Jérôme Melançon : Beast Body Epic, by Amanda Earl

Beast Body Epic, Amanda Earl
AngelHouse Press, 2023

 

 

 

 

Listeners of The Small Machine Talks, which has been Amanda Earl’s solo podcast for some time now, will have heard mentions of her near-death experience. As part of discussions with poets and poetry-adjacent artists, these mentions act as devices to connect with her interlocutors or to push the exchange into more vulnerable territory through a mutual openness. Made with humour and honesty, never seeking pity or attention, they are devoid any sense of drama. They open up moments of humanity.

Some months ago now, Earl shared that she had completed a manuscript about this near-death experience and that, unable to find the right publisher for it, she would publish it herself, through her AngelHouse Press. A small press, along with the printing tools and expertise of Coach House Press, seemed like the best way to share the long poem and maintain its vispo components. By now, poetry enthusiasts around Ottawa should have had the occasion to run into Earl and purchase a copy from her.

I also received my copy from her hands. There is so much in that gesture: she hands over the book, her hands are alive, they wrote the words, they carried them to the reader. An intimacy, an occasion to run one’s fingers where her fingers have been, and then to retrace a series of days, to walk through a loss that, thankfully, was far from complete. But there is a loss, even though Earl is incredibly herself. There is sadness and fear and doubt in her whimsy, but the whimsy is there, and her smile is full, unencumbered. Her voice as hesitant as ever, grasping and groping for a way toward what hadn’t yet been said; Earl is not one to polish pages until the writer’s struggle can no longer be perceived. There are asperities for the readers’ fingers to enjoy.

Is the third section the best drug sequence written in recent memory? Does it change anything that the drugs were hospital drugs, that it might have been ICU psychosis, that the improbable dream-like events actually happened to Earl (though the modality in which they happened remains to be established)? This section rises above the others in its scope and breath and in the sense of reality it creates (and the other sections are already solid and almost (almost!) too real). Here the poem folds upon itself, takes on the feather-like lightness of the visual poem on the cover, the reversibility of events in dreams, and the disheveled existence of the patient:

Earl uses the possibilities opened by the well-spaced prose poem to slide into ambiguous beauties: “I lay in the dark when cracks opened let myself be swallowed up taken to who knows where no pomegranate seeds just blood overflowing the banks of an unknown river.” Or – it’s ok, it’s blood. There are such strong phrases here: “Ached green in the damp,” “ethereal demoiselle,” “sky-blue line of crows.”

In previous sections we have the sheer – sheer, as in a thin, veil-like covering for what is truly happening –, sheer panic of the displacement toward the hospital, the pre-operatory helplessness, and then the confusion and high-pitched whine of pain that follow the operation. These sections must be read as each forming a whole to have their full effect: a steady slip into uncertainty and disorientation. The following sections also each take on their own personality; the same poem unfolds, but its form shifts as the body does. They include something of a letter; a list poem that is also a chronology; and short and small blocks of prose poems.

In the fourth section Earl gives us a form of anger that is born of pain and helplessness. She offers grand similes and metaphors – pain “like strike of match against fingernail,” “hell-paint on my insides” – as words and themes circle around, much like pain, sleep, and thoughts do during a fever. Here it seems that rather than being tested by her unbearable condition, she tests her own resolve, down to her commitment to whimsy. We do not get tension, but a furious whimsy, a deepening of images and a shifting of associations that won’t coalesce once and for all and so never gets comical or inspiring. The ever-shifting metaphorical register is a record of what ought to be unspeakable, what is said to be beyond words and evaluation, of moments when the body and the mind, feeling and expression, cannot possibly correspond to one another.

This relationship between mind, body, and self nourishes the fifth section, which explores the intertwining of sex and death. She confronts her continued capacity to provoke lust in others and her marked body’s capacity to stop the abandonment to lust. There is no performative word for how Earl lets us see this great tension: not flaunting, nor unveiling; not displaying, nor exhibiting. She avoids the sentimentality proper to a slow undressing as well as the bravado of a reality brought into plain sight. By identifying herself with Cixous’ laughing Medusa, by using straightforward speech and metaphors from daily life, she opens the possibility of a communion that rejects the mystical and mystification. She opens her reader to a direct look at the kind of life that is possible after wearing death’s clothes for a short while.

Digging into the epic form that carries the poem, Earl opens each section with a quotation from ancient mythology or from its criticism and critique. She keeps that corpus alive and, with it, the epic form – just as criticism and critique do, leaving it better able to do its work by helping it survive its crises – and if it leaves scars and trauma, so be it. She imprints the seal of indeterminate meaningfulness upon the epic tradition by cutting these quotations from their context and neighbourly words. She brings it into movement by weaving the quotations into visual poems that evoke the manner in which they float within collective consciousness. She openly rejects the unity of any work or word by taking on their literal reshaping.

The visual poem that opens Section VI, based on Alice Notley’s The Descent of Alette, evokes the act of speaking by practicing an opening in the middle of the text, in what can be read as the outline of a head and shoulders (and a hat, because there’s a hermeneutics of visual poetry that borrows from the hermeneutics of clouds, and because that’s whimsical too). In this sixth section, Earl reconstructs the act of writing poetry based on lived moments by narrating the moments ahead of presenting a versified poem. Each poem thus includes its own preface, which is just as much a part of the poem as what might be read more immediately as a poem. Italicized for separation and distance, it displays the lack of a hinge, the uncertainty of the connection between experiences and their telling, the difficulty of placing experience on the side of narration and of poetry.

Earl thus destroys part of the epic poem, and notably its obsessive repetition of form, in order to make it do new, better things. She becomes the metaphor for her poetic work, reattaches the narrative form together but leaves the seams visible. The book bears the marks of the effort, of the reconstruction, of the reassignment of tasks it performs, and which Earl has had no choice but to perform herself through her illness. The poem is tentative in a lovely way, and then self-assured. Over and over. Brutal, soft, without a sense that everything is ok. There is no perfect reunification with oneself: “Grief is still there. Guilt is still there. I left her on the bed, my counterpart. She is in ICU and dying. I floated out of her and yes, there is a doubling. I feel her silence. I fill oblivion white sheets with colour.” There is no perfect coming together with others (more die, or pass through the poet’s life). The visual parts of the poem evoke heaviness and closeness at first, a lack of control. They become more and more open, free, self-reliant, anchored. But they are not whole; the strength comes with weakness, and the recovery and newfound health work themselves through aging. Things do not become entirely better – they become different as the adaptation takes place. The recourse to mythology in the opening quotations leave room for a meditation on dying, on the return of threats to life, and the last poem recounts the entirety of the events, and more – a third way to live what has been lived and written about already, and what will continue to be lived through at each new stay in the hospital.

 

 

 

 

 

Jérôme Melançon writes and teaches and writes and lives in oskana kâ-asastêki / Regina, SK. His third chapbook, Bridges Under the Water, was published by above/ground press in August 2023. It follows Tomorrow’s Going to Be Bright (2022) and Coup (2020), as well as his most recent poetry collection, En d’sous d’la langue (Prise de parole, 2021). He has also published two books of poetry with Éditions des Plaines, De perdre tes pas (2011) and Quelques pas quelque part (2016), as well as one book of philosophy, La politique dans l’adversité (Metispresses, 2018). He has edited books and journal issues, and keeps publishing academic articles that have nothing to do with any of this. He’s on various social media, with handles resembling @lethejerome.

Amanda Earl : Charlotte Jung’s Feminist Reclaiming of Concrete

 

 

Charlotte Jung first came to my attention at the fall 2019 ottawa small press book fair when I visited one my favourite vendors, Kingston’s Puddles of Sky Press, run by Michael E. Casteels. Puddles of Sky makes handstitched and machine-sewn, rubber stamped wee chapbooks, among other gorgeous limited-run meticulous work, tending toward the minimal. When at the Fair, you can often see Michael sewing the books as people come over to peruse and admire.

MBRYO (Puddles of Sky Press, October, 2019) was one such work that captured by attention. In a limited edition of 45 copies, the chapbook contains “5 micro-visual-poems that touch on fertility, conception, pregnancy, the formation of a new life.”  I admire the slowness of these one-word poems. It causes me to focus on each word, how it is placed, what is included. Such as ( belly ) or seedling. and the scattered, repeated s on germs.

From Timglaset Editions came (SEED) (July, 2020), “the fourth chapbook in the VVV-series of small, inexpensive chapbooks which aim to broaden the perspective on contemporary experimental poetry. This book contains eight of Charlotte Jung's visual one-word poems. 16 pages, laser printed in black and white and stapled in an edition of 60 copies. A6 format.” While the print copy of SEED is now out of stock, you can view the free pdf here. Tension in the words chosen and how each piece is placed on the page, what accompanies them: w h (o) r e. All of this creates a narrative and a tone.

Charlotte kindly mailed me a copy of C (Vänd Blad Vörlag, 2019), a beautifully designed and self-published book, which she describes as “a collection of visual micro poetry exploring the basic building blocks of language and life.” At 8 x 10 inches, hand-stitched and bound with signatures, this is a luxurious book, with lots of space for each poem to be contemplated without noise or distraction. It opens with three blank pages, evocative as it unfolds of a seed becoming flower or a tabula rasa, how life begins. No expectations. No promises. From parenthesis to opening o contained within, to variations on C, to a flat line or horizon to C to me sea and words with the sound of e and on it goes to, capital letters and war, and words with the w sound, wall, dwarfs, drown, NOW in red, the only word to diverge from black on the crisp white pages, playful connections, leading to grow and flow through and flower and power to bee G. being. And the back, two vertical dots or a colon spaced, each dot spaced widely apart. Leading us outward.

My other work by Charlotte Jung is her piece in ToCall No. 9 (psw, 2020), a work that contemplates the notion of explosion, the o’s blown apart from the word and scattered on the page.

For NationalPoetryMonth.ca’s Ode to the Small (AngelHousePress, 2020), I was pleased to publish Charlotte’s piece .regrets for our special feature on minimalist work in homage to Nelson Ball, who died in 2019.

Charlotte has said that her work is a feminist reclaiming of concrete poetry. I like this. I see it in these works. I appreciate the white space and the sparseness that allows for the contemplation of life, beginnings, and change.

 

 

 

Charlotte Jung is originally from Stockholm, Sweden and today she divides her time between the Stockholm countryside and Chicago. In Charlotte’s micro poetry, the main theme and driving question is “existence”; what is it and how does it come to be (or not). The project aims to highlight the defining power of structure on one hand, and the life enhancing force of movement on the other. Charlotte's micro poetry is published, or planned for publication by (among others); Puddles of Sky Press, Molecule – Tiny Lit Mag, Ad Lucem, ToCall and Timglaset (2020). Please see www.vandblad.com for more information about Charlotte’s writing project.

Amanda Earl is a polyamorous pansexual writer visual poet, editor and publisher living in Ottawa with her husband, Charles. She’s the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the fallen angel of AngelHousePress. She has new poetry in Long Con Magazine Issue 9. Her most recent chapbook is Sessions from the Dream House Aria (above/ground press’ prose naught imprint, 2020). Kiki (Chaudiere Books, 2014) is now available from Invisible Publishing.

 

 

 

Amanda Earl : AngelHousePress: from ragged edges to advocacy

When I started AngelHousePress in 2007, it was to self-publish my own work, the weird, colour, that’s- not-poetry writing/visual poetry/maniacal doodles that I didn’t think I could find a home for anywhere else. I put out three of my chapbooks in limited editions of 26 copies only. I didn’t think I knew more than 26 people who would want this stuff, but I discovered that it was fun to design and make weird chapbooks, and I wanted to publish other raw talent and ragged edges made by those who rebelled against the status quo in some way.

AngelHousePress, along with my own writing practice, became a way to build community, to show fellow misfits that they are not alone. “The Angel In The House is a Victorian concept and poem about a very weak and mindless woman whose sole responsibility was to be charming. Perhaps you can see the irony.” (from the About section of the site.)

In the first few years, I published friends whose poetry intrigued me. My husband, Charles is a highly talented and skilled individual who is instrumental to the existence of AngelHousePress and everything else I do. It turns out he had experience in doing layout, typesetting and design. I married wisely. I could go on about how supportive and loving he is, but that’s beyond the scope of this essay.

In 2011, we had great fun designing the chapbook, notes from a cartywheel, by my dear friend, Christine McNair, for example. I asked Christine for objects she owned.  She gave them to me in a wonderful old film canister. Charles had the great idea of scanning both the contents and the tin. I love Christine’s poetry and was over the moon to be able to publish it in the beautiful chapbook that Charles designed.

It wasn’t long before I started to feel like chapbooks were not the only way to publish raw talent, ragged edges and rebels. Thanks to Charles’ skill with making websites, and also because I became part of communities of visual poets and experimental writers all over the world, I wanted to publish their work, but even shipping complementary copies of chapbooks to other countries is extremely expensive from Canada.

It has always been my dream to publish print magazines. I have adored magazines since I was a little girl reading Mad Magazine, Tiger Beat and 16 Magazine, and eventually forking over a lot of francs to buy a copy of the French Vogue in Paris at the age of 16 because of its glossy full colour lushness. I devoured Mojo magazine for years because of the succinct and artfully written music reviews and free sampler CD. Unfortunately we couldn’t afford the costs of publishing a glossy mag full of art and literature.

In 2008, we began Experiment-O, an annual pdf magazine that comes out in late autumn and celebrates the art of risk through poetry, prose, art, visual poetry and work that doesn’t fit into specific categories. We have published 120 artists and writers. I am grateful to them for allowing us to publish their work.

In 2009, we had the opportunity to start NationalPoetryMonth.ca, an annual celebration of that poetry without boundaries or borders. Each year in April, 30 contributors from all over the world entrust us with their poetry, visual poetry and art.

In 2016, we started a podcast, the Small Machine Talks which I host, along with local writer a.m. kozak. We interview poets about their work and chat about the poetry scene in Central Canada and beyond.

I think we can do things online that can’t be done easily or as inexpensively in print. We opened NationalPoetryMonth.ca 2017, A Celebration of Women, with Primary Colours, a beautiful cine-poem featuring Sudanese-Canadian spoken word artist Roua Aljied aka Philosi-Fire. The film was directed by Derek Price and produced by Emily Ramsay. We’ve published additional video and audio poems in previous years as well.

My growing appreciation for artists and writers who were primarily sharing their work on social media informed my aesthetic and made me seek them out to be part of these magazines.

We started to publish chapbooks by poets like Jennifer K. Dick, an American writer who was living in France at the time. Her chapbook, Afterlife, which we published in 2017, is our only bilingual chapbook with text in English and French. It is a powerful story of women’s erasure and beautifully written. It’s an example of my aesthetic in many ways, leading outward to other influences such as Sappho. You can still buy copies of Afterlife and other chapbooks on the site.

One issue with being a publisher that many other publishers have stated as well is that most of the work I was being sent was by men. I wondered why. I asked my women writer pals whether they submitted their writing for publication much and if they didn’t, why not? Some women said they were simply too busy with life, taking care of children and parents for example and working at the same time. Others told me they didn’t feel their work was good enough to send out.

These were writers whose work I admired greatly. I wanted to be someone who supported them and showed them that their work had value. I wanted to help drown out the noise of mockery and dismissal we’ve all heard from men, and even as I say this, I can think of countless wonderful men who’ve been supportive, including my own husband, but you know, all it takes is one or two voices to make you feel lesser than.

Through AngelHousePress, in 2016 I began a free close reading service for new women and gender nonconforming poets who hadn’t had chapbooks or books published yet. I did the service for about a year and a half and responded to the work of 20 or so poets from across Canada. I read five pages of their work, gave them encouragement and a few editing suggestions, along with recommendations for additional reading of poets who were working with similar styles, methods or themes. It was a heartful and rewarding experience.

Increasingly I saw the work of those I had helped appear in other publications. It wasn’t a necessity for them to submit their manuscripts to AngelHousePress for publication consideration, but word got out and I began receiving more submissions from women, from gender nonconforming poets, from disabled poets.

The whole process of publishing chapbooks, getting them out there for review when there are few places to send them to, and distributing them, the costs of production and shipping, and the time involved, the storage space etc became too much.

I don’t think a publisher has to opt for one or the other. It’s not a binary decision, and I have nothing but respect for chapbook publishers who continue to work in print. I love chapbooks. For us though, it became necessary to cease print publication.

Online publication takes labour and money too, but these costs are manageable so far for us, don’t require storage space in our apartment, and ultimately we reach more readers through the online publications than we could possibly reach by the limited number of chapbooks we could afford to make in the styles we wanted to make them in.

At the end of our chapbook publication, in order to reduce our time, we worked with Elephant Print, a local printing company run by a woman of colour. The chapbooks were always well-made, beautiful and professional. I am proud of the chapbooks we’ve created and thankful to all who’ve entrusted us with their work.

In 2019, AngelHousePress published a Google map of women and gender nonconforming visual and concrete poets. Women, myself included, are constantly being told that the reason we are not being published or featured is because there aren’t many women making visual poetry or some such nonsense. I saw an article recently about artists reusing out-of-date technologies and it featured only men. Without even thinking about it, I could name at least three concrete poets who are women.

This map, currently at 76 participants from North and South America, Europe and Asia, working all kinds of visual poetry from asemic writing, asemic comics, digital, typewriter poems, Letraset, collage, erasure and more, disprove this notion of lack of women visual poets.

When I shared the invitation, I received a few responses from those who weren’t comfortable with having a presence on the map. They talked about persecution of artists in their countries, especially women, and the fear of online stalking, the abuse and bullying they’d received when they’ve been public with their work. There are many reasons why women and gender nonconforming artists, along with other vulnerable artists, are not well published.

We donated money to Freemuse.org, an independent international organisation advocating for and defending freedom of artistic expression. And by the way, the wonderful FemTech.Net has a Centre for Solutions to Online Violence, reach out to them if you need to.

Since I expressed my desire to center women and gender nonconforming writers and artists as both a publisher and a creator, I have been belittled, mocked, bullied and threatened with this-will-ruin-your-career (ha ha) type responses in e-mails and messages from men, some of whom are well-respected in literary communities I am part of. I will continue to advocate for women, gender nonconforming, D/deaf and disabled, 2SLGBTQIA and IBPOC writers and artists, and will form alliances with those who do the same, while rejecting and not supporting those who don’t.

AngelHousePress began thirteen years ago with the sole goal of publishing raw talent, ragged edges and rebels, but it has grown into a feisty feminist press whose main goal is to support and promote those who do not or cannot ally themselves within mainstream, often white, patriarchal objectives and to satisfy readers’ tastes for the same while finding concrete ways to advocate for the vulnerable.

Amanda Earl is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the fallen angel of AngelHousePress. Please visit http://angelhousepress.com/, http://smallmachinetalks.com/, http://nationalpoetrymonth.ca/ and http://experiment-o.com/ for more information or to enjoy a community of great writers and artists.