Category Archives: Essay

If a fortnight ago, you’d have asked me who Hartley Coleridge was I would have said he was the baby that his proud father, Samuel Coleridge, eloquently wrote about in his great poem Frost at Midnight.

“My babe so beautiful! It thrills my heart

With tender gladness, thus to kook at thee,

And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,

And in other scenes!”

If pressed I would have added that Hartley grew up to be a writer to produce work that was now completely forgotten. Yet a chance find of a paperback in an Oxfam shop proved me wrong. Here was Bricks Without Mortar: The Selected Poems of Hartley Coleridge (Picador books) edited by Lisa Gee (2000). Whilst researching work for an anthology the poet Don Paterson was attracted to Coleridge’s poetry, and then showed it to Lisa Gee. Her selection is drawn from the 1833 volume of Hartley’s poetry edited by his brother Derwent.

One of Hartley’s unpublished manuscripts is Bricks Without Mortar from the Tower of Babel. This seductive title sounds like a fiction by Jorge Luis Borges. In fact, there’s an indirect link to Borges, for in his fiction Coleridge’s Flower Borges remarks on the “perfect fancy” of a notebook entry by S.T. Coleridge.

“If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream, and have a flower presented to

him as a pledge that his soul had really been there, and if he found that flower in

his hand when he awoke – Ay! – and what then?”

Borges perceives this as “a final goal.” Correct from a poet who wrote such visionary works as The Rhyme of The Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan. Yet what would this have meant to his eldest son, Hartley? Coleridge Snr. wrote big, expansive poems with a philosophic charge. Coleridge Jnr. wrote small poems with a gentler inner exploration of the self and observations of the natural world that were imbued by a feminised awareness. It’s been said that Hartley Coleridge had more in common with his great friend the poet William Wordsworth (I would also include a similarity with John Clare.)  Hartley was often a quietist who spoke (at his best) of the minutiae of life with acute sensitivity.

“The insect birds that suck nectareous juice

From straightest tubes of curly-petaled flowers,

Or catch the honey-dew that falls profuse

Through the soft air, distill’d in viewless

Whose colours seem the very souls of gems,

Or parting rays of fading diadems:-

S.T.  Coleridge may have yearned for some ideal Platonic essence of a flower in Paradise to be realised in material form, whereas for Hartley the ordinary was always extraordinary. The overlooked had to be looked at with a feminine sensibility and wonderful stillness. It’s very apparent in his beautiful poem, Night.

The crackling embers on the hearth are dead;

The indoor note of industry is still;

The small birds wait not for their daily bread;

The voiceless flowers-how quietly they shed

Their nightly odours: – and the household rill,

Murmers continuous dulcet sounds that fill

The vacant expectation, and the dread

Of listening night. And haply now she sleeps:

For all the garrulous noises of the air

Are hush’d in peace; the soft dew silent weeps,

Like hopeless lovers for a maid so fair-

Oh! That I were the happy dream that creeps

To her soft heart, to find my image there.”

Hartley was known to be an egalitarian fellow mixing comfortably with the high and low of society. A great conversationalist who delighted his listeners and wrote a lot of poetry: quite a bit composed within ten minutes and regarded as pretty bad (Though the 19^th century yeoman of the dales considered him “A powitt, iviry inch of ‘im.”)  yet when it’s good, it can also be outstanding and sometimes great. According to scholar Andrew Keanie, Hartley very much lived in the moment greatly aided by alcohol – no doubt at the local inn where he was considered a kindly gentleman. His brother Derwent observed that Coleridge was greatly loved.

“Among his friends we must count men, women, and children, of every rank and every age…In the farmhouse or the cottage, not alone at times of rustic festivity at a sheep-shearing, a wedding, or a christening, but by the ingle side, with the grandmother or the ‘bairns’, he was made, and felt himself, at home…He would nurse an infant by the hour. A like overflowing of his affectionate nature was seen in his fondness for animals – for anything that would love him in return – simply, and for its

own sake, rather than his.”

Hartley loved cats. And in his poem To a Cat, he brings a ruthless rhyme ending when his consciousness of mortality sharply distinguishes him from an animal.

“Nelly, methinks,’wixt thee and me,

There is a kind of sympathy;

And could we interchange our nature,-

If I were cat, thou human creature,-

I should, like me, no great mouser,

And thou, like me, no great composer;

For, like thy plaintive mews, my muse,

With villainous whine doth fate abuse,

Because it has not made me sleek

As golden down on Cupid’s cheek;

And yet thou canst upon the rug lie,

Stretch’s out like snail, or curl’s up snugly,

As if thou wert not lean or ugly;

And I, who in poetic flights

Sometimes complain of sleepless nights

Regardless of the sun in heaven,

Am apt to dose till past eleven.

The world would just the same go round

If I were hang’d and thou wert drown’d;

There is one difference, tis true,-

Thou dost not know it, and I do.”

Hartley also wrote notebooks, essays and biographical pieces on other poets – Milton, Spenser and Marvell. He tried to earn his living as a teacher but wasn’t any good at it because he constantly felt intimidated by his pupils. Hartley feared they might physically assault him. (This must have fed into Hartley’s own childhood. For he was a dreamy boy who didn’t readily mix with other children; preferring his own company and his imaginary world. He even invented Ejuxira – a kingdom that had its own laws, language and customs.)

Apart from his writing any other means to earn a living seemed not to interest him. Eventually Hartley was given money by his family; his needs were modest and he got by. Despite his many friendships Hartley was lonely and unfulfilled. For Hartley was self-denigrating and considered himself unattractive to women. His childlike vulnerability and over-sensitivity was channelled into a confident poetic talent: whilst Hartley’s great social affability and his need to be a free spirit probably wasn’t grounded enough in realism.

As a poet of the 19^th century he remains a major-minor voice, with a sensibility that greatly differs from either the Romantic utterances of his father or Shelley. Hartley isn’t a writer of grandiloquence or revelation. Yet his verse shines with a modesty, introspection and insight. Hartley is a democratic poet of great integrity and directedness. Both a poet of his time and yet hinting at a later Victorian period of uncertainty and doubt. Hartley’s haunting poem It Were a State Too Terrible… has an elegiac quality that reminds me of the grief of Tennyson’s In Memoriam  blended with the darkness of a 20^th century philosophical despair.

It were a state too terrible for man,

Too terrible and strange, and most unmeet,

To look into himself, his state to scan,

And find no precedent, no chart, or plan,

But think himself an embryo incomplete,

Else a remnant of a world effete,

Some by-blow of the universal Pan,

Great nature’s waif, that must by law escheat

To the liege-lord Corruption. Sad the case

Of man, who knows not wherefore he was made:

But he that knows the limits of his race

Not runs, but flies with prosperous winds to aid;

Or if he limps, he knows his path was trod

By saints of old, who knew their way to God.

Hartley’s great range of moods and skill is impressive. Another of his voices was of the praising kind. In the sonnet form he brilliantly praised Donne, Marvell and Shakespeare. Hartley’s remarkable and moving To Shakespeare ought to be much better known.

The soul of man is larger than the sky,

Deeper than ocean – or the abysmal dark

Of the unfathom’d centre. Like that Ark,

Which in its sacred hold uplifted high,

O’er the drown’d hills, the human family,

And stock reserved of every living kind,

So, in the compass of a single mind,

The seed and pregnant forms in essence lie,

That make all worlds. Great Poet ‘twas thy art,

To know thyself, and in thyself to be

Whate’er love, hate, ambition, destiny,

Or the firm, fatal purpose of the heart,

Can make of Man. Yet thou wert still the same,

Serene of thought, unhurt by thy own flame.

This poem recalls his father Samuel Taylor. The dramatic criticism of STC is probably not as read as much these days as his poetry. But it remains a landmark in the development of modern literary theory. In Coleridge’s writings on Shakespeare we have father and son Hartley united in their insights.

“…that in his (Shakespeare’s) very first productions he projected his mind out of his   own particular being, and felt, and made others feel, on subjects no way connected   with himself, except by force of contemplation and that sublime faculty by which a great mind becomes that, on which it meditates.”

Shakespeare also brings my essay full circle via its earlier remarks on Borges’s fiction on STC and Kubla Khan. For Borges also wrote on Shakespeare and that great poet’s awareness of an insubstantial I, or empty sense of self. You’ll find this in the haunting Borges’s fiction Everything and Nothing and the essay A History of the Echoes of a Name. Here Borges mentions Parolles, of All’s Well that Ends Well who announces

“Captain I’ll no more,

But I will eat and drink and sleep as soft

As captain shall. Simply the thing I am

Shall make me live.”

for which Borges’s conclusion is:-

“Thus Parolles speaks, and suddenly ceases to be a conventional character in a comic farce and becomes a man and all mankind.”

With Hartley Coleridge, as with Shelley the’ legislator’ the Romantic poet takes on the job of representing humanity.

“Twere surely hard to toil without an aim.

Then shall the toil of an immortal mind

Spending its strength for good of human kind

Have no reward on earth but empty fame?”

Answering his own doleful question, Hartley concludes his poem ‘Twere Surely Hard…with this,

“Tis aught that acts, unconsciously revealing

To mortal man his immortality.

Then think, O Poet, think how bland, how healing.

The beauty though has taught thy fellow man to see.”

Like all good poets Hartley did teach us to see. And in the selection Bricks without Mortar we have his best seeing of humanity and nature. The other, unfairly passed over, Coleridge now deserves our attention and love.

I

About the Author:

Alan Price lives in London. He’s a poet, short story writer, book reviewer and film critic for Filmuforia.In 2012, OUTFOXING HYENAS, a collection of his poetry was published by Indigo Dreams. This has been followed by further pamphlets and collections. His latest book THE TRIO CONFESSIONS (The High Window Press) appeared in June 2020. Alan is currently writing a novel and also working on a series of prose poems based on films.

I miss the physical act of writing [ELLIPSIS]… The world has always made sense as soon as I have my notebook [COMMA], and I miss it with a belly-wrenching [INSERT DASH BEFORE WRENCHING END OF LINE COMMA], world-turned–sideways [INSERT DASH AFTER WORLD INSERT DASH AFTER TURNED END OF LINE] kind of hurt [FULL STOP]. There is no other part of my body I would notice missing more than my hands [COMMA], and now somehow I am on an awkward first date in a long-term relationship [INSERT DASH AFTER LONG END OF LINE COMMA], and I’ve forgotten how to do it all [FULL STOP].

6 September 2017, 8:17 AM

This is what’s left of one human being,

this thing on a slip of gauze;

but the rest of me, scattered across

continents, calls

screams for its face.

from the Japanese poem ‘Revelation’, Koichi Kihara, 1922^[1]

If you had asked me what a writer looked like a few years ago, I would have spun you a tangled web of impressions. They wore glasses (probably). Their office was a coffee shop, or a cluttered library, or a tree trunk from which they could watch the world go by. My exposure to the writer’s process was also pretty shallow. I parroted editors such as Crowe and Oltermann who ‘wanted to tear down the invisible wall between us readers and them writers and see what’s really going on behind the page’^[2], but was still secretly convinced that Book Was Always Better. Writing was a tangible act of creation. I felt a writer was more akin to a potter than anything else – unless they had their hands on the raw material, they couldn’t shape it.

My writing process is starkly different to that rosy image. Nearly three years ago, I was diagnosed with a health condition which severely limits the use of my hands and wrists, so I write with my hands in my lap, with a headset, and a computer bristling with dictation software. Writer’s cramp is no longer the issue – instead, it is the possibility of losing my voice! I can be speaking for up to ten hours a day, depending on the task at hand.

My relationship with the software has not been an easy one. Dictation is imperfect, but so is the person dictating. I struggled to translate what I was thinking into good content, punctuated as it was with the voice commands necessary to navigation and editing. It wasn’t possible to maintain a creative stream with this constant attention to the “nuts and bolts”. Words were reduced to building blocks. Vocalising my thoughts was a stilted, unnatural process. Before, I had been able to condense those first flashes of thought into a coherent sentence, with my keyboard or pen. Now, I was frustrated by their disconnected nature. They spilled onto the page and I tried – unsuccessfully – to connect the dots. In my inability to translate myself properly, I stopped trying to innovate. I did only as much as was required to complete my undergraduate degree, but I didn’t write outside of it. I was too busy grieving for what I had lost.

By the time I began my Masters degree, I had a better facility with the software, but there was still a yawning chasm between what was in my head, and what ended up on the page. Perhaps, as Brande put it, I hoped ‘to hear that there was some magic about writing, and to be initiated into the brotherhood of authors’^[3]. She might have been writing in 1934, but her words resonated. I felt challenged. As we studied the different facets of creative process I realised that I needed to train if I were to better translate my thoughts. My difficulty was that I had yet to perceive dictation as anything more than a crude tool with which I could still approximate my old creative process.

As Hall points out, often ‘Our minds are musclebound, not by intellect, but by formulas of thought, by clichés of both phrase and organisation’^[4]. I was constrained not only by the usual array of issues which plague us as writers, but also by my choice to suffer rather than celebrate the unique possibilities of dictation. I slowly became convinced that I could achieve as much, if not more, with this new technology as when I had used traditional methods. But how could I do so?

The same simple advice appeared wherever I looked: write often, in quantity, and without editing as you go. Brande compares the mechanism of writing to exercise, to which we can become better accustomed as long as we practice^[5]. This stamina grows as writing becomes a habit which we cultivate. I was writing a journal at the time, and realised (with a tone of surprise) that:

It is brilliant and useful to write rubbish. Probably most of this is. Sifting through – mining for the gold – is part of the process. Writing for no one but myself is the goal here. I am not trying to find the shape of the finished product. I am not considering my audience. I am not writing for applause or adulation. I am writing because in order to get better, I must.^[6]

I practised. I couldn’t just create nonsense, because the effort of editing it all later was too lengthy. I had to learn to distil it. Dictation has forced me to organise my thoughts differently, to know what I want to say before I speak it aloud. How can I best translate what I’m thinking? Which words will best capture the story I am telling?

I began to see parallels in the challenges of translation – of works from another language, especially those with a very different aesthetic. The anthology Japanese Poetry Now has been, according to the translator, ‘remade into English’^[7], not translated. This choice of language is spot-on! The phonetic differences and its logographic nature alone are a huge contrast to any European language, and when cultural aesthetic is taken into account, the task is monumental. As Fitzsimmons approached each poem for the collection, he tussled with how ‘to preserve rather than reduce mystery’ whilst still trying ‘to make poems in English… with fidelity to pattern and whole, the human vision vibrant there’^[8].

I wanted to remain faithful to the mental catalyst which inspired me, but wanted increasingly to render it in ways appropriate to the new language I was learning. And as I have bent my will to doing so, I have developed a greater precision with language. I have also developed a greater appreciation for the relationship between form and content, especially in poetry. As formatting my work must be achieved by voice commands, detail needs to be worth the time expenditure. A poet is less distracted by form for form’s sake, or gimmicky concrete aspirations, when it is painstakingly achieved.

I had previously experimented a little with form, but this growing awareness of sympathetic form led me to study other poets in a new way. As Knowles explores in her study, the visual element of poetry is hardly a new phenomenon^[9], but we owe our modern inheritance to poets such as Mallarmé, who ‘turns spatial values… into a signifying force in their own right’^[10]. He marshalled both the forces of ink and the white spaces between words with equal weight. It is this new understanding, a more imaginative wielding of dictation, and long hours of practice which have allowed me to develop a writing process which is far more robust than it ever was.

In this process of digging, I have found I am excavating self, piece by piece. I am coal-smudged, dirty and grinning with new callouses on my hands from this work mining words. Not all of my forays are successful or productive. I cannot pretend that I bring back gold with every trip, nor that I don’t sometimes groan from the strain or shrink from the labour, but I am learning the tunnels and trying new parts of the rock face.

I am mining for gold. Look – how it gleams in the dirt.

Bibliography

Brande, Dorothea, Becoming a Writer, (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1934)

Donald Hall, Writing Well, 6th edn. (Illinois: Scott, Foresman/Little Brown College Division, 1988) pp.18-23

Crowe, Dan, Philip Oltermann, eds., How I Write: The Secret Lives of Authors, (New York: Rizzoli, 2007)

Knowles, Kim, Anna Katharina Schaffner, Ulrich Weger, & Andrew Michael Roberts, ‘Reading Space in Visual Poetry: New Cognitive Perspectives’, in Writing Technologies, 4 (2012), 75–106

Fitzsimmons, Thomas, ed. and trans. Japanese Poetry Now, (New York: Schocken Books, 1972)

^[1] Koichi Kihara, Japanese Poetry Now, ed. and trans. by Thomas Fitzsimmons (New York: Schocken Books, 1972), p.36

^[2] How I Write: The Secret Lives of Authors, ed. by Dan Crowe & Philip Oltermann (New York: Rizzoli, 2007), p.4

^[3] Brande, Dorothea, Becoming a Writer, (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1934), p.22

^[4] Donald Hall, Writing Well, 6th edn. (Illinois: Scott, Foresman/Little Brown College Division, 1988) p.19

^[5] Dorothea Brande, Becoming a Writer, (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1934), p.71

^[6] Process Creative Journal, 16/10/2018, Appendices p.2

^[7] Japanese Poetry Now, ed. and trans. by Thomas Fitzsimmons (New York: Schocken Books, 1972), p.iii

^[8] Japanese Poetry Now, ed. and trans. by Thomas Fitzsimmons (New York: Schocken Books, 1972), pp.11-12

^{[9], 10} Knowles, Kim, Anna Katharina Schaffner, Ulrich Weger, & Andrew Michael Roberts, ‘Reading Space in Visual Poetry: New Cognitive Perspectives’, in Writing Technologies, 4 (2012), p.76

About the Author:

Rue Collinge is a linguist-turned-storyteller living in Gateshead, UK. She has performed across the North-East and on the radio, was  shortlisted for the Terry Kelly Prize in 2018 and has had her poetry published in several magazines and anthologies. 

                     ‘Writing is writing. Everything else is everything else.’

–          Mark Siddens[1]

I spent most of my early childhood believing I was some sort of sorceress because I often found myself spinning verses about the moon and stars at silly hours on school nights. That was when I was able to write at all, other times I would be kept awake by some unnameable urge, pen poised above paper, literally without the words to express myself. I would later find solace in Clarice Lispector’s assertion that ‘one can have vocation and not talent; one can be called and not know how to go.’ I would read these rhyming verses aloud to my teddy bears and occasionally my parents and, eventually my mother, who had read little save for newspapers and quit smoking guides since school, took me to a poetry reading at our local library. The poet, whose name I cannot recall, was a bright new talent reading from her first collection. Sat in the dark of the back row, my eyes filled as the syllables fell from her tongue with an effortlessness I had only hitherto heard in the soft repetitions of a priest’s refrains, on the few occasions my grandmother had taken me to church. She seemed to photosynthesize the spotlight, gathering energy and gradually growing taller, sitting up straighter, transcending herself. I yearned in my childish egoism to supplant her; me, a child who still referred to English class as ‘literacy’ on occasion, with my insightful stanzas about moonlight and dreamscapes and my twenty-six—and counting—spiralbounds. That evening, feeling both entirely out of place and yet strangely at home amongst academics and artists, I discovered a dream. I went out a sorceress and came home a poet.

A narrative such as this one is not uncommon amongst writers. Indeed, most of us will treasure similar moments which printed writer on our brains with an imaginary click of typewriter keys and shaped our decisions thereafter to include anything which allowed us to put words on paper (or equivalent white-coloured square of arranged pixels.) David Almond has described these moments as ‘personal mythologies’, which rightfully indicates a gap between the reality of the experience and the recall of it.[2] The dream of writing is particularly prone to this kind of embellishment, due perhaps to the emphasis on meaning inherent in the craft and the romantic stereotypes associated with the profession. As well as harbouring ‘personal mythologies’ about how we came to write, there are more widely held mythologies surrounding the ostensibly enigmatic ‘writer’s lifestyle’. Born of these mythologies are two opposing ‘writer’ aesthetics. I aim to examine the productivity of these in practice, addressing the commercialisation of a distinctly middle-class writer aesthetic through social media and its consequences, as well as the poet-maudit-esque, impoverished writer aesthetic, and how the stereotypes arising from these differ from the reality of the productive and at least semi-sane full-time writer.

I detail the anecdote above firstly to introduce the romantic vs. reality dichotomy with which this essay is concerned, and also to demonstrate that while my child-self, despite my nocturnal scribblings, my enjoyment of and inherent easiness socializing with artists and general desire for the attention the spot-lighted poet garnered, was not a productive writer. She was, at this point, concerned with aesthetics: she did things she knew to be typical of writers; stayed up writing by streetlight, nestled, nose-in-a-book, under a tree, kept a journal like the red-wine-sipping academic beside mam at the poetry reading with the curly cursive. Writing is, however, a craft: it requires honing. That is to say, aesthetic does not equal productivity, nor talent, and where the two become muddled, issues arise.

Any lifestyle has the potential to become enmeshed with the regular consumption of particular services and goods, and thus, there is unsurprisingly a consumer aspect to what I term here a ‘middle class writer aesthetic’.[3]  At the time of writing, I sit with a steaming thimble of espresso in a certain green-logoed coffeehouse listening to indie bands and admiring the satisfyingly consistent circumferences of coffee rings some inattentive barista forgot to wipe from my table. I might as well add that among my favourite things in the world besides coffee, are new typewriters made to look vintage and the musk of old books I collect but will never read. I type ‘#writerlife’ into Instagram. Here is a list of what I see in the posts:

• A chocolate-topped cappuccino beside a MacBook and folded jam-jar spectacles.
• A plastic cup skewered with a green straw atop an open journal endowed with illegible cursive (link to fountain pen used in caption.)
• A perspiring scotch on the rocks beside a book (this dedicated bookworm’s 30^th read this year, the caption informs us, and there’s an affiliate link to Amazon Audible—your first book’s on me, guys!—but she just had to have a physical copy of this particular gem.)
• An advertisement for an Indiegogo-funded new-fangled writer’s laptop that supposedly inhibits its user from procrastinating by having no functions other than typing and saving, to the tune of £267. Has anyone informed the hipsters that £1.49 notepads are also devoid of ‘distracting apps’?

Social media platforms are the new lifestyle magazines. Glossy screens have usurped glossy pages, but the intention is the same: to sell. Whatever your profession, interests or niche, there is a hashtag infested with influencers and advertisements, ready to endow you with all you need to be successful at it, for a price. We are being sold an idea of what it is to be a writer, and it is costing us.

    Where livelihood, identity and lifestyle become inseparable, a certain interdependence is produced between the three, one which is perhaps not particularly helpful or productive. ‘Lifestyles are creations of markets and media, mutually reinforcing each other through a cycle of advertising images that arouse consumptive desires to fashion a self compatible with a particular lifestyle.’[4] The question becomes, then, what is the result when both livelihood and identity become contingent upon a lifestyle which demands specific levels of social and economic capital in order to be maintained?[5] This is a particular issue for younger aspiring writers, especially those with working-class upbringings, whose lack of professional experience coupled with their exposure to these idealistic and consumerist portrayals of what it means to write might be enough to turn them away from the profession entirely. The internalisation by working-class writers of the false necessity of such writer ‘accessories’—audiobook subscriptions, particular pens, laptops and the regular consumption of extortionate coffee—as prerequisites to or the paraphernalia of success might well contribute to and perpetuate feelings of imposter-syndrome and self-doubt, and prevent already underrepresented voices from being heard.

The other issue inherent in this interdependence between lifestyle, livelihood and identity is our proclivity to decide on prerequisites to writing, these lifestyle ‘accessories’ we come to believe we require to write, which may or may not have anything to do with the act of writing itself. Coffee, perhaps, is one of my own. Another is being ‘out of the house’, which usually equates to being in a café. I once knew a very talented aspiring writer who would only write alone in a dimly lit room with a glass of red. I had to wonder how much more productive he might be if he could write on his morning commute to his day job, or at his desk between taking calls. There is something performative in this, an apparent need to play the part of what one suspects a writer to be, which may prohibit writing when access to such conditions is unattainable. Eliminate the obstacles you yourself impose. They are procrastination masquerading as productivity.

Ernest Hemingway boldly asserted, ‘there is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’ This quote introduces some of the main qualities of the second writer aesthetic I will examine in this essay—that of the tortured and impoverished writer. The quote, from the same writer who advised us to ‘write drunk, edit sober’, suggests that writing is a process for which one must suffer, but there is undeniably an element of self-indulgence inherent in the assertion. The language alone is romantic, and the suggestion that writing is merely an outpouring of one’s emotions which comes as freely as blood from an opened vein is of course a highly romanticised perspective on the craft. This indulgent, perhaps even hedonistic and excessively emotional ideology is typical of the poete maudit (that is, the ‘cursed poet’) for whom the craft of writing becomes bound up with a lifestyle characterised by drug and alcohol abuse, crime, insanity and generally living on the peripheries of society. One might hesitate to label this stereotype an ‘aesthetic’, but there is undoubtedly something performative about it, a certain pleasurable sadness inherent in projecting to the world the lengths to which one would go for their craft, irrespective of the suffering it causes to its creator. We see this in perhaps its plainest form in artwork created using the artist’s own bodily fluids. Take Rose-Lynn Fisher for instance, who, in her Topography of Tears, creates landscapes from her own true and onion-induced tears.[6] Or Gottfried Helnwein, who, confronting his country’s Nazi past in his youth, was expelled from university for painting a portrait of Hitler using his own blood.[7]

Poverty, mental illness and substance abuse are the three defining factors of this aesthetic, and it is important to note that the latter two are inextricably bound up with the former. The prevalence of both mental illness and substance abuse are highly correlated with poorer socio-economic circumstances.[8] Could it be then, that the existence of this aesthetic provides a counterpoint to the aforementioned consumerism-focused aesthetic to which less privileged writers might aspire? Personally, I have always gravitated more towards this aesthetic when trying to decipher my place in the world of writing, simply because it is closer to my own experiences external to my professional life: working-class parents and peers who drank and smoked, and suffered with depression among other mental illnesses.  Whether the perpetuation of this aesthetic through artists and writers whose work emerges from and perhaps romanticises these circumstances is validating or problematic for aspiring writers is a complex question. Perhaps both are so.

Mental illness is often associated with the creation of good art, and indeed, much enduring literature has been composed from such experiences, from the darkly poignant work of Sylvia Plath, to the scathing cynicism and black comedy of David Foster Wallace. It is true that both the process of developing and overcoming mental health issues can provide insight into the human condition, which makes for convincing, emotive and universally relevant writing. It is also worth noting that the creation of art, including writing, is often prompted by a desire for self-expression, and thus can be considered a therapeutic endeavour. There is, undeniably, a link between mental illness and artists: ‘In 1983, the psychologist Kay Jamison, herself bipolar, surveyed 47 British artists and writers and found that 38 percent had sought treatment for mood disorders — a percentage about 30 times the national average.’[9] According to Jamison, ‘poets had it worst of all: Half of those surveyed had been hospitalized for depression and/or mania’. Jamison attributed this to poets having the most ‘creative fire’, and Sarah Nicole Prickett in her article ‘A Woman Under the Influence’, addressing Jamison’s work, states ‘this seems a suspiciously convenient thing for poets to believe: It’s better to burn, burn, burn than to pay the heating bill.’[10] Again, there is this romantic and excessively emotive idea that one’s life and one’s art are mutually reinforcing entities, as if ‘burning’ with creativity could actually negate one’s survival-driven requirement for warmth.

The creation of particularly original and enduring writing has sometimes been attributed to the involvement of drugs such as alcohol, marijuana, amphetamines, and LSD and other psychedelics, particularly that of the modernist period wherein the sharing of writing in bars and jazz clubs was common practice. Jack Kerouac once advised ‘if possible, write “without consciousness” in semi-trance’, an approach perhaps best facilitated by being under the influence.[11] Ginsberg yearned to transcribe his intoxicated nocturnal experiences in his generation-defining poem ‘Howl’, lamenting those ‘who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish’.^[12] Erik Mortenson suggested this desire to capture such experiences is also mirrored in the form of ‘Howl’, describing it as ‘benzedrine-inspired’.[13] During a panel discussing the association between artists and mental illness at Newcastle-held event New Art Social, the topic of writing under the influence of alcohol was raised. Several audience members attested to the suggestion that alcohol can be beneficial for the initial stages of writing, particularly for writers prone to perfectionistic thinking. This has been true of my experience also, as a writer who finds it difficult to begin new work with the unrealistic expectation and desire for the first draft to be flawless from the start. Drinking alcohol can certainly facilitate writing by lifting such expectations, which is possibly why it is touted for aiding creativity; it lowers inhibitions and thus we are more likely to explore ideas and write liberally.

Certainly, the use of substances in the creation of art, and channelling experiences of mental illness into art can be advantageous, but here we return to this issue of having prerequisites for writing. Enduring and esteemed writing has and can be produced without its creator having utilized drugs or suffered mental health issues. It is therefore my conviction that the tortured artist aesthetic can be considered a romanticisation of mental illness which can contribute to maladaptive behaviour in aspiring writers and at worst, ultimately result in the development of mental health issues and even addiction. With regards to mental illness and the creation of art, one need not look further than the symptoms of depression (including lack of motivation, disinterest in previously enjoyed activities, low mood and decreased self-esteem) to deduce that the mindset produced by such an illness is not a productive one. The insight attained from these experiences might be applied to writing productively post-hoc, but such insights may also be collated from interviews and other research, as well as first-hand experience. Where substance use is concerned, one might consider the consequences on productivity the following day, as well as the long-term consequences of substance use, including dependence, particularly if writing is one’s full-time profession.

We all come to writing with preconceptions about what it means to be a writer. The writer ‘aesthetics’ discussed here are two which I found to be particularly impactful whilst trying to discover what kind of writer I was aspiring to be. I have found, however, that whilst expensive accessories bolster motivation for a time, and a few whiskies can lubricate a creative block, it is imperative to rely on nothing save for words when it comes to writing. No amount of espressos, bleeding, depression, vodka or evenings spent shivering (even in the dazzling presence of one’s imperishable ‘creative fire’!) can ensure that one’s words reach the page—that is our work alone. ‘Writing is writing. Everything else is everything else.’[14]

[1] Mark Siddens, Introducing ‘Useless Suffering: Marina Tsvetaeva in Moscow‘, (Reading given at Ernest, Newcastle: 2019).

[2] David Almond, ‘David Almond on the Notebook’ (Lecture given on October 16^th, 2018).

[3] Lynn D. Wenger, ‘Cigar Magazines: Using Tobacco to Sell a Lifestyle’ in Tobacco Control, Vol. 10, No. 3 (2001), pp. 279.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Mark Tomlinson, ‘Lifestyle and Social Class’ in European Sociological Review, Vol. 19, No. 1 (United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 97-111.

[6] Rose-Lynn Fisher, The Topography of Tears, (New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2013).

[7] Peter Selz ‘HELNWEIN: THE ARTIST AS PROVOCATEUR’ (1997) (Available online here: http://www.helnwein.com/artist/biography/article_3414-With-his-own-blood-Helnwein-paints-a-picture-of-Adolf-Hitler-Fuehrer_-The-Professors-are-discomposed-and-the-school-administration-confiscates-the-painting). [Accessed 16/05/2019].

[8] Iris Elliott, ‘Poverty and Mental Health: A review to inform the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s Anti-Poverty Strategy’ (London, 2016), p. 16.

[9] Sarah Nicole Prickett, ‘A Woman Under the Influence’ (2018) (Available online here: https://thenewinquiry.com/a-woman-under-the-influence/) [Accessed 16/05/19].

[10] Ibid.

[11] Sarah Ramshaw, Justice as Improvisation: The Law of the Extempore (Abingdon: Routledge Publishing, 2013), p.70.

[12] Allen Ginsberg, ‘Howl’ in Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems (London: Penguin Modern Classics, 2009).

[13] Erik Mortenson, ‘High Off the Page, Representing the Drug Experience in the Work of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg’, (Wayne State University), Online PDF Access: < http://www.janushead.org/7-1/mortenson.pdf> [Accessed 16/05/2019].

[14] Mark Siddens, Introducing ‘Useless Suffering: Marina Tsvetaeva in Moscow‘.

About the Author:

Jasmine Jade is a poet from South Shields, Britain. She won the South Tyneside WRITE Festival Poetry Slam, was shortlisted for the Terry Kelly Poetry Prize 2018 and came second in the Mind Short Story Competition 2019. Last year, she completed an MA in Creative Writing at the Newcastle University.

Was this the place which witnessed Abel bleed that was recorded for eons on earth and Jesus was needed to incarnate with the vibration of love? Not vampires, or sorcerers could equal the torture on this disembodied soul. It seemed we were in such a place. Yet we were located in ignorance in the earth, following the skies and tempests as the great light arrived. And the news was to erase the troubles of humanity in unceasing toil. The horizons were to change like the spectrums of the rainbow to enhance the environmental health of the globe. The human brain was to adapt to stringent controls of a new age. If mystics and teachers as Christ had failed, science had succeeded.  Mind matrix technologies involving great genius of war intelligence supported the process. Even God had become a lesser instrument of fate in times of cyber modernization.

Rigorous scientific experiments of the past measured success for the laser to now direct the rocket. Focused beams of invisible infrared spectrum that segmented the earth, illuminated images on the moon, altered synapses, mobilized tissues and organized layers of the earth’s ether. Speckled geo-mapping of polarized beams created no illusion. The invisible strata of light were active. I mapped a pin which showed the first NASA laser physiotherapy unit mounted on the satellite. The hard pricks of electromagnetic radar were to give way to quantum sciences in therapy that we preferred. But this technique was invisible as was the higher layer of the bio magnetic spectrum of the rainbow that could be tolerated by human tissue.

Four years ago there was a vague haze of news of real people and notes shared on Klout which warned readers of lasers being pointed on the eyes of pilots, blinding them. Some in my family urgently resorted to eye surgery for the onset of blindness… both eyes. It was the same with someone important at work. Cause of blindness was unknown.

This vital record of silent weapons associated with NASA began flashing to me in my emails…. pin drums…. with statistics of views of laser physio images…. and also meridian sheets. The age of bloody war was over. Weapons were altogether more sophisticated, mocking the era of science and achievement. Now the radar on the ground collected to become an electromagnetic pulse, simulated by infrared, invisible laser radar that could prick acupuncture points when the victim was unaware. Over the weeks some undetected activity had progressed to pump intrusive radiation into the meridians and alter the neurological balance. My feet and ankles showed slow burns, dull brown spots on spleen 6 and kidney 4 points. These points triggered the DNA of the constitution. So the laser beam in incognito mode was arranged for physical therapy from mapped notes in my listed book. To endure and follow the Mysteries was my Key* in control to combat the unseen enemy.

My network arranged conspicuous pictures of eyes as the crisis began reaching a melting point. I noted the warning three hours before it happened. Eyes and flashes and repeat image postings on my social media precipitated concern. We were four years into the progression of time since the episodes of blinding eyes with lasers. Scientists had reversed technology adequately for the alarm to subside. But not completely.  Some subtle system remained. The war had returned. My bathroom light began blinking ferociously as another network started raising a threat alert.

Moses managed commandments and followed the guiding voice of Christ to emerge victorious from the pursuit of the Pharisees. Much mystical application was required to complete the project. Christ, the saviour, evenly combated the crowds but could not alter the human condition with messages and examples of love. The ages before Christ caused man’s spirit to bleed. The ages after Christ remained the same.

So it was not a surprise when out of the dark the attack came. When the light came on I witnessed the big black eye, a dark bruise swollen with fluids measuring one inch below the right eye. And the radiation spread to the left eye causing watering and discomfort. The feet were feeble with radiation bouts that numbed sensation. The radiation kept spreading though the face and into the frontal brain. This was new weaponry. The single shot could trigger a lifetime of unseen control to alter human tissue and functionality forever.  Over the weeks the eyes became swollen and puffy, the facial contours changed.

There is a Key to the Mysteries. This silent enemy was reigniting the cries of Abel. My hard working book on laser therapy contained the sciences for health which was evidently became an issue, a system of weapons. Around the world for years, I trailed this wonderful therapy in CAM, obtaining medical licenses for all its natural applications.  I introduced it in veterinary and medical hospitals to practitioner teams who devoured the grace. Alchemists connecting to mysteries arranged a new order for life, drawing and mobilizing the essence of god in man, tapping that solitary system that permitted perception of the physical realm. Scientists see and then believe. Mystics believe and then see. Scientists are challenged by the mystics, and the enemy makes use of the Key. Sciences maintain Commandments. The enemy crushes the Truth. God proposes. Man disposes.

The Eye and the Needle.  The single eye maintains the body in light. The light ceases to diverge and becomes a needle.  A laser needle. My documents and commandments in print on Amazon of this unique therapy was an act of love for all to prepare for this time. My pages were being sliced by a sword of enemy trail. Robbed by thieves with lesser intelligence and no Key to the Mystery.

Twenty years of hard scholarship of Acupuncture science from traditional and medical schools around the world faded away for a new world science of laser needling of medical category where several beams could simultaneously be applied on a patient. And today this faded away further for consideration of quantum applications. Needles could be directed on masses of humans in a simultaneous moment for their welfare or their destruction.

I returned to my handheld laser and laser acupuncture device at home for self-aided therapy. The point that had been attacked could be irradiated to control the electromagnetic pulse which defied healthy tissues. The great light had arrived but I was marked a victim, yet I refused to resign my science and my Key for the lesser work. The world showed surrender of faith and humane livelihood, of governments and courts. Yet the search was on, in dreams, in fantastic notions, of a dawn to come, in darkness or in light.

Reference:

*The key to the Mysteries.  Eliphas Levi. Internet Archives.

About the Author:

Malini Chaudhri is the author of five non fiction books, mainly based on wellness.  She submits creative non fiction pieces to lit mags and collections in books. Her stories have been nominated for awards.  She has been Academy manager of a British qualification in India, and has worked in South China Normal University as a foreign expert, in a Harvard affiliated English project. She has lived in India, China and USA.

http://malinichaudhri.wordpress.comhttp://amazon.com/author/malinichaudhri

http://malinichaudhri.wordpress.comhttp://amazon.com/author/malinichaudhri

There are those convinced the fundamentals of writing hasn’t changed in a thousand years. An ink well, a parchment, an idea and quiet time are the essential ingredients of the literary endeavor. I don’t agree. My generation is the first to live through societal shifts in technology, economy and family structure that dramatically altered the fabric of daily life. These radical changes are so profound as to befuddle our parents who are lost to offer good counsel. I live in a time where both parents work, computers are carried in your pocket and the average adult has already had five jobs less than ten years out of college. The stability of homesteading a job, a home, even a cell phone is nonexistent. Everything is temporary and nothing is secure. Freedom forces adaptations in artistic lives during uncertain times. If you cannot truly care you cannot truly create meaningful metaphors in a day of mechanical conformity.

This is the reason I resist the denial of social changes in writing content, style, and length. There is an impact that should be acknowledged by the establishment. But I am saddened and perplexed by many academic publications who continue to push literary structure straight from the venue of Woodstock. I am amazed by journals endorsing vague ramblings of raconteurs heavy on academic published credits and light on anything resembling a connection with a current audience. Why should we ignore the information overload that is the Internet? Social platforms are more than communication tools they are also called boards for opportunities and back channels for active writers. The collective sea change of the 21^st century has shorted our attention spans while simultaneously lengthening our life spans. And the internalization of this upheaval is reconstituting the perceptive viewpoint to varying degrees.

I noticed it is difficult to write past 600 words for my flash fiction and creative nonfiction. I am not consciously attempting to be rebellious or trendy. In a digital age of IM, Snapchat and Twitter I internally feel the drive to be more concise. Yesterday brevity was a dirty word describing an artist seeking a short cut. Today it is par for the course. Political and marketing campaigns have influenced our thinking to accept sloganeering as critical commentary. But bumper stickers and beer taverns are the bloody last places to find solutions to problems. The modern writer stands a chance to make a difference in this volatile environment if he merely stands up for something true in his life. Because most are sitting in silence often immobilized by political correctness, moral infancy or social apathy.

I am mortified when considering this age of instant information and communication has not produced greater peace, less divorce, more sobriety. How it is possible people persist in believing the worst about each other? How can we maintain free societies in the foreseeable future if we continue to abuse our freedoms, our families, and our friends? We have lost faith in Government and Religion because we recognize they cannot “give” freedom and happiness. At best these entities can only permit the conditions for a better life to exist. We are tasked with the enormous responsibility of discovering for ourselves how to live. This may be the price of Liberty but it is also the promise of Art to open launching points into creative expression and personal growth.

The connection between Government and Art figures frequently in my writings to remind the reader of the potential power of practical change in writing. Bad governments historically target the artist first by closing theatres, banning songs, burning books and destroying paintings. We are targets because Art matter in the daily lives of average people. Art is the eternal archive holding the memories of millions preserved as a vital source to support culture and history and dignify the voice of the governed. The very act of committing word to paper is a solemn ceremony worthy of respect and deserving as a real starting point on how to improve the world one community at a time. Your art may save a life. It may save your life. God, guns, and government have yet to fix our ailing planet. Maybe a short story on how to stop being a maggot would be a good start. You have the power. Wake up and use it.

About the Author:

Mark Antony Rossi’s poetry, criticism, fiction, creative nonfiction and photography have appeared in The Antigonish Review, Anak Sastra, Bareback Magazine, Black Heart Review, Brain of Forgetting, Deep Water Literary Journal, Dirty Chai, Enclave, Expound, Farther Stars Than, Flash Fiction, Gravel, Indian Periodical, Japanophile, Journal of Microliterature, Kulchur Creative Journal, Mad Swirl, On The Rusk, Purple Patch, Scrivener Creative Review, Snapdragon, Syzygy Poetry Journal, The Rye Whiskey Review, The Sacrificial, Toad Suck Review, Transnational, Wild Quarterly and Yellow Chair Review. His poetry was nominated for the Best of the Net 2019 Award. He is the Editor in Chief, Ariel Chart

http://arielchart.blogspot.com