Writing in February

There have been times when the gigs got in the way, and I wasn’t able to write all week when the Finns were here. I have been breaking up the research with poetry. It has been very productive, a good mix of research, writing and editing. The Traci Lords research I did came out in some new poems. The process of writing these new poems was interesting to me. For one thing, I made myself write them in chronological order, I don’t know why. But it felt important to do it that way. I wonder if this was because I didn’t want to jump into the more grim subject matter right away, and it was a way to avoid it for a while. I found myself sort of writing from someone else’s point if view, which I have done before, but it seems not so deliberately and intensively, and using language which isn’t even close to my own (dialect, colloquial ways of speech, use of words etc.) There are so many limitations, and a sort of freedom with this, which was interesting. I found myself putting off writing the first sex poem by spending two days writing short poems to scatter throughout the piece, that are sort of a journey.

Then I had to get into the sex stuff and I found it physically draining to write the poems, a new sensation with writing that hasn’t come to me before. Sure, I’ve been tired, or sick of seeing a monitor, but I felt like I had been digging in a field after spending the day writing the sex poems. I knew I didn’t want to go there, and then made myself go there anyway. This leads me to ask why I did that, why I pushed myself to write about something I must find so distasteful, when I don’t have to. For the past year I had been writing with a collection in mind, a publisher already there, and knew I had to get on with writing poems for that collection to complete it. But this time, there is no such external need for the work, which makes the question of why I made myself write something so mentally and physically demanding all the more challenging. I don’t know. The sex poem that came out is the longest poem I have ever written, and yet it seems that there isn’t the option of cutting it, as it doesn’t seem unnecessary, or gratuitous. It surprised me, in dealing with innocence, expectations, a transition, and yes sex, but also love. Love is what surprised me the most. I suspect it is the kind of poem people really wouldn’t want to hear at a reading. It is probably the saddest poem I have ever written, and yet the most tender. Without the length it would seem unredeemable, I had to make it worth it with other things in it beside the acts. I came away from writing the second draft feeling drained, a bit like you do when your blood sugar drops, and had a can of beer to sort of distance the process. I’m amazed writing can do this to me; it’s a new sensation.

A few weeks later I showed the poem to Jo Colley and Kate Fox, they are my new poetry buddies, and we try to meet up now and then to sort of get some feedback and sound out new work. This is so great, it’s hard to find people who will look at your new poems, and even harder to find people you trust to give feedback. I had a feeling of wanting to show them the new poems, but also wanting to drag the sheet out their hands and bury it with this one particular poem. Wanting to show the poem, and not wanting anyone to see it- I think because I knew it was a miserable poem, and I felt guilty for making them go to a miserable place to hear it. As for reading it, in a way I didn’t want to read it, because it was hard to read, hard to keep going when I could hear the silence in the room and sense them really actually listening. There is always that oddness of reading, if you are reading a darker poem, the silence of the audience is almost unbearable. It is lonely to read serious poems, and have that silence around you, you wonder if people are bored, if they think it’s crap, part of you wants to make a joke half way through to get something back. It must be nice to have funny poems to fall back on, to get some reassurance. I think it the silence must be something we should get used to, and respect, but it’s hard when there is always going to be the element of wanting to feel liked. This particular poem seemed to magnify this feeling. I read to them, and we were quiet for what seemed like ages after, though it was probably only a few seconds. I hope they liked the poem, and I am sorry if it is a hard poem to hear. Thing is it feels like a personal poem probably to listen to, even though it is about someone else and uses their voice. I was pleased with poem in a way, though it isn’t one I will ever send out due to its length.

Later in the week, and the one after, I had to continue with the sex poems. This time I had to do research, of buying a porn mag. This was so dreadful to me; I have never bought one before, and sort of felt implicated in the whole industry by doing so. I could have not bought one and guessed I suppose, but it felt like cheating. It took me a week to pluck up the courage, and I ended up putting on a big coat and going to a newsagent near Byker where no one would recognize me in order to do it! This is so silly, I have always thought I am quite open minded, and sure I have seen porn mags before (I house-sat once in my early 20’s and found a big stack of them, quite out in the open, in the house of a friend’s aunty. We were grossed out, but did in fact read them for the whole fortnight, a sort of morbid fascination, a ‘yeah right’ to the letters page, and a ‘yuk, but how are they doing that?’ to the pictures.) I bought lots of other magazines to sort of disguise what I was actually buying, and was very aware of some young student lad in the queue behind me looking at what I was buying as the shopkeeper struggled to find the barcode. All the way home I wondered if he was thinking, yeah, a woman buying porn! When I got home I had to hide the magazine, I have no idea why, and then go back and look at it the next day. I was surprised by my reaction, of feeling so sad, and so yes, shocked. You hit 30 and think nothing will surprise you anymore, and certainly not shock. But I was shocked, shocked at the pictures, and the odd lack of eroticism in the pictures, shocked by what I was seeing, the glossiness, the letters page, and by the captions (one page was artfully called Hairy Russian Twats for god sake- is it just me, or could they have found a less sort for insulting way to describe what they wanted to?) The whole thing was a puzzle I couldn’t solve. In terms of research it is probably the oddest thing I’ll ever do, but also strangely satisfying to find reactions I never knew would be there. Now of course I’m stuck with the damn magazine, I can’t stand to put in the recycling pile incase the men see it and think thereafter that’s the porno house! How sad is that? Do you think it would be better if I put a post-it on the cover stating I bought this strictly in the name of research ?! Partly I am paranoid that one of the recycling men will recycle it in his own way, and that is even worse. I’m wondering what uses I can find for the damn thing, there is an evil side of me that wants to put a stack of Bella’s around it and leave it in the dentists, and a better side that wants to learn how to make handmade paper so I can make some with the thing and write something beautiful on it (and yeah, of course, send letters to nice people on it, like my mum!)

If you have any suggestions of what you would do with my porn mag, please email me them, and I will send the one I like most the magazine (if they so wish!)