompted me to buy it, but I do remember that I decided to check out a little used book store in Dundas (the town, not the street) where I lived at the time. I looked through the poetry section and randomly chose that book. I took it home and read it—and re-read it and read it again. That book changed my life. The darkness in it—the voice that I didn’t expect in the least. From that book I knew I wanted to be a poet. That was some time ago…
Friday, 4 January 2019
Sacha Archer : part three
What are you working on?
I am finishing a manuscript titled Montage of Abrasions which is a mess of prose reflections (some autobiographical, some otherwise) mashed together with poems both visual and not. It has been an attempt to write something perhaps more conventional than I’m like to do—but I’ve probably failed miserably at that—which is good, and bad. Good in that I find it powerful and interesting—bad in that the same question arises that accompanies all of my longer works: who is ever going to publish this? The work developed with the loose theme of that which we read out loud and that which we read silently.
I am also at work on a manuscript which collects a number of series in which I engage/ collaborate with the landscape directly to discover poetry. I began it in 2016 with my Ghost Writing series where, in one part I facilitated asemic writing by trees, and in another part I wandered, collecting rubbings as poetry. This year I completed the next series which is titled The Nature of Language. In this work I regard natural specimens as found poems in and of themselves—the development of form (body) as a mode of writing before us. I want to round off the manuscript with a third series for which I have a few ideas bouncing around in my head.
Also, at the moment, I have starting sketching rooms in my home on my gestural keyboard on my phone. Of this I have little to say at the moment except that I am finding it a fascinating way to write and it is producing some expectantly odd-ball texts.
I am finishing a manuscript titled Montage of Abrasions which is a mess of prose reflections (some autobiographical, some otherwise) mashed together with poems both visual and not. It has been an attempt to write something perhaps more conventional than I’m like to do—but I’ve probably failed miserably at that—which is good, and bad. Good in that I find it powerful and interesting—bad in that the same question arises that accompanies all of my longer works: who is ever going to publish this? The work developed with the loose theme of that which we read out loud and that which we read silently.
I am also at work on a manuscript which collects a number of series in which I engage/ collaborate with the landscape directly to discover poetry. I began it in 2016 with my Ghost Writing series where, in one part I facilitated asemic writing by trees, and in another part I wandered, collecting rubbings as poetry. This year I completed the next series which is titled The Nature of Language. In this work I regard natural specimens as found poems in and of themselves—the development of form (body) as a mode of writing before us. I want to round off the manuscript with a third series for which I have a few ideas bouncing around in my head.
Also, at the moment, I have starting sketching rooms in my home on my gestural keyboard on my phone. Of this I have little to say at the moment except that I am finding it a fascinating way to write and it is producing some expectantly odd-ball texts.
Friday, 28 December 2018
Sacha Archer : part two
How does a poem begin?
How does one write? Over here it’s an emptiness that demands filling—even if that is a pipe dream. How can the empty world be made to speak? It comes out gibberish, mostly. That’s fine. Gibberish is an accurate reproduction of what really goes on. I look for the gibberish that we cling to and cling to it. The gibberish I produce is the product of my failure to believe in the meaninglessness that we are expected to ignore. It is amazing that people can ignore a hammer hitting their head. Am I in shock? Survival is editing. The poem begins, for me, in recognition of those habits that erase us. A poem begins in catching myself off guard, noticing something I always notice but somehow never process—the wealth of the blind spots.
How does one write? Over here it’s an emptiness that demands filling—even if that is a pipe dream. How can the empty world be made to speak? It comes out gibberish, mostly. That’s fine. Gibberish is an accurate reproduction of what really goes on. I look for the gibberish that we cling to and cling to it. The gibberish I produce is the product of my failure to believe in the meaninglessness that we are expected to ignore. It is amazing that people can ignore a hammer hitting their head. Am I in shock? Survival is editing. The poem begins, for me, in recognition of those habits that erase us. A poem begins in catching myself off guard, noticing something I always notice but somehow never process—the wealth of the blind spots.
Friday, 21 December 2018
Sacha Archer : part one
Why is poetry important?
I’ve been wearing a scarf during the cold months for as long as I can remember. A few days ago my wife gave me a neck warmer. Now every time I come inside I take off my coat and then my hand goes up to the cloth around my neck and pulls to unwind the scarf—which isn’t there. It’s been only a couple days of this, but I’m still trying to unwind the scarf and instead yanking my neck sideways as the neck warmer fails to yield. I love this.
It is one thing to tell this story and an altogether different thing to revel in the experience of it. Poetry, I think, is an (always failing) attempt to surpass the relation of experience and somehow submerge the reader in the less than logical shapes of impact. Why is that important? You have to open the window sometimes.
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