‘-ings’

Verbs with the suffix -ing are called present participles; the actions of which are in the continuous tense, meaning they exist without a defined end. We can be tempted to see life as a series of ‘events.’ But rarely do we break down these life events to appreciate the many actions that comprise them.

Creativity is no single event; it’s a lifestyle that arises from the series of behaviors we are continuously participating in.

For Writers & Creatives, we are the sum of our everyday activity.

As long as you are moving, you are creating.

Read-ings: Recommendations

  • I read it in two days and haven’t stopped thinking about it since. It’s a Memoir that takes place in rural Idaho and follows the author’s childhood, living in a home guided by parents that didn’t believe in sending their children to school or the hospital. The author Tara Westover, was working on a junkyard sorting sharp metals at age ten; she didn’t even have a birth certificate until the year prior to that.

    Westover tends to the characterization of her fundamentalist parents and siblings with so much grace and humanity, in doing so she captures the complexity of human nature better than any non-fiction I’ve ever read.

    The narration was so beautifully crafted, it transported me so profoundly that I completely forgot at times that it wasn’t happening to me and also that it wasn’t fictional - which makes it all the more astounding. The only criticism I've seen of this book I think is its greatest strength. It doesn't seek to appraise any of the occurrences or people within it from any perspective except the young girl who experienced it. Be warned that it is a heavy read, with inclusions of abuse and injuries that occurred during her upbringing.

    At its heart, it is a story about and for people searching for a way to love themselves when the people they love most in the world give them only fuel to hate and doubt their own worth.

  • Smith writes this memoir as only a highly-skilled poet could - not being wholly fixed on its content, but as equally devoted to it as to Form. This memoir's form is so masterful. I've personally not read anything like it.

    As a poet, I was in awe to recognize the influences and melding of what she was creating. The repetition, to an untrained eye, might seem over-the-top, but its such an essential rhetorical device in Smith's home genre, I appreciated that every time certain refrains were repeated - "“A Friend Says Every Book Begins with an Unanswerable Question,” "Next question," etc. - they deepened in meaning. Ultimately, that's what I love most about this memoir, after having read about a dozen in the past six months, how deep it goes. You cannot go deep if you don't circle back time and time again, that's what Theme is. If you aren't looking for one Topic and all its Themes to be expounded with depth, than this read might not resonate with you. But I loved it! It's the style of memoir I would want to write.

    Petition for more poets to write non-fiction!!

  • Ocean Vuong is my favourite poet and because I love him so much, I’ve waited quite a while to read this Novel. I was pretty sure that when I did eventually read it, it would become my favourite book. I was right.

    Just like in his poetry, Ocean uses language and form to transport. The narrator, Little Dog, discloses in the opening lines that they are “writing to go back to time.” The entire novel follows consistently, but never monotonously, from that premise. Paragraphs rhythmically begin with prepositions that position the reader in differing epochs, during Little Dog’s life and before it – episodes from his mother and grandmother’s life in Vietnam before, during and after the War. The plot is not chronological, but it is fluid and fluent in the language of memory.

    Through this letter to his mother, the narrator pushes back on our tendency to taxidermy the deceased; to petrify them in a death initiated by the end of their earthly dialogue with us.

    Instead, he manifests the movement that legacy and loss realistically assumes, and in doing so offers us a new way to grieve those whose physical presence we may not currently enjoy. He disproves the idea that death ends the conversation that is the relationships we hold most dear to us in our lives.

    A master of story-telling tapestries, Ocean Vuong utilizes analogy like no other; weaving novel-long analogies seamlessly through Monarch butterflies, Tiger Woods, poetic elegy, geological formations, cultural histories and a multitude of translations to reveal the beautiful interconnected lens that he sees the world through.

    “I am writing because they told me to never start a sentence with because. But I wasn’t trying to make a sentence – I was trying to break free. Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between the hunter and the prey.”

    “What is a country but a borderless sentence, a life?”

    “What is a country but a life sentence?”

  • What can I say - Octavia is the GOAT.

    The second & last installment of the Parable series, this novel is more gripping than anything I have watched in the recent past, I couldn't put it down. Butler's vision is so impressive & something I feel is so rare to find in modern fiction. She is truly the Leader of genre. She makes it feel so effortless for the reader to buy in to the world of the Text and even the structure, which I haven't encountered anything like before. She executes plot with such precision, I've not seen Diary entries utilized anywhere near as effectively as she does. The ground she covers in this one Text is incredible. Safe to say, massive fan.

    It would be a shame if anyone didn't read this second installment after reading the first, if that's you, you're missing out! Loved starting my reading for 2024 so strong with this novel, I'm sad to say good-bye to Olamina & Earthseed, but I feel satisfied with where and how she ended the story.

  • Of all the awarded literature from the Victoria’s Premier Awards, I was most excited to get my hands on this collection of autobiographical essays by Eda Gunaydin, a second-generation Australian to Turkish parents growing up in Sydney’s west. One authorial choice she makes that I love and speaks volumes is the frequent inclusion of untranslated Turkish dialogue. There’s a captivating locality to her storytelling that is bolstered by honest and reflective cultural critique. Reviewer Anwen Crawford puts it well to say these essays “pay careful attention to ‘the materiality of living’” while also being “funny, self-deprecating, self-dramatising and hopeful.”

    This passage below is one I deeply resonate with and know others from migrant backgrounds would too:

    “To live as if everything were temporary is how I interact with Australia. It’s also how trauma makes you interact with experiences. You’re like: ‘Sorry, I have to go back to my main memory now. There’s something more important I have to be remembering.”

  • I’ve found short stories to be such a convenient and generous form to read in adulthood. This collection won the Pullitzer in 2000 & a myriad of other awards. It deals with issues of cultural identity and romantic love both within India and across the diaspora. I felt honoured to read every single page of the Masterpiece that is Interpreter of Maladies. The last paragraph of every story left me breathless at its perfect vulnerability, without exception.

  • After focusing on poetry for a few years, I've been falling back in love with fictional novels with this book being a seductive gateway. Short, sweet and punchy, it gave characters and plot that only the most vibrant imagination could conjure. I couldn't pick its genre and that's what I love about it. Vonnegut’s writing is a delightful mix of engaging narration, ludricrous dialogue and unpredictable twists and turns.

    Teaser Quotes:

    - “Like all real heroes, Charley had a fatal flaw. He refused to believe that he had gonorrhea, whereas the truth was that he did.”

    - “Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun.”

    - “I do realize that I am a very slow realizer.”

Learn-ings:

  • I’ve been doing a six-week poetry intensive run by the remarkable Jackie Braje of Milk Press aka New York Poetry Society. The reverence she holds for Poetry allows her to hold space for everyone regardless of poetry experience but also to expect that we engage with the material and challenge our preconceived notions. Each week she curates thought-provoking readings and poems to initiate discussions. Up until now, how I’ve conducted myself in Poetry has come from an intuitive place within me that is difficult to regale. The amazing part of getting into this Theory has been the discovery and affirmation that the craft of Poetry does have this spiritual origin and operation to it that lives within and is executed by the Poet. We’ve spoken about Voice, Form, the Line and Method in Poetry and common to all of these devices is the imploration that these poetic tools lead you more than you lead them. You must be open to discovering the ecosystem that already exists, more than you are creating something that did not exist prior to your writing about it.

    Barbara Guest challenges us to “[lose] the arrogance of dominion over the poem to an invisible hand” because while “the poet campaigns for a passage over which the poet has control..[the] unstableness of the poem is important. Also the frequent lapses of control.”

    Alice Notley acknowledges that “there is no way not to impose yourself as an author on your material” but also that the Voice of the Poem “seems to have come into existence just a moment prior to the poem” and “is really only for the poem.” “The things that are said in poems are for poems - for the unity of the occasion of a poem, which is made by one poet only. In life one person blends with another, but rarely in poetry…each [poem] is a cosmos.”

    As a poet, I am seeing myself more and more, not as a creator, but a conduit or a channel.

    Anne Carson’s ‘Notes on Method’ distilled this epiphany to me with the inclusion of György Lukács’s philosophical statement “I do not want to be a windowless monad.” Carson speaks about the poem being reflective of “withness.” In these two concepts, I understand my role. A poem is two entities, a part of the poet’s ‘Self’ and the ‘cosmos’ they have discovered and positioned themselves ‘with’ in the container of the poem. I must allow the reader to look through a part of me, to see what scenery I have sought out and sat ‘with’ on the other side.

    In short, Poetry is Magic.

    If you’re interested in nerding out further, check out the following:

    - Invisible Architecture by Barbara Guest

    - Some Notes on Organic Form by Denise Levertov

    - ‘Voice’ from ‘Coming After’ by Alice Notley

    - On the Line by Stacy Szymaszek

    - Notes on Method by Anne Carson

  • I have never formally studied poetry. I fell in love with poetry accidentally, when I had already finished my Arts degree without having taken a single class in it! An anonymous good friend helped me sneak into their lectures at [redacted] University, which gave me tools in some of the basics, but I’ve always longed to be a student and get hands-on instruction and feedback. Recently, I took the plunge & signed up for Advanced Poetry at The Writer’s Studio with Peter Krass. It has been such an affirming and invaluable experience. The first week, Peter introduced us to the concept of the ‘Persona Narrator.’ The idea that within each poem, the poet makes the choice to adopt a distinct narrative voice for the purpose of the piece. This was revolutionary to me, I thought it was always me that was narrating.

    Poems do not have to be wholly autobiographical. Even if they do take inspiration from the poet’s life, the Persona Narrator can be a version of you from the morning of your 16th birthday, or the evening after the party, or even from your hypothetical retirement home. It can be a stranger you inhabit on the train. A conscious leaf from a surrealist painting. A disgruntled shade of blue. Whittling down the Poem’s narrator into a character builds in identity to a poem that gives the writing a stylised path to follow, to guide you through decision-making around word choice, mood and tone. This concept also elps when reading and deciphering poems too, to stop looking for what the poem means and instead, getting to know the personality of the voice taking you through it.

  • So much of writing exists in isolation, poetry more than most. The poem is like a cavernous world that the poet meticulously carves out, from their mind’s eye onto the confines of a page. It is so personal. So when this private imagining becomes public in the form of publication, I wasn’t sure what to expect. It had been a goal of mine for so long. When the day came, I made my post on Instagram, my dutiful mother messaged that she was proud of me and then… nothing. I don’t know if two or two hundred people read my poem. I don’t know what they felt or thought about it. And it’s likely that I’ll never know. This preturbed me. I realized that I write to feel a shared sense of humanity, and I’ve found myself in an art form where the receivers are rarely in the same room as the creator. I’m wondering if the only balm to this is the double-edged social media sword, a tool that can either facilitate connection or disconnection between the Self and Other People?

    All I know is I want to find ways to invite conversation and connection over Art, whether it’s mine or not. I’m hoping this newsletter is the beginning of a different kind of cavern I can carve out, where I can speak to you directly and ask - so what do you think?

Writ-ings:

  • New York Writers Coalition puts on the best free, restful yet generative events. Wrote this baby the other night to the Prompt “if this was the last thing I wrote, here is what you need to know…” The ever-amazing host, Ugba, warned us against taking this prompt as a deathbed poem where you cram a million profound, over-the-top things into one piece, but instead, focus on the present day only. This is where I was at that night.

    Today’s Ugly Truth

    artistry is a burden

    can we talk about the missing Off switch?

    I am fatigued

    from the hijacking of my body

    for the sake of creativity

    maybe I’d just like to cruise

    down the highway of being on a Wednesday

    maybe I was saving those neurons for something else
    like the motivation
    to pluck my eyebrows
    or do fifteen more seconds of small talk

    to be a poet
    is to have absent agency
    as you swim in material
    you cannot ignore
    or you will drown

    I am conscripted to the production line
    of world peace by way of enjambment
    I’ll be here all week, month, year
    century,
    whether you publish me or not

  • I’ve been working on a Chapbook I’m titled ‘Distance Makes the Heart Grow’ to help me process and share the 4 year Long Distance relationship (LDR) my now-husband & I endured. When I first thought of the premise for this Poem I got that giddy, excited feeling. Actually executing that premise took 10 drafts, 6 months and a lot of self-loathing! But finally, I cracked her. Here is ‘Sometimes, Often, Always’ my attempt to capture how during the Past, Present & Future plagued my mind during the LDR and what longing looked like in each of those time frames.

    Sometimes, Often, Always

    sometimes

    I grieve the clusters of my past unknown to you

    the versions of me that leapt off campground piers fully clothed

    debated teachers, immune to my classmates discomfort

    plain naive, blind to friends who were withering trees

    I’ve been a jumper. I’ve been a fighter. I’ve been lost.

    would you have loved those hers like you do me?

    often

    I grieve the pockets of my present unseen by you

    barista catchphrases that keep me guessing,

    rare suburban roadkill, just furry guts and corny

    talkback radio on my lonely morning commute,

    people-watching at red lights, performing my idiosyncrasies

    for strangers who interpret them as accidental

    how would you have?

    always

    I am reaching for our shared future

    striving to close the distance

    between the sometimes and often

    between the echoes of togetherness

    that reverberate in the aching silence

    seconds after another airport goodbye

    when will the end come?

    until then

    we are an expanse of lost time

    still expanding.

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