Critical Self Appraisal
I began writing this term with the theme of writing the visual as a starting point. Initially, I wrote in direct response to art works, for example, Shrinkwrapped was inspired by a Mark Rothko painting I saw at the Tate Modern gallery.The first and last stanzas directly relate to things I have seen within the paintwork but have described in a more metaphorical way. The second and third stanzas are different in that they employ aspects of synaesthesia – I have blended different kinds of sense impression by attributing smells and sounds to the visual piece. This is a recurring trope throughout my portfolio and a strength in my writing as a whole.
Submission was written in response to Tracey Emin’s photograph The Last Thing I Said To You Is Don’t Leave Me Here. Within this poem I couldn’t help but take into account the artist’s infamous character, particularly as she has placed herself within the piece. This therefore led me to create a narrative voice for the work, taken further than that which is primarily displayed within the image. I thought this was an interesting approach to the set theme and wanted to develop it further.
I wrote Nude In Studio after seeing the Janos Vaszary exhibition at the Hungarian National Gallery. This poem concludes in the penultimate stanza with a direct reference to the paint style and content of the painting but the rest of the poem is entirely imagined and based on my own impressions. This mainly came out of a feeling of sterility within the gallery and a desire to recreate the piece with a deeper sensuality. I think the influence of the context in which the painting was displayed is equally as important as the piece itself and this is also something that I used within Hagiographer.
I used a first person voice to personalise the poem and focused on a fictional story behind the artwork rather than the final, displayed piece. This is similar to Carol Anne Duffy’s Standing Female Nude, written on reflection of the sketch by Pablo Picasso. Both poems focus on the tensions between the artist and subject and build on this relationship to create drama which I think is more intruiging than a simple description of the piece.
Cells is the final poem in my submission portfolio that is written in direct response to a singular artwork; Louise Bourgeois’ Cells installations at the Tate Modern. I think at this point I had moved through a process of ekphrasis, becoming comfortable in writing small narratives and this had limited the variety of my working style. I now wanted to develop my ideas to something more intense and less bound by another artist’s concepts.
I read a great deal of Raymond Carver’s poems and ________ was the first poem I wrote that was influenced by his writing style. Rather than using fanciful language and metaphor, Carver’s poems are more matter of fact with a distinct openness. He creates small pictures that can be read on both a surface and deeper level, with a focus on themes of mortality and vulnerability. Dolour is also written in a similar style. I particularly like this poem as I think it is quite beautiful in its’ simplicity. I brought inanimate objects quietly to life to illustrate a feeling, for example the line ’The lamp plays hopscotch...’ This is also reminiscent of the line ’The floor tiles...play chess with the moon’ in Adam Zagajewski’s Dutch Painters, which I like a lot because of it’s playfulness. This style of writing is very different to the language I usually use but I think has helped to broaden my creative thinking.
All of my poems include a great deal of surrealsim and abstraction through the use of metaphor and physical description. This is particularly evident in Alize, Hagiographer and Etrog. I think this is one of my strengths and a technique I use constantly. This term I was more aware of using it as a device to highlight issues of defamiliarisation and alienation I experienced through my time spent in Budapest.
In his essay Formal Wear: Notes on Rhyme, Meter, Stanza and Pattern, George Szirtes argues that ’the gap between signifier and signified is potentially enormous.’ This was the focus of my visual Word and Image project (http://thewordandimage.blogspot.com) which is heavily interlinked with my poetry work this term. For example, the final stanza of Photograph describes the process we used in our visual work of applying ambiguous words to framed scenes in the urban environment of Budapest.
P.B. Shelley argues that poetry ’makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar by stripping the veil of familiarity from the world’. By undermining the environment through applying contradictorary labels, you are invited to look at it in a different way and similarly the use of surrealism and abstraction can emphasise this same feeling of defamiliarisation and invites the reader to consider normality in a more unusual and interesting way. The Word and Image project was therefore hugely influential in my writing and a topic I would like to continue working on.
Bovarysme was the beginning of another approach to the theme. I started writing about events that had happened to me but presented them as images as though they could have been paintings or photographs – almost as notional ekphrasis. This is also notable within Alize, Hagiographer and Etrog. From this pont onward my work took a cinematic turn, much as the poem Vanishing Point by Martin Figura describes a journey as though part of a film, I think my poems have a similar quality. However Bovarysme could be described as having more of a freeze frame effect than a ’life in one take’ style.
My two favourite poems within this collection are Photograph and Revolution Day. Both were inspired by George Szirtes’ Reel as I strived to recreate the same cinematic feeling and level of description to present the environment with more vividity. I think these poems are the most successful in presenting a real life scene as a bold image or series of images, ultimately Writing the Visual. In the Word and Image visual project, we placed frames in the public environment to re-present it as art, in these poems I feel I have placed a frame around a situation, presenting it in an artistic context.
I have used a free verse approach to my writing which I feel is less restrictive. Enjambment also features heavily to emphasise particular sentances and allow for a flowing run through that I do not think end-stopped lines can achieve. The language is very physical and the use of metaphor creates a vividity and sensuality within the collection as a whole. I have used a distinctly female first person voice because they are all very personal and I find it difficult to disattach myself through a third person voice. I also believe that my identity as a woman is very important and should therefore be projected in my writing.
Generally, I have been working through a process of compiling notes on paper which I word process into full poems, then submit to the bulletin board. This is an ever helpful forum which has helped me to redraft my work continuously. I then print my poems and annotate them before typing up redrafts. This term I have employed the additional resource of a blog which I have posted the majority of my draftwork on (http://laurayasmin.blogspot.com) which has been very helpful in managing and tracking the development of my work. I will continue to use this for future projects as I think it has benefitted my organisational skills a lot. I could also post images alongside the poems, but have decided not to do this with my final submission as I think the poems should be considered seperately and stand up in their own right.
Overall I am incredibly happy with my submission and I think that my writing and creative thinking has grown significantly through my experience of living abroad.
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