Opia Lucy Harbron
Transporting & Torturing (a note on the writing process)
In January 2017 I was sexually assaulted, and it is no coincidence that some of the most tumultuous months of my life merged into the most creative. Maybe no one could tell, but my work became covered in hands and eyes, the same images running through my poetry as they painfully spiralled ceaselessly in my brain during the healing period. And I never intended for that, I intended to never write about it, never wanted to cement the experience within my body of work; but I’ve written poetry as a diary since I was thirteen. My work has forever been thoroughly selfish, consciously or not. There have always been hands and eyes on my work, but I didn’t contemplate it until they weren’t mine. I see this most clearly in two of my poems; A Sunset Over The Tree and The Hand. Both poems tackle the subject of my assault, and following events and recovery from the trauma; I see that night in them, others probably don’t. During these months, I was reminded of Patti Smith’s words; ‘You just keep doing your work because you have to.’1 Smith’s discussion of poetry and art as a subconscious need reflecting the human necessity to express our emotions and experiences changed how I began to view my work, previously shrugging it off as a teenage diary written somewhat more eloquently in images and metaphor. Patti Smith is my biggest inspiration in writing, with traces of her extremely personal yet thoughtful and eloquent style underlying in my work. I always believed her thought to be true, that writing was a need as I felt my hand tugging
1
Louisiana Channel, Patti Smith Interview : Advice To The Young, (2012), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2EO3aXTWwg, [accessed 21/4/17}
to try and work this through, find some way to write out what had happened. Patti Smith’s discussion of her own writing, writing I admire and aspire to match in quality, affirmed that my work based on personal experience was just as worthy as, she claimed, poets are ‘channelling … the purer circumstances.’ It is this honesty, the inability to hide your thoughts from your pen that makes ‘the act of writing [both] torturous… and transporting.’2 These two states are reflected in the two pieces; A Sunset Over The Tree was transporting, reflecting my feelings into a different setting, The Hand was torturous, head on and violent. The process of writing A Sunset over the tree extremely different to my other works. My writing process is normally nothing then everything; it rolls onto the page completed and I tidy it up later paying more attention to grammar, pace and consistency in imagery and tone. However, this poem fell out in 4 different drafts, 4 different voices and numerous ripped out pages of nothing. I battled with these two sides of writing; transporting and torturous. My hand couldn’t decide if I was ready for everyone to know my pain yet. As in my life, I wasn’t ready to talk about it, but I could feel it burning. First emerged a draft titled A Poem For Awakening; ‘The hands on my body said That’s it This is all you could know They said I mean who can blame it
2
Dazed Digital, Patti Smith On Writing Poetry, (2015), http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/19528/1/patti-smith-on-writing-poetry [accessed 2/5/17]
on the girl when she never did see it coming, she never quite knew what it was’ I didn’t like the tone here, it gave something but not everything, I felt I was cheating, so I retired this draft. I then transported it, distracted the context with dreams of Eve. Studying Genesis earlier this year left me fascinated with the character, I wanted to know what she would’ve thought or how she would’ve recovered from the fall as a character created without consent, given to a man without consent, tricked and blamed. I wrote an initial thought on the 9th March, already covered in eyes; ‘Was there a sky in the garden of eden or were there only eyes and eyes and eyes’ And for a while that voice was enough. But something about it felt incomplete, like I had yet to find a purpose in the poem when it was skating around the subject, cutting out lines that travelled a little too close to home. I listened to Kate Bush’s extended piece ‘An Endless Sky Of Honey’, trying to find inspiration to write about the sky in the Garden of Eden. But nothing urged me to write, except the lyric; ‘we’re gonna be laughing about this we’re gonna be dancing around it’s gonna be so good now.’ I imagined the voice of Eve saying it to herself as an affirmation, and I wanted to say it to myself too, a reassurance for both of us that this season of healing would
end, I’d learn, and I’d get back to dancing in clubs with friends, quiet-minded. I took her hand and joined our voices, letting myself come back into my own poem. The final draft of the poem is hands held. It keeps the initial line that I couldn’t shake- ‘the hands on my body said’- giving acknowledgement to the cause, but I transported my feelings into images of greenery, changing season and a garden you can see but have to leave. I kept doing my work, as Patti Smith said, but I pushed it away just far enough for the time being. I couldn’t not write, I just couldn’t write about what had happened yet, not quite ready for the torture. Writing is a well-known, successful recovery treatment, and technique used within mental health intervention and counselling. It’s regarded as ‘a medium of professional help and healing in the various interventional tiers of self-help, education, promotion, prevention, and psychotherapy, and rehabilitation,’3 allowing people to express their feelings and experiences but somewhat control the presentation and intensity with which they confront them. The concept of writing as a healing process is something I’ve always believed in, and I definitely find beneficial. When I eventually started counselling, my counsellor set me writing challenges, encouraging me to try to begin confronting the memories in my head, softly, then more and more, until I could write out exactly what I remembered, step by step. There is undoubtedly something cathartic in sitting with your feelings, allowing yourself to slip into them and turn them into a piece of art. Taking something sharp and painful like a strong emotion, and turning it into something mouldable and beautiful like a poem, if nothing else, allows a sense of ownership over your 3
Laura G. Sweeney, Research On Writing; Approaches An Mental Health, (Emerald group publishing limited, UK, 2011), pp. XI
feelings and experiences. I transported until I ran out of places to go, a period marked by a series of metaphorical and character poems that contained only drips of me. Then on the 12th April, I wrote The Hand. Frank O’Hara realised of his own writing, that he could ‘could use the telephone instead of writing the poem.’4 This is a thought that translates into The Hand, a poem about my trauma affecting other relationships, and having it used against me, written directly to my partner at the time of the assault. This poem represents the torturous side of writing; written in a trance of anger and upset, so deep that the moments of pen to paper are lost in the memory. This was the burst, the overflow that I’d been pushing down for so long. To me, this reflects in the violence in the words ‘stamped’, ‘bruised’, finally using physical, body imagery, and in the last lines which are confrontational in their approach and voice; ‘then look at me in disgust when I am it, when you can see me as anything other than the hand.’ I took increasing care when editing The Hand, choosing to only alter the grammar and line breaks without changing any of the content or word choice. An important aspect of personal writing is to respect your emotions and not overedit your inner voice, I was cautious to not lose the intensity created in the release of emotion, making this poem the least edited I’ve ever released.
4
Frank O’Hara, Personism: A Manifesto, (1959), http://opencourses.uoa.gr/modules/document/file.php/ENL9/Instructional%20Package/Texts//Readings/Wee k%203%3A%20Pop%20art%3A%20breaking%20down%20the%20boundaries%20between%20high%20and%20 low/Frank%20O%27Hara%20Personism-2.pdf [accessed 21/4/17], pp.2
Even though these two poems directly about my trauma and healing from the incident; traces of it are everywhere; in images of being frozen, and repeated mention of skin and hands that began to creep into my work, unable to keep the images haunting in my head from hitting the paper. It was this reason that I’ve called this collection Opia, a nod to this mix of invasion and vulnerability in a collection that is as confrontational as it is soft and naïve. A nod to the transportation and torture of allowing yourself to remain open and honest in your art. A nod to how I felt. My poetry has and always will be all me, all mine. I write about my life, dipped in a coating of advice from writers that inspire me, stories I’ve heard that stayed with me and faces of women like Eve that take my hand when I write from time to time. But the grounding is always in me, my psyche and my pain. When Patti Smith said; ‘you keep doing your work because you have to’5, I believe that is what she was talking about; using your work as a coping mechanism or a process to organise and reorganise your thoughts, emerge from the trance and be met with your true feelings on a page in front of you in a way that isn’t hurtful but eye-opening. Control it when you need to, let it pour when you’re ready. I’ll be transported, I’ll be tortured, maybe I will be tainted by the hands and the eyes. But now I have these poems, and that’s the reward, an unburdening of unresolved emotion. Close the notepad, walk away lighter.
5
Louisiana Channel, Patti Smith Interview : Advice To The Young, (2012), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2EO3aXTWwg, [accessed 21/4/17}
OPIA n. the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable.
A Sunset Over The Tree The hands on my body said; this is it now. They melted into my every line and dimple and turned me grey, broken green, the colour of leaves fallen and decaying, left now. I had no choice; you can’t get back into the garden, can’t apologise now you’re forbidden. You can’t re-attach; too far down and the seasons had changed though I couldn’t tell by the shade of the gravel. The voices leaked out through the cracks, the screaming whisper of their hatred echoed over every surface, I shivered. I screamed, I cried, I surrendered to the changing colours again and again until it revolved about around to yellow light, bearing green. Whispering, whispering warm words over the top as the lines fade into the new sea;
‘we’re gonna to be laughing about this It’s gonna to be so good now.’
I don’t need the garden to grow.
The Hand It was stamped all over me, a hand, two hands; gigantic and red and smothering. Stamped, again and again, with a force that made my skin convex, pushed me into the shape. My cells pulling, trying to avoid it, but thinner skin bruises easily.
You slipped your hand into the hand, began to wear it as a puppet, acting like it had a life of its own. But you touched me still, caressed me with the same look in your eyes, the same taste of compliments dripping off your tongue in the shower. I guess sometimes you’re left, sometimes you’re right, sometimes it was the hand.
It must have been, because here I am still bruised and moulded. A push from my elastin, a push from your hand, in the hand, a pressure too hard that maybe I became it after it touched, you touched, it touched again. Then you look at me in disgust when I am it, when you can’t see me as anything other than the hand.