Ink / Here
Roland Prevost
As for ink over here, it begins in the words of
French-Canadian songs memorized as a child, sung at late-night réveillions,
or in the summer at the family cottage by the campfire. Lyrics.
Lots of them. In metre and rhyme
often backed by a guitar and some kind of percussion, like a tambourine or
spoons, the stomp of feet, or hands clapping time. Playing with breath, voice, intonation . . .
and emotion. Everyone present took their
turn. I learned how songs could give
powerful expression to feelings. By my
early teens I started to write songs.
Something I've done for a lifetime.
Another lifelong writing practice has been keeping a
journal. It now stands at fifty-thousand
pages, give or take. If songs give expression to emotions, then the logbook (as
I tend to call it) acts as a potent mind-amp.
In the logbook, the reach of complexity, strength of focus, and accuracy
of recall all get boosted by the powers of ink.
Interestingly, many elements of Song and Journal can
marry: breath and focus, emotion and complexity, sounds and ideas, feelings and language, rhythm and thought.
Looking at this marriage, it's not surprising that I soon
wanted to write poetry.
Poetry's more intricate, I feel, than either logbook or
song. I can't see its borders. Which makes it particularly attractive.
~
Why write poetry?
First, out of a desire to encapsulate some of the mysteries
at here/now's edge. Self-expression
isn't exactly the correct term, though I've no objection to the word
'expression' by itself. I find it very
meaningful to try to give a body to that strange substance. An incarnation. That's at the core of why I even try.
Also, I've recently begun to feel something I'd not felt
before. Writing had always seemed a
solitary pursuit; I experienced no
desire for publication. Then I noticed
how many others were trying to put their work 'on River', making efforts to
pass it on. I realized that what I refer
to as my 'self' was in large part a patchwork of what I've found in thousands of
publicly shared artworks. Culture
suddenly felt like a third, unrecognized parent. So now, I sometimes add a publication attempt
to my creative ritual as many others did for me. I'm trying to keep faith with them. In a solidarity tinged with thanks.
Beyond that, trying to write poetry presents such a complex
and layered challenge. It's not always
easy, but when it succeeds it feels great to 'have written'. Like very few other things in life, it
provides me with a renewable 'tall enough mountain' to climb. A proper gerbil-wheel for my cage, if you
like.
Then there are my associations with members of the local
arts community. These exchanges result
in a rich sharing of substantive 'notes on being'. Artworks act as a starting point, providing
something in common to build on. I find
this social aspect of poetry worthwhile.
There are other more transient motivations over time, but
these four seem to have taken hold and keep me returning to the blank page.
~
How do I write poetry?
I've always had this Picture-Mind,
or Pixmind as I call it, as far back as I can remember. It provides me with an ability to call up
free-flowing pictures, like snippets of movies, if I just get out of the way. I often say it's like there's a constant
stream of images out there on the horizon.
That I can choose to watch or not.
This Pixmind's centrally involved in
writing poetry, for me.
Let's go through the actual steps, and you'll see what I
mean.
I wake up at six or seven in the
morning. Grab a quick breakfast, sip a
coffee. I want to get downstairs to my
poetry binder, pen and paper, as soon as possible. Preferably within ten or twenty minutes after
waking up, so that some of the sleepiness remains with me when I face the empty
page. A bit of dream-dust left in my
hair, so to speak.
When I get there, instead of trying to stake out a
linguistic terrain, I just wait. And a
picture comes. With no fingers
pressing. Most of the poems I write, if
you look, have an image at their core.
My approach involves writing a text-response to the
spontaneous graphic output (as with ekphrasis: texts in response to graphic
artworks). It's almost like writing
subtitles to a foreign film clip. These
'subtitles' end up providing the first seed-draft for a poem.
At this point, the poem's still very incomplete. I've no idea where it might eventually go or
what it might mean. But it hooks me
well enough to stay with it. I've often
said that I like to write into, instead of out of, inspiration. So long as I have this kind of visual seed to
start from, I feel able to do that.
It's only later that the time comes for applying
edit-transforms and somewhat more practical skills. That work gets done on the computer. Remove clichés, add some senses, adopt a voice
& tone, orchestrate a confluence, play with rhetorical forms of
meaning. A few hundred fairly loose
rules, more like tendencies towards certain do's and don'ts. My goal with editing is to sculpt the words
towards the original feel of the unscripted Pixmind.
I write poetry this way simply because other approaches
don't seem to get me there. Like anyone
else, I prefer what works.
Along the way, poetry's become my favourite sort of ink by
far.
Probably because it has such a mind of its own.
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