Tag: poetry

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‘he never came on my stomach/also he was afraid of elevators’

Accidental social media poets gaining credibility in the arts scene

Social media: the beast without a conscience, a filter, or any real artistic relevance. In fact, its use normally invokes a sense of mindlessness, of inane commentaries or agenda-pushing statuses. But for 22-year-old Los Angelean and creative prodigy Mira Gonzalez, Twitter became a creative vehicle, a prompt to produce a collection of succinct, self-aware poems that would become part of a movement that I’ll refer to as “Twitterature.”

In her own words: “hell hath no fury like a woman on social media.”

Gonzalez writes with a bald, almost vile honesty about topics like drugs, sex, loneliness, self-loathing and recklessness. Most are anecdotal, based off of her own experiments with prescription drugs, loneliness and sexual trysts with unconventional men. Her Twitter feed is a collection of pithy and darkly humorous updates, which she amassed into an anthology, i will never be beautiful enough to make us beautiful together, published by Sorry House in 2013. However, after Lena Dunham instagrammed a photo of the book earlier this year, Gonzalez became more visible—and distinguishable—among her literary peers.

Her publisher’s description of her work states that she is “brutally honest to the point of appearing unhinged or wildly fantastic,” and a who’s-who of readers have come forward to acclaim her brazen and nervy approach to daily activities and thoughts. Blake Butler, writer and editor of HTML Giant, said it straight in his review of the anthology: “It’s messed up and feels honest, open, like lying naked on the floor with your arms chopped off.”

More established poets denounce this form of self-expression, claiming that it glorifies and beautifies depression and self-damaging, self-deprecating habits. They are also ruffled by the non-exclusivity of this type of movement. Twitterature, for the most part, threatens those people who write heavily veiled, heavily nuanced pieces of work. The simplicity of Gonzalez’s poems cause some to question their depth. Her lack of formal education also brings her talent and understanding of literature into question.

Also, they’re readily available to reject stanzas like “he said ‘I’m gonna come on your stomach’ 15 to 20 times while/ breathing heavily and putting his penis on different parts of my stomach/ every time I attempted to touch his penis he moved my hand away/eventually I gave up on trying to interact with his penis/ he never came on my stomach/also he was afraid of elevators.”

But aside from style and overall pretension, Gonzalez and other Twitterature figures are distinguished by their openness and honesty. In an interview with Vice, she stated that hiding the truth about her drug use would be hiding a part of who she is. Twitterature is less involved, less focused on the overall impact or analysis of the work, rather than putting the poetry into the public domain in a non-exclusive, somewhat ubiquitous way. The “club” or “venture” itself isn’t discriminatory. Gonzalez tweeted, quite candidly, that “being a poet is cool if you like being poor and unhappy.” The emphasis of her work is honesty and impact.

Gonzalez also warns us, and her publishers, to look out for her next manuscript: “a piece of paper that says ‘can i have money’ written in my own blood.”

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Arts

A multidisciplinary show, made just for you

Body Slam will take place Sept. 28 at 8 p.m. at MAI located at 3680 Jeanne-Mance St. Photo by Andréa de Keijzer.

Mouths ready to recite poetry; legs angled to dance; fingers poised to play music; minds itching to improvise. Together, Body Slam artists will perform on Sept. 28 at MAI (Montreal, arts interculturels). Body Slam is a collective of dancers, musicians, poets and circus artists who explore human nature, through live improvised performances. Gregory Selinger, a former Concordia contemporary dance student, is the artistic director of this collective.

Body Slam will take place Sept. 28 at 8 p.m. at MAI located at 3680 Jeanne-Mance St. Photo by Andréa de Keijzer.

The idea of creating Body Slam came to Selinger when he was picked to perform six shows at the Montreal Fringe Festival in 2011, the first of many subsequent performances. He had planned to perform with friends, but a few days before their performance, Selinger realized that his partners would not have time to do it. At that moment, the idea of live improvisation arose.

“It seemed like the best bet was to kind of let people present what they wanted to present,” said Selinger.

The show became easier to organize because different artists could just drop in, and they didn’t have to do all of the six performances. Some performers could only be there for one or two shows.

Attending a Body Slam allows you to “get to be part of a moment where artists are taking real risks,” Selinger explained. They create their performances in front of the audience. According to Selinger, it makes each show very different than that created in studios. Every performance is unique – sometimes they plan a little what they want to do, sometimes not, but they always try to get inspiration from the public.

During one of their first big improvisations, for example, the artists were stuck and could not find an idea. Then a cell phone rang amongst the audience and the performers simply started improvising off of the ringtone. Artists also once asked audience members, before the performance, to write a suggested title for the show. They randomly picked out three of those suggestions and improvised from them.

Body Slam has changed across time. At its onset, small groups of artists would create unrelated short pieces. Some of them were prepared before the performance. They had a stage manager who determined whose turn it was to be on stage. When the stage manager could not make it to one of the shows, the structure of the organization changed. They started improvising the entire show together and stopped presenting unrelated short parts.

“I felt that there was more coherence to it,” added Selinger.

The recruitment process to find artists is a “little all over the place,” said Selinger. He met the 20 artists he is working with from Concordia, from the Montreal dance scene and from a little bit of everywhere. He even recruits artists he meets on the street. Just a couple of days ago, the artistic director told The Concordian, that he invited a girl who was playing the piano near Guy-Concordia metro to join them on their project.

There is still some preparation that goes into creating the shows, however. Though the “ideal is just to jump on stage…to completely be in the moment and not have rules to follow,” Selinger says he has to be careful and still keep a little bit of structure so it doesn’t become chaotic. They now have weekly practices for artists to get to know each other and to practice structures and exercises of improvisation so that they feel more secure on stage.

Body Slam will take place Sept. 28 at 8 p.m. at MAI located at 3680 Jeanne-Mance St.

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Digging deep but coming up short

Available for $14.95 online at kasinihouseartshop.com/magazine
Available for $14.95 online at kasinihouseartshop.com

It’s the crack of noon, so roll yourself out of bed, brew a cup of extra strong tea and settle in with the philosophically melancholy characters featured in Guillaume Morissette’s debut collection of stories and poems, I Am My Own Betrayal.

Comprised of five short stories and ten poems, the Concordia student’s first collection is beautifully written but thematically stale. The main characters featured in each piece, are all obsessed with themselves, they wax poetically and philosophically on the staleness that is their day to day, moaning about their relationships or lack thereof.

Although anyone who’s ever suffered from perpetual or occasional depression will be able to relate to these sentiments, the novelty of Morissette’s crafted observational insight into melancholy and anxiety wears thin with repetition.

The writing is of high literary quality. Morissette is a master of the clever metaphor and visual metonymy, offering a unique take on the everyday. He astutely comments on everything from beer cans to the bustling metropolis of Montreal with candor and wit.

“We bought beer earlier and the beer we bought seems to have awarded itself a blue ribbon, for prettiest beer maybe,” writes Morissette.

In Vaster emptiness achieved, a story about a friendship carried out mainly through email, it is punctuated by one liners, reminiscent of facebook status updates. The narrator and his friend Anika, write to each other in beautifully insightful, melodious style, which is fun to read, but makes you wonder whether there are real people who talk this way, or if Morissette has taken literary license in appropriating dialogue to fit his style of writing.

It is Morissette’s style of writing that makes the collection worth reading. He crafts wonderfully vivid and interesting descriptions, such as how the world looks when you’re tipsy from drinking too large a pitcher of beer.

“The room is slowly starting to go diagonal, zig-zags. it comes at you, leaves and then comes at you again, like a game of ball-in-a-cup in which the ball is the room.” This excerpt comes from the story Banhood, which again plays with the theme of a young person feeling inadequate and generally despondent.

Concordia student and author Guillaume Morissette,

Morissette’s poems also play with this theme: in the poem I hate myself, he writes “a purpose is a person but backwards; if there’s a place where I belong I have already ruined it.”

The only poem where the narrator gives a concrete reason for being depressed is Poems are for no one, very long poems are for themselves, where the narrator is lamenting over a failed relationship. Morissette brings freshness to the classic poetry theme by appropriating the narrator’s feelings of longing to the bed.

my bed is a mess, it misses you. it’s been
having nightmares about being suffocated to
death with a red pillow. to calm the bed down
I have read the bed a bedtime story of printed-out
e-zine articles on ways to overcome a heartbreak.

I Am My Own Betrayal, is a collection that clearly demonstrates Morissette’s literary talent, but could use a little thematic variation and maybe a few more rays of sunshine.

I Am My Own Betrayal is available for purchase at Maison Kasini, suite 408 in the Belgo and online at http://kasinihouseartshop.com/magazine/

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