a handbound chapbook press based out of Gainesville, Florida. for information or to submit a manuscript, email [email protected]. titles are available on etsy.
Unthinkable Creatures is a little side project, and I've been busy with life the last few months, which is why I haven't published anything recently. Thanks for your patience and for continuing to read, send submissions, and support the small press community in the meantime.
Later this summer or early this fall we'll publish Trash by Adam Crittenden. Excited to put out these weird and clever poems about disposability and accumulation.
Next weekend I'll be doing a small second print run of quiet in the body by caelan tree. pre-order by friday if you want a copy.
i also made a small set of three instant-book zines, also available on the unthinkable creatures etsy.
Thinking of giving another big-box gift card to the literary person in your life? We at the Little Magazine Collection are here to help. Act now, before desperation sets in— and before these items sell out. (These also make good gifts to yourself.)
"there's such a rhythm to birth. The breath and pulse and contractions and movement. Intervals of noise and silence...." Interview with Valerie Wetlaufer
I emailed with Dr. Valerie Wetlaufer this morning about her chapbook nostrums: a handbook of the unborn, her work as a doula, and the relationship between birth culture and writing poetry.
1. Can you talk a little about your doula work? What sort of training and preparation is involved?
There are various ways to become a doula, but I happened to train through DONA International and the Aviva Institute, as well as a semester of midwifery college. I took a six-week course there, and I also did a weekend intensive training, followed by several "certification births," in order to become a certified birth doula. Being certified is a lengthy process involving a lot of self-study, as well as being able to prove you attended a certain number of births, and getting letters of recommendation and proving your training and such. I got into it in 2010, in Salt Lake City, where there is a strong and active doula community. I found it so nourishing to have something else to do besides PhD coursework, something so physical and communitarian. While the academy expects you to renounce and deny your corporeality for the sake of the mind, doula work and simply being around birth demands you inhabit it fully. It's hard work to help support a laboring person, often holding her up, and massaging her body, and being on your feet all night, and running to get things, and it also demands connection and cooperation, which I believe the academy also discourages. I had been interested in pregnancy and birth for as long as I can remember, so it came naturally that I would seek this out.
2. There are a lot of strong opinions in the writing community about "writing everything you see and experience," but as in my own writing i feel a conflict between that ethos and professional ethics/boundaries (I'm a social worker); i.e. that I have complicated feelings about writing how my experience intersects with someone else, especially in the capacity in which I work. Could you talk about the experience of writing about your work as a doula? Did you borrow from your clients' birth stories, and if so, how?
There are absolutely elements of my clients' birth stories in my writing, but nothing identifiable. I tend to write about things from my perspective, and about what I was thinking and feeling at certain moments, not actual details from births, though the sharing of birth stories is an important aspect of the birthing community. Telling one's story and normalizing birth is very important. I don't ever share someone else's story without permission (for example, there are clients' birth stories on my doula website), but there's also this sense, I believe, of the importance of sharing these stories. In my poetry life, though, it's much more associative for me. Something at a birth might trigger a memory of something else for me, and so on the page they all become entwined.
3. I was really struck by the image where you talk about how birth work is like being a poet. Can you say more about that?
The name of my doula business, Blooming Within, comes from an Audre Lorde poem, and my decision to finally become a doula started with literature about birth, so they feel very connected to me. It might be corny to compare the composition process to the birthing process, but I do see a lot of connection between birth work and ushering a poem into the world. Mary Shelley called her book Frankenstein her hideous progeny, so it's hardly a new idea. Also, there's such a rhythm to birth. The breath and pulse and contractions and movement. Intervals of noise and silence.
4. there is a tradition in feminist culture of "women's" capacity to give birth being a site of organizing and solidarity, whereas it seems like queer theory/politics rejects this, or anything that could be considered biological determinism or essentialism. You write that not all women have vaginas, and that not all vaginas belong to women, but you use feminine/maternal language throughout the text. you have a speaker who is not able to give birth herself who's intimately involved in birth. Can you talk about that, intellectually/creatively?
It's difficult to avoid the essentialism in the birth community. And because of the ways in which women are still oppressed, to have something that does feel so inherent--a capacity for childbirth--and to locate that as a source of power and pride, well, I think that's understandable. "Men say they can do anything better than women, but they can't do this." that sort of thing. And I understand it. And I've seen that be an extremely powerful organizing principle for many cis women. However, there are, as you note, many pitfalls to this kind of thinking. If we're defining women as someone who can bear children, but then here is this person who was assigned female at birth, but they're infertile, well that goes against our previous definition. And if we say only women can give birth, but so many transmen and genderqueer folks are getting pregnant, well, we can't limit things to gender. I don't identify as cis. I try to be careful with language around birth, and my doula website is gender neutral. At least that's what I've aimed for. I'm more likely to use gendered language in relation to specific cases or specific people who identify as female. All my clients so far have been cis women. And I think it's ok to acknowledge the legacy of female knowledge and experience when it comes to midwives and other birth workers, as well as the mothers themselves. The problem with wanting to use gender neutral language is that it is quick to erase a powerful legacy that was dependent on gender. Midwives were historically accused of witchcraft and persecuted for the knowledge they had, knowledge about the bodies of women, and the so-called "female" body has long been this mystery. So many scientific studies are still based on the "male" body as the default. That has very real consequences for FAAB folks. My problem with so much of the focus being on language usage--while that is important, for sure--is that it is so quick to reject anything that has been historically gendered. I definitely still struggle with this, and I slip up in my language all the time. I struggle with the way the queer community actually ends up these days denying the body. Bodily experiences are often--for better or worse--gendered, and theory doesn't like the body, so it rejects that. I'm not arguing for essentialism here, I'm saying that for myself and a lot of folks I know, certain physical experiences bring out gender feelings that don't always easily reconcile along the lines that theory tells us they should. I'm not sure I have any real answers here, because this is something I still struggle with myself, to be honest.
5. I know your book, Mysterious Acts by My People is coming out in a few months, and so is the journal you edit, Adrienne.(congratulations on both!) What are you working on now?
Right now I'm preparing my 2nd book (though first in order of composition), Call Me by My Other Name, to be submitted for publication, and I'm working on composing my third book, which deals a lot with corporeal alterity, especially fatness and disability. And also there's a lot about food in the book. I try to write a poem a day, so I'm always working, but these days I'm really focused on revision, taking these daily drafts and making them into fully-formed poems.
(order nostrums: a handbook of the unborn from unthinkable creatures' etsy store!)
Hey. Please read this. PLEASE SHARE PLEASE PLEASE REBLOG.
Hi. My name’s Madison Lynn. I’m a queer trans lady who lives in Detroit and writes short fiction, monologues and poetry. You may have read my short story “Stones Stand Still” featured in Topside Press’ The Collection or…
I’m reblogging this because hey: I just got out of another 24 hours in the emergency room followed by 7 days of the worst care I’ve ever received in a psychiatric institution. More hospital bills, more time off work, more community support needed. Please consider reading this again. Please consider reblogging for support. Please consider donating something (anything) to a queer in a lot of need right now (in exchange for some really neat ‘zines, short stories and never-before-seen material from yours truly - your favorite writer (mentally-ill transgender, midwest category).
tree! i have been meaning to take a picture of your chapbook since i got it. it was a hard picture to take. the goats wanted to eat both your chapbook and my phone. the one on the left is celeste and she is my favorite goat ever ever ever. the other one is zela.
anyway, y’all, tree’s chapbook, quiet in the body, is great. 10 out of 10 goats would chew on it again.
quiet in the body is full of these quietly heartbreaking honest poems that are beautiful and true and the workbook part is really important. parts of it reminded me of The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers by Bhanu Kapil. if i read something that’s really good, it makes me want to write, and quiet in the body has led me to fill up my notebook and make some of the most substantial work on both my memoirs and recovery i’ve done in a very long time. it’s as gentle and encouraging as i think of tree.
