In our workshop with Deborah Levy we discussed concealment and then carried out an exercise with which we supplemented ETC for the what is concealed in the text.
This is an example
“She writes a poem – my mother says I'm the jewel in her crown but I've made her tired with all her ETC. and now she walks with a stick".
The Text I did this with didn't really work here is the original without ETC's I might use it later as a staring point for a narrative .
In another activity in groups we worked through Dreamers by Ted Hughes We were then asked separably to come up with five words in response to the text. from this point we where asked To generate images relating to the the poem via these five words .
These are my five words;
- EUROPE
- Mongolian Curtains
- Lilith
- Coal
- Ghosts
These are the images I generated
Mongolian Curtains
I produced this image very quickly with just the literal idea of the curtains over this landscape. I removed the word curtains from the base of the image because the whole image looked to much like a crude euphemism recalled from my youth. Once noticed its hard to get rid of a euphemism but I still like this image. I enjoy the power of the name of a place with the historical, cultural and political connotations attached to it in contrast with this almost abstract double laired Fog landscape with a central translucent form announced by curtains? Oh dear.
Lilith
This began by accident when I was photocopying my ghost images. As this was the ghost of Assia I decided to show her mirror side as she was described in the poem; The Lilth! Bad photo copying is a bad trick I think the original before I edited it may be more successful, because it was served up with less thought put into its composition. With its wrongness it becomes more agreeable. .( Its inside my Journal )
Ghost
To the right is the ghost of Assia she was to have black hair but after reflecting on the many her's and Silvia's I produced I began to think that it was not so important to distinguish them too much from one another. This idea and the comments of the others in the group became the starting point for the text I have included below the timeless silvia/assia ghosts. Deborah Levy went through the the text a few times until it reached the point as it is included in this post. I would like to take this work further and work out a way to incorporate the text and images. I think the next stage may be to remove the biographical details entirely, disconnect it from the poem. It could be just the unnamed writer and the struggle for the mute trapped girls to survive the publication process.
THE WRITER
In 1998 Ted Hughes published a book of poetry called Birthday Letters within which there is a poem he had written about two women who had died, one in 1963 and the other six years later. They had both killed themselves.
In the poem the two women meet one another. Later in 1998 at the point of publication, with these words written down perpetuating outwards, the two women became one.
DREAMERS
A blond American women of German heritage. A Dark German Russian women of Jewish heritage. They meet. The Blond American women looks into black ringed grey eyes of the visitor. This is what she sees:
- Erotic Europe
- A black forest wolf.
- A witch's daughter.
- The power of disaster and endings.
- From all this she feels an attraction, a sort of guilt and perhaps envy.
The poem had been designed, the writer had trapped these women. Mute and unable to reply, now beautiful and youthful, they are ghosts locked into a perpetual meeting. But then the poem is published; dissolving into the sea of words they begin to fade inside this written device. In order to protect one another they merge their consciousness, hidden from the publisher the reader and even the writer.
Hypnotic and with uneasy tension they have become one!
