Feral Poetics

materials towards a feral poetics. by Michelle Detorie

[leirelatent]

“Cats Instructed By an Owl in the Art of Mouse-Catching” (1700)

[englishable]

Old English just has some wonderful words and kennings. I mean, really:

Their word for sea? It was often swan-rad or “road of the swan.” Spider was gangelwaefre, literally “the walking weaver.” They had the simple and now-obsolete word uht, which describes that time just before sunrise when mist still hangs heavy over all the fields and lakes and the last few stars are still out.

…Also, they didn’t say body. They said ban-cofan, which means “bone-cave,” and if you don’t think that’s some hardcore shit right there then you need to get out of my face before I turn your skull into a mead-cup.

[loneberry]

Hélène Cixous on details

The Detail makes the Tragedy. No atrocious Tale possible without the frail crack in the wall that surrounds the unspeakable. Othello is contained in a handkerchief. This Handkerchief turns anyone who touches it into a monster. The Detail is this seepage and this handkerchief, which hides-shows, gives on the scene impossible to behold. The Detail is the representative and representation of the act of mutation that turns people like you and me into the monsters of Tales. The Detail is a visual shibboleth, dreadful to behold. Whoever sets eyes on it will never again be the same. Generally, when you enter the Tale for the first time, you pass over the Detail without noticing it. It gets lost among the host of signs. It was only many years later I noticed the Detail that gives us access to ‘‘The Metamorphosis’’ (‘‘Die Verwandlung’’) though it is perfectly obvious in the entryway where it vegetates and stinks, the eternal cadaver posted as a warning to the reader. But as it doesn’t call out or moan or squeak the avid visitor sweeps indifferently past the prophetic vignette and throws himself into the front room from which he doesn’t emerge alive. If only you’d read the warning Nothing wouldn’t have happened. But by definition the Detail hides what it shows. You can always look at the engraving Gregor Samsa cut out and deliberately framed in gilt on page one of the Tale, but it just so happens you still don’t see it you never will. The law of Details, how to think of its tricks? It hits you in the eye. 

That engraving is a picture of the future. 

Why do we always take the roads to madness? But for my mother who goes straight I have always gone zigzag.  

[From Manhattan: Letters from Prehistory]

[bibliomancyoracle]

Not knowing any better  is all primitive means. 

  *

  from “Reservations” by Jackie Clark

[womenandanimalsnotebook-blog]

I am glad that this book is the first book. It came out of my bones. I pulled out what was already there. This is of course a type of making, but much of my earlier work was more consciously crafted to look or sound a certain way and do a certain thing. With After-Cave, my work was to have the language and the shapes they made on the page honor the way the words had already grown inside my body. This required crafting and intention, but some of that was to make room for a type of risk-taking where my relationship to the language and page space was open and messy, because the way the language coalesced and sytancitically constellated and unfurled in my body-swamp was open and messy. And plastic. How do you put things that are alive and moving on that page? For the past several years I have been very preoccupied with the notion of ferality, and how feral creatures and organisms trouble and adapt . In this way, I feel like After-Cave is a feral type of writing.

[feralpoetics-blog]

eohippus labs is excited to announce the publication of Acts + Encounters, a book project collaboration with Poetry + Politics Imprint. Acts + Encounters grew out of the two-day conference, “Emergent Communities in Contemporary Experimental Writing,” held at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2012. The texts included in Acts + Encounters were solicited from conference participants, and delineate and expand on questions of experimental writing and community that were first addressed at the conference.

Edited by Andrea Quaid and Juliana Leslie, Acts + Encounters is a collection of twelve individual pamphlets housed in a custom designed slipcase. Artist and printer Maggi Lomeli designed and printed the slipcase cover. The project brings together the work of poets and authors from across the United States, and includes Ronaldo V. Wilson’sPoetics in Delusion or After Bitterness, Amanda Ackerman’s I Did Not Write This by Myself, the Atlanta Poets Group’s Local Plural Vocal: Community, the We-Agent, and the APG, Belladonna’s* An Assignment: Notes on Structure, Teresa Carmody’s Making as Content: I’ll Drown My Book as Feminist Community, Michelle Detorie’s Notes Towards A Feral Poetics, Jen Hofer’s Materiality: Mortality notes on the making and context of “Uncovering: A Quilted Poem Made from Donated and Foraged Materials from Wendover, Utah.”, Tung-Hui Hu’s The Last Time You Cried, Petra Kuppers’ Lit Skin: Collaboration in Water, Land, Body Poetics, Jill Magi’s Quitting, Manifesting, Theorizing the Perishable, Vanessa Place’s Zombie Poetry and Wendy S. Walters’ Notes on The Short-term “We”: Collaborative Communities of Known Duration.

[judyxberman]

I’m fascinated by femininity, and how perfect femininity seems so unattainable, but that a lot of what is desired is this perfection, to be polished, to be perfectly groomed. I find flaws in the performance of femininity much more beautiful, the feral — the chips in the glittery nail polish, the pained cuticles, the unbrushed hair, the holes in stockings. It’s always struck me as impossible, to be groomed, and so expensive and time-consuming. That doesn’t mean I don’t try, but I do it quite badly, my femininity often feels like a total failure. I feel that even more, here living in New York, among people who spend so much time and energy and money constructing and curating themselves.

Kate Zambreno, in a fantastic conversation with Karolina Waclawiak about Zambreno’s book, Green Girl (via judyxberman)

[feralpoetics-blog]

[feministgodzilla-blog]

[bibliomancyoracle]

No matter what          you do — no matter who — you cannot catch us           once were through.

*

from “Fallopian Blooms” by Michelle Detorie

[feralpoetics-blog]

My "Notes Towards a Feral Poetics" essay is included in this wonderful collection.

[feralpoetics-blog]

IN OTHER EDENS: On Amanda Ackerman’s <em>The Book of Feral Flora</em>

In which I talk about reading Amanda Ackerman’s The Book of Feral Flora and Amanda talks about making The Book of Feral Flora. Divya: Reading The Book of Feral Flora  Feral. /ˈfɪərəl/ /ˈfɛrəl/ Latin fera wild beast Of an animal: Wild, untamed. Of a plant, also (rarely), of ground: Uncultivated. 1659   Daniel Pell, preacher:   “It [...]

[womenpoetswearingsweatpants]

Michelle Detorie

[odditiesoflife]

Abandoned Cottages in the Woods Overtaken by Animals

In a series titled Once Upon a Home, photographer Kai Fagerström captured the new residents of abandoned cottages in the woods. After residents had passed away or relocated, a group of feral animals took over the spaces. In a story published for National Geographic, Fagerström captured the “wild squatters” in a handful of derelict dwellings near his family’s summer home in rural Suomusjärvi, Finland.

sources 1, 2

[feralpoetics-blog]

abstract for "are women and animals real?"

presented at &now 2011 @ UCSD

This lecture presentation introduces fragments of research conducted over the last 35 years into the following question: women and animals, are they real? Accompanying this talk will be a powerpoint presentation and 3-dimensional art-objects and artifacts providing visual evidence and provocation vis-à-vis our central thesis. This lecture/presentation will also serve as a real time test of the veracity and/or the verisimilitude of women and animals, and the audience will surely come away with a firm opinion regarding the ontological status of either or both. Along the way, the following thinkers may be indexed: Donna Harroway, Elizabeth Grosz, Haryette Mullen, Carol Emshwiller, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and others. Sub-topics and intersections could include time-travel, interspecies friendship, future communities, and a shared animal past. We believe that these concerns chime harmoniously with the broader mandate 2011 &Now conference and share in the wider project of collectively rethinking our coming communities. 

[feralpoetics-blog]

abstract for emergent communities conferene

Emergent Communities in Contemporary Experimental Writing 

UCSC, May 4-5 2012

Abstract: Notes towards a Feral Poetics

About 300 feral ponies inhabit Assateague, a small and narrow barrier island off the coasts of Maryland and Virginia.  Although the precise nature of how the ponies came to live on Assateague remains a mystery, a popular legend suggests that the ponies are the descendants of those who escaped from a shipwrecked Spanish galleon in the 16th century.  However they arrived, the horses adapted to the harsh island conditions – developing distinct characteristics — and thrived.

In this paper––part of a continuing project that meditates upon the politics of interspecies affiliations, affinities, and alliances––I explore a series of interrelated questions provoked by the Assateague ponies. How can we use this story of feral marronage as a model for community-building and artistic, poetic, and/or pedagogical practice? How can we draw upon this allegory to better understand artistic and experimental writing communities––particularly feminist communities––that have challenged literary traditions and other political and social constructs? And how might a feral poetics undermine the duplicitous categories of "wild," "tame," and "domestic"? I enlist a variety of thinkers to help guide this inquiry, including Alice Notley, Fanny Howe, Donna Haraway, Elizabeth Grosz, Harryette Mullen, Carol Emshwiller, Trinh T. Minh-ha, and bell hooks.

Accompanying this talk will be a powerpoint presentation and artifacts providing visual evidence and provocation vis-à-vis the exploration of a feral poetics.

[feralpoetics-blog]

Abandoned House in the Woods Taken Over by Wild Animals

Finnish photographer Kai Fagerström presents unique photo series, where he captures wild animals making themselves comfortable in abandoned houses in the woods of Finland. Titled The House in the Woods, the photo series is set in cottages near Kai's summer house, which were abandoned by their ...