How does a poem begin?
Poetry almost always begins with my feet. I walk. A few words walk with me until they begin to string out into something/else. Sometimes I have a strong visual idea but no words, and sometimes I have words, but no structure. I almost always have a fieldbook with me, or turn to it when I get back from walking. I make notes, I draw, I listen, I question myself. I have been known to stuff leaves in my nose and flower petals down my shirt. I find it hard to not walk barefoot on the quartzite. A poem begins with my feet and a question. The language and practice of fieldbooks comes from my training in geography influenced/encouraged by the brilliant scholar, mentor and friend joni m palmer). The walks, the writing, the notations follow some sort of query (even if I don’t always know the question); sometimes I am looking for the question and always seeking a deep observation of the ecosystems to know it better, to see patterns, to listen. This process is almost always inseparable from my own thoughts and state of mind. I am curious about the edges, the boundaries of language and writing, self and ecology.
Showing posts with label sophie anne edwards. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sophie anne edwards. Show all posts
Saturday, 27 July 2019
Saturday, 20 July 2019
sophie anne edwards : part four
What do you feel poetry can accomplish that other forms can’t?
Poetry often gives the sense, in its distillation, that it is merely a glimpse of an entirely other, entirely whole other world, the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, whereas visual art can sometimes be the thing itself, finished, whole (although I also prefer unfinished, process-based visual art and non-representational work). Perhaps that is why sometimes I like my poems to be visual, or somehow visually structured, even if the poems feel incomplete in the language. I increasingly find it hard to separate the visual from the textual, and so my work now often hovers between the two. A sensibility to installation-based visual arts practices as a curator and visual artist lends itself to my site-specific poetry. Each practice has its own vocabulary, its own possibilities, its own way to construct and deconstruct meanings, to synthesize and expand language and meaning. But poetry is language, and song, and word, and these are somehow deeply linked to meaning making in a way I can’t quite articulate with a brush, or a stitch alone.
Poetry often gives the sense, in its distillation, that it is merely a glimpse of an entirely other, entirely whole other world, the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, whereas visual art can sometimes be the thing itself, finished, whole (although I also prefer unfinished, process-based visual art and non-representational work). Perhaps that is why sometimes I like my poems to be visual, or somehow visually structured, even if the poems feel incomplete in the language. I increasingly find it hard to separate the visual from the textual, and so my work now often hovers between the two. A sensibility to installation-based visual arts practices as a curator and visual artist lends itself to my site-specific poetry. Each practice has its own vocabulary, its own possibilities, its own way to construct and deconstruct meanings, to synthesize and expand language and meaning. But poetry is language, and song, and word, and these are somehow deeply linked to meaning making in a way I can’t quite articulate with a brush, or a stitch alone.
Saturday, 13 July 2019
sophie anne edwards : part three
How do you know when a poem is finished?
I have learned through painting that a work (mine anyway) will never be perfect, but there is a moment when it just feels done and there is the risk of overworking it. Sometimes a poem is finished because the structure says so, or because I am happy with the rhythm or the pace of it and it just feels, or visually looks, finished. I think it’s easier to know when a poem is unfinished, unresolved, or needs to have a big eraser attend to it.
Some of my poems are finished when I can no longer see them in the landscape. But they never are completely finished in the sense that they may be a moment in a conversation, a trace, a point on a line, a breath in a lifetime of breathing. Or they are floating somewhere still out there in the water, or decomposing in a pile of leaves. Like ecologies, these poems are always in process; increasingly I like poems that are unfinished, or somehow give the sense that they are in motion, or still speaking after I have finished writing/reading the words.
I have learned through painting that a work (mine anyway) will never be perfect, but there is a moment when it just feels done and there is the risk of overworking it. Sometimes a poem is finished because the structure says so, or because I am happy with the rhythm or the pace of it and it just feels, or visually looks, finished. I think it’s easier to know when a poem is unfinished, unresolved, or needs to have a big eraser attend to it.
Some of my poems are finished when I can no longer see them in the landscape. But they never are completely finished in the sense that they may be a moment in a conversation, a trace, a point on a line, a breath in a lifetime of breathing. Or they are floating somewhere still out there in the water, or decomposing in a pile of leaves. Like ecologies, these poems are always in process; increasingly I like poems that are unfinished, or somehow give the sense that they are in motion, or still speaking after I have finished writing/reading the words.
Saturday, 6 July 2019
sophie anne edwards : part two
How did you first engage with poetry?
There was always poetry on my bedside table as a child; the written word was always somehow a home for me. Although I have written most of my life as a process of meaning-making, to find words for what I can’t understand or grasp, sometimes to process grief, or as a means to conjure a whole other space, I feel like I am only really beginning to engage with poetry recently. My writing feels more complex now, but also simpler, more a part of me and also apart from me. Turning fifty has made me (mostly) accept the limits of my life and the possibilities of my contributions to it, but has also stabbed me with the deep sense of the limits of my remaining time. Both of these things are motivating and somehow freeing.
There was always poetry on my bedside table as a child; the written word was always somehow a home for me. Although I have written most of my life as a process of meaning-making, to find words for what I can’t understand or grasp, sometimes to process grief, or as a means to conjure a whole other space, I feel like I am only really beginning to engage with poetry recently. My writing feels more complex now, but also simpler, more a part of me and also apart from me. Turning fifty has made me (mostly) accept the limits of my life and the possibilities of my contributions to it, but has also stabbed me with the deep sense of the limits of my remaining time. Both of these things are motivating and somehow freeing.
Saturday, 29 June 2019
sophie anne edwards : part one
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What are you working on?
Mostly, I am working on a collection of poetry titled Interview with a River. I am writing about the complexity of a local river ecosystem - the biotic and the abiotic, the social, cultural, colonial, environmental histories along with my own personal emotional, intellectual and embodied relationship to the river. Alongside the responsive poetry, I am also writing with the river - finding ways that the river might be a collaborator in the writing and editing. This involves spending a lot of time on the river; I never quite know what invitations I might set up as these emerge from cues I interpret through my walks. I have also just finished edits on chapters included in two book projects (one on geopoetics, the other on 19th century women and travel), and recently submitted two co-authored articles on creative field research with children in the early years. I also write a lot of lists (the poetry of daily life).
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