Kimberly Blaeser & Margaret Noodin
For this poem we each approached revision a bit differently. Kim added more literal and metaphoric meaning with revisions while Margaret was often more concerned with rhythm and alliteration across languages. We entered into discussions about these elements but granted one another leeway to make changes until we both felt satisfied that the poem achieved its reach.
We worked together to understand the best way forward, sometimes taking time to talk about the process before completing a revision, but, in the end, the poem felt finished when it stopped echoing across our different ways of speaking about a shared idea. When the poem subtly reenters the spiral of meaning, having advanced its arc, it seems both to close and reopen in a way that feels complete.
We were working toward a single poem that did not translate language per se, but wove ideas across languages. This bilingual code-switching arose from a desire to inflect the poem with cultural understanding of an “other” that can add perspective or expertise originating out of Indigenous knowledge systems and practices (IKSP). Specifically, this poem gestures toward an awareness of our deeply intertwined realities (aka intergenerational rootedness) as a different place from which to view climate change. Using both languages and our different capacities in each, we created a stronger structure than either one of us might have created in using just one language. We are able to attend to the many intersections of the poetic sounds and meanings. Sometimes Kim saw to the metaphoric elements of the images while Margaret attended to the chains of morphemes tumbling together and echoing across our lines. Sometimes we built off of one another’s introduction of new elements into the poem.
If play is a way to stretch the imagination and take great satisfaction from a team effort, then this was certainly what we did. Although it is not easy, writing together always feels like one of the best and most rewarding challenges. We surprise one another when we add a turn to the poem and it may take one or the other of us some mulling to understand that movement and its potential before we are able to reenter the process. And this is where the poem often truly takes off—when we each leave our “expected” ideas or methods and begin an untethered language journey.
We definitely work differently in a solo setting because Margaret can write a poem entirely in Anishinaabemowin and change it many times before arriving at a final piece which is then translated. One of the lovely things that happens when working in two languages from the start is that the words themselves get to know one another as equals, each shaping the poem in different ways. Likewise, our collaboration is built in layers of thought, and both are explored equally as we write. Even when write alone in the present we never feel we are writing solo because there is a history each of us represents, a language honed over centuries that Margaret preserves through active use, and if done well, there may be readers in the future whose imagined presence alters the poem as we write.
Like Margaret, Kim never feels entirely in charge of her writing, even when writing solo. Language, culture, spirit, or whatever muse we acknowledge (or allow) always feeds us and leads us in a direction we hadn’t anticipated. Kim often tries to intensify this element of the process by putting a poem aside and coming back to it later. Most poets can relate to being surprised by what they may have written a month ago. Kim feels as if she is “collaborating” with that already present movement or voice in the poem. In collaboration, of course, this kind of weaving of voice, ideas, direction, etc. is intense. With this particular poem, her attention in revision was partly on creating an entrance for the reader into the unfamiliar without compromising the necessary difference(s) of language and understanding.
*
This poem appeared in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing.
< draft>
When waabooz stories spill into my dreams
and climate change photos cover the front page,
I wake afraid of snares.
My scarred fingers fold and unfold
disasters making paper dolls for nindaanis
and daughters of daughters--
unmaking the worlds we may have borne
•••
Margaret: “Well . . . I thought about this all week and played with ideas and here is what I’ve come up with. . . a weaving.”
When waabooz stories spill into my dreams
ziigwebinamaan your memory nookaag
and climate change photos cover the front page,
aanakwaadong you and I ayaayang then
I wake afraid of snares.
My scarred fingers fold and unfold
mamaandaawanokiiyaan or
disasters making paper dolls for nindaanis
miinawaa my mother migoshkaadendang
and daughters of daughters--
unmaking the worlds we may have borne
Glossary (can this one just have a glossary?)
waabooz - rabbit
ziigwebinan – to spill something
nookaa – soft
aanakwaad – clouds
ayaa – to be
mamaandaawanokii – make miracles
nindaanis – my daughter
miinawaa – and
migoshkaadendan – to worry about something
•••
Kim:
For the poem, I moved things around in the second stanza and added a word (“newsprint”) because I wanted to convey that the speaker in the poem is making paper dolls from the newspaper stories mentioned in stanza one—ie: making paper dolls from the “disasters.” I liked your idea of miracles so pulled that in another way. See if the tinkering I did in stanza two works. I moved on from those stanzas to draft a third stanza and add a title. I look forward to seeing what you make of it! (I also added to the glossary.) So those are my weavings for now.
TAP ROOT
When waabooz stories spill into my dreams
ziigwebinamaan your memory nookaag
and climate change photos cover the front page,
aanakwaadong you and I ayaayang then
I wake afraid of snares.
My scarred fingers fold and unfold
newsprint disasters making paper dolls for nindaanis
and daughters of daughters—
or dreaming mamaandaawanokiiyaan,
miinawaa my mother migoshkaadendang
unmaking the worlds we may have borne.
When we tire of stacking words,
when mazina'iganan have forgotten
their origins, let us weave new stories:
aadizookaan rooted like ancient trees
in a tangle of unseen—ojiibik belonging.
Glossary
waabooz - rabbit
ziigwebinan – to spill something
nookaa – soft
aanakwaad – clouds
ayaa – to be
mamaandaawanokii – make miracles
nindaanis – my daughter
miinawaa – and
migoshkaadendan – to worry about something
mazina'iganan – books
aadizookaan – sacred story
ojiibik – root
•••
Margaret: I made some changes and think this might be closer.
TAP ROOT
When waabooz stories spill into my wondering
ziigwebinamaan your memory nookaag
and climate change photos cover the front page,
aanakwaadong you and I then ayaayang
awake suddenly afraid of snares.
My scarred fingers fold and unfold newsprint disasters
making paper dolls for nindaanis and all daughters
dreaming mamaandaawanokiiyaan,
miinawaa my mother migoshkaadendang
unmaking the worlds we may have borne.
When we tire of stacking words,
when mazina'iganag have forgotten
their origins, let us weave new stories:
aadizookaan rooted like ancient trees
in a tangle of unseen—ojiibikbelonging.
Glossary:
waabooz - rabbit
ziigwebinan – to spill something
nookaa – soft
aanakwaad – clouds
ayaa – to be
mamaandaawanokii – make miracles
nindaanis – my daughter
miinawaa – and
migoshkaadendan – to worry about something
mazina'iganag – books
aadizookaan – sacred story
ojiibik – root
•••
Kim: I especially like the change in stanza two, opening the possibility for the daughters to be dreaming miracles. I think “wondering” isn’t quit the word though for the first line. Maybe just “day.” That allows for the possibility that they come from dreams into the day, although that is unstated. That together with the second line, the soft spilling of memory, allows them the kind of reality that is more than just thought, if that makes sense.
Tap Root
When waabooz stories spill into my day
ziigwebinamaan your memory nookaag
and climate change photos cover the front page,
aanakwaadong you and I then ayaayang
awake suddenly afraid of snares.
My scarred fingers fold and unfold newsprint disasters
making paper dolls for nindaanis and all daughters
dreaming mamaandaawanokiiyaan,
miinawaa my mother migoshkaadendang
unmaking the worlds we may have borne.
When we tire of stacking words,
when mazina'iganag have forgotten
their origins, let us weave new stories:
aadizookaan rooted like ancient trees
in a tangle of unseen—ojiibikbelonging.
Glossary:
waabooz - rabbit
ziigwebinan – to spill something
nookaa – soft
aanakwaad – clouds
ayaa – to be
mamaandaawanokii – make miracles
nindaanis – my daughter
miinawaa – and
migoshkaadendan – to worry about something
mazina'iganag – books
aadizookaan – sacred story
ojiibik – root
< final version>
tap root
When waabooz stories spill into my day
ziigwebinamaan your memory nookaag
and climate change photos cover the front page,
aanakwaadong you and I then ayaayang
awake suddenly afraid of snares.
My scarred fingers fold and unfold newsprint disasters
making paper dolls for nindaanis and all daughters
dreaming mamaandaawanokiiyaan,
miinawaa my mother migoshkaadendang
unmaking the worlds we may have borne.
When we tire of stacking words,
when mazina'iganag have forgotten
their origins, let us weave new stories:
aadizookaan rooted like ancient trees
in a tangle of unseen—ojiibik belonging.
Glossary:
waabooz - rabbit
ziigwebinan – to spill something
nookaa – soft
aanakwaad – clouds
ayaa – to be
mamaandaawanokii – make miracles
nindaanis – my daughter
miinawaa – and
migoshkaadendan – to worry about something
mazina'iganag – books
aadizookaan – sacred story
ojiibik – root
Amy Sayre Baptista &
Carlo Matos
Carlo and I often set the poems individually around a central artifact word. The way one bone found in the unearthed soil leads to the next until a body is built. We tried to bring our discoveries to each other in drafts. Specifically, in this piece, we kept the word “deciduous” through both drafts. A concept of growth that sheds like leaves, and also of the soft milk teeth that drop from all animals, inherent then is the sharpening of the next growth.
We wanted that language of the grotesque, the beauty and terror of the natural world that is Inês and Pedro’s ongoing love affair in the afterlife. Maybe Carlo originated this piece, but I honestly cannot say. I can rarely tell in this work, where either of us began or ended. This was a true collaboration in that we trusted one another enough to turn it over so the whole could be greater than the two. I am not sure if we knew that from the outset or if Inês and Pedro taught us along the way.
With this epistle, the obvious shift from first to second draft is the voice. In the first draft, Inês addresses Pedro and stretches forth over him like a storm. The tension centers on how and when she will enact her rage. For Carlo and I, her anger at Pedro felt relatable to that of any lover consumed by the abandonment of a beloved. Her rage is justified, but our concern was to keep her ferocity fresh. So we tried the second draft, using similar language and voiced as Pedro. Small but radical, the switch makes the reader a witness to Pedro’s reaction. Now the reader sees not just Inês, the building storm at sea, but the storm connected with the shore, by way of Pedro’s response. And Pedro—always the swordsman—parries, dances through her anger, because to take her on directly is to end all conversation, and that is the real death.
It was in these experiments that we realized Pedro preferred even Inês’ violence to her silence. He loves her across life and death, and built their tombs as much towards the hope of an eternal marriage bed as a resting place. We wanted to try and bring the reader an unsteady familiarity in all of us that these lovers inhabit: Who among us has not crossed the thin line of love and hate, at least in our minds? Who has not invited it back again after a sure swearing off?
*
This poem appears in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing.
< DRAFT >
PEDRO,
In the future—for the tongue can see as well as the eye and taste the kind of dark that always opens eventually to light and air—grave powers will rush to bind us, will slip to claim our ill-starred and blood-rilled sails, and, of course, our songs to the toothsome anchors under a layer of silt, harbor fog, and salt mist. But you, meu amor, you are erosion, wearing my boundary as your own, a glacier's wreaking claws. And I . . . I am deciduous—deadly to look at and ready for a fall, ready in the dirt that hides the bone meal of knuckles and toes. And when I rise to lash the lips of spring again, none shall leave our throne room exactly as they came.
< REVISION >
INÊS,
The tongue can see as well as the eye and taste the kind of dark that always opens eventually to light and air. In life, grave powers rushed to bind us, slipped to claim our ill-starred and blood-rilled sails, and cast our songs to the toothsome anchors under a layer of silt, harbor fog, and salt wind. But you, meu amor, you are erosion, wearing my boundary as your own, a glacier’s wreaking claws. And I . . . I am deciduous—deadly to look at and ready for a fall, ready in the dirt that hides the bone meal of knuckles and toes. And when you rise to lash the lips of spring again, no promise, no craft, no performance of cool can move you. You become the false notion that it could have gone differently, avuncular as a father’s tired hands, like all people with principles but not the courage to live them. There is no law, after all, regarding things left undone or unsewn. There is something in the way you always just . . . something bitten and battered about the edges. You are sod and moss and anvil like all the women in your family, not sap and nectar and reluctant buzz of bees. It’s all in the waiting, I guess, a tamping-it down like cannon fodder and sandbags and serpent smoke licking the air. I ask you to forgive those foolish enough to have severed head from tongue in the great relief of your silence.
Pedro
Alicia Elkort
& Jenn Givhan
Life is beautiful, truly. Even in the dark. We might be moved by seeing the riot of pink bougainvillea next door and begin a conversation in a collaborative poem. One person sees in the pink leaves hope or transformation. The other might see a ripped pink dress. Together the texture of the writing is heightened. It can be an emotional experience, like singing a call and response. I speak a line, and “I hear you” comes back over the transom, in the context of the poem. What could be more healing than that being heard? We both feel blessed to have found a Sister Muse. Writing together is an immeasurable treasure.
Our experiences share the theme of what it means to be a girl/woman in Western culture. Collaborative writing is a form of sharing experience that allows us to be heard (which itself is enough), and also to learn, to inform, to heal, and to uplift. In our collaborative writing we are creating and updating myths as a way of interpreting our pasts, and, in this, we are mentoring ourselves, our daughters, and the girls we hope will be strengthened by our poems.
We wrote this poem to describe how we’ve had to teach ourselves to overcome inherited trauma—the trauma of the parent that is passed onto the child (if the parents had known better, they would have done better), and the trauma patterns repeated by the child.
In the first version of the poem, written back and forth through email, we found what we wanted to say. It started with the first line Alicia emailed to Jenn: “I once was bound to my mother/rooted in the salty loam.” To which Jenn responded, “My mother was a box of rocks/weighted by the gold she craved.” As we continued, the theme developed.
Once we had the skeleton of the poem, we could focus on craft, including word choice and form.Couplets benefit this poem by providing a way to order the traumatic experience and also arrive at something of elegance. Poetry takes our pain and lays it out on the page, a graphic demonstration of beauty.
As for word choice, this is where collaborative writing can be incredible. Two people see different things and together can push the language in unusual and unordinary ways, partly like a random cut-up.Word choice develops organically from the synergy of the collaborative writing experience. This synergy creates a new spirit, a twofold spirit that allows for new energy and play.
When we’re writing solo, we might want things to make more cognitive sense, more logical or linear sense, but working together, we accept and welcome the mystery of communal knowing; we don’t need all the answers individually, because together we form a more complete picture. In fact, when our collaborative writing fails, it’s usually because one of us hasn’t surrendered. All of this to say that the compound words in the diction like “brokenmothers,” “globemallow girls,” “firepitched”—all of these ideas meld together wisdom that we’ve arrived at together and allow us to keep working toward the heart of the collaborative spirit of healing.
*
This poem appears in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing.
< REVISION >
WE RETURN TO THE BEGINNING [TEACH OURSELVES CONSENT]
Rooted to our Brokenmothers
rocks [weighted not] by salt, not by stone
but by the gold they craved
& we? Globemallow girls we didn’t want
the gold [we wanted only]—our mother’s
eyes. Crowblack mother or Yellowcurse
mother. We giftgirls we clever girlchilds
we who stopped dancing only when
Firepitched mothers couldn’t keep us
from that anvil man’s broken words, his cut-
gourd slapdowns, thrown to the pit-
drop where he wouldn’t
untouch [& us believing] our gift-
bodies were for men.
Then came the day we [unbound]
ourselves, scrape by scrape
[please Truthmother tell me who I am]
but mothers’ words were not our words—
We had to scratch the peel before we could eat
the alphabet of
our own beings, this is our mouth
[I choose my words]
this is our heart
[I choose my
self] you cannot touch us
until we say
Yes this is our spirit [she’s mag-
nificent]
< DRAFT >
WE RETURN TO THE BEGINNING
We rooted to our mothers,
boxes of rocks
weighted not by salt, not by stone
but by the gold they craved
and we? Mallow girls we didn’t want
the gold―we wanted only our mother’s
eyes. Crowblack mother or Yellowcurse
mother. We giftgirls we girlchilds
we who stopped dancing when
not even Firepitched mothers could keep us
from evil (meaning fearspreading meaning privilege
meaning entitled) & believing
our giftbodies were for men.
then came the day we had to unbound
ourselves, scrape by scrape
[please mother tell me who I am]
but mothers words were not our words
we had to write the alphabet of
our own beings, this is our mouth
this is our heart [you cannot
touch us until we say yes]
this is our spirit [she’s mag-
nificent]
Ross Gay &
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Ross and I started this project in the summer of 2011 and we’d trade three to four poems a season as we tended to our respective gardens: his fruit and veggie garden in Bloomington, Indiana and my giant perennial flower garden in my former home in western NY. I (almost) always start my poems long hand. If the draft wasn’t too messy, I’d send it as a letter (via USPS) to Ross. If it was, I’d copy it out by hand (and along the way make edits/revisions in that way) and THEN type that draft out and send it to Ross. You have to understand that in addition to being one of my dearest friends, he just happens to be one of my favorite writers,and he always made me want to bring my ‘A’ game to the table.
After almost a year of writing to each other, together we boarded a train bound for the Millay Colony for the Arts in the Berkshires in upstate New York. There, we met with several other writer friends (who were also working on independent projects), and revised and finished this series of epistolary poems. Our collaborative chapbook, Lace & Pyrite (Organic Weapon Arts, 2014) is how we made sense and record of a full year from our respective gardens.
A little more about what we mean we say we “revised and finished this series”:
Ross Gay: I absolutely ask different questions of a collaborative poem I’m revising than one created solo — because I don't know how to revise Aimee's poem, her lines or language. I might have questions, but the delight is that I'm engaging and creating with someone who, hopefully, makes poems differently than I do, and thinks about poems differently than I do, and relates to things like metaphor and simile and diction and sound and form etc. differently than I do. That's the fun of collaboration—that you very clearly enter into this thing that is bigger than you are, or is out of your control. You have to submit a bit, or join. Which I think is a lot of the fun, and the point.
I definitely would revise my own lines over the course of the writing based on some of the language that Aimee was making—usually it would be some kind of music or something that I would be trying to meet. And I think a few times we would ask each other questions about what we had written, wondering about lines or words or whatever.
Aimee: I never tried to revise Ross' lines—any questions or "Are you sure about this line?" moments came only after a substantial draft (several months' worth of writing back and forth) was established. I loved that Ross said he'd try to "meet" my music, as that feels similar to what I did with his lines but I'd also add that I'd sometimes change up or push against one of his lines or images, like they were magnets in a way--sometimes our magnetic fields would line up and part of the fun was figuring out when that did or didn't happen. In other words, sometimes my lines wanted to smush up against his, and other times my lines would want to go in a totally new direction, sonically and with its images.
Ross: As for what I was aiming for in a collaborative poem’s final form? I don't think I was aiming for anything, beyond the thing that came. We knew we wanted to write a collaborative epistolary poem about our gardens, and that was that. So the poem—like the poem poem—showed itself to us over the course of its making. The basic form—epistolary—was there from the start.
Aimee: I think there is an alphabet and language of the outdoors that helps me develop my own language in observance of human relationships that never ceases to delight and astonish me. In other words, I believe poetry about and from the natural world can make you feel like you’ve traveled, can give you a rush of understanding of less familiar landscapes, and a thunderstorm in your heart or brain. It can make you hear music all day even if the world around you seems music-less. When you pair this kind of writing about the outdoors with revisions with a friend who makes you dig deeper (pun intended) and who has a similar capacity for finding delight in his garden—a little something like an entire chapbook can happen. I’m happy to say that this summer, we’ll join forces again and will be working on more collaborative poem-ish projects involving trees.
*
This poem appears in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing.
< DRAFT >
Aimee:
{Ross}
And yesterday—
The full bloom, not just half-waft, whiff or hint,
but the full lilac gust, honeysuckle gale, full burst
of rose bush or jasmine
like hands the length of your body; full
drag and flash of the apple’s giddy show,
crinoline or crepe (words the meaning of which
I don’t even know!), blowsing
like a dancer’s skirt—my dead friend,
while a glaze of ice made all the bones of my garden shine,
arrived—blend of incense and body
and the ratty wool overcoat—not one ounce
of sorrow or rage, sweet only
with forgiveness and love—
and stayed put.
< final version >
{Aimee}
I still marvel at all the people who first mapped the summer sky—
the pretty patterns from chalk and string they pulled
across the fresh-swept floor. Every monster wishes their teeth
gleamed louder than Vega, summer’s brightest star. Every night
has its own delights: waxwing, paper moth, firefly larvae.
I would drink the red and blue stars if I thought my thin throat
could handle it. Even at the darkest hour, my garden throws
furtive dots of pale light to guide my steps: the bubble of fresh
egg-froth on a frog’s back, the secret bloom of moonflowers
when the children have been tucked into their tiny beds.
O teasel bur and grasshopper— how you catch in the hem of my skirt
like a summer cough. It’s exhausting, this desire. But I would never
trade it for any shiny marble. Would you? I love the silence
of sweat in these the slow days of summer. All the mysterious sounds
in the trees—like a sack of watches—while I tend to tomato plants
who have only thought to give four fruits this entire month.
{Ross}
And yesterday,
looking from my chilly kitchen
over the garden ice-slicked and shining:
crumpled tufts of asparagus fronds
slumbering beneath the cherry tree;
the knuckled grape vine gripping
its rickety fence like a fighter
between rounds. Strange,
then, when the full summer bloom—
not just half-waft, whiff or hint—
but the giddy lilac gust, honeysuckle gale,
gaudy burst whole of rugosa rose
sticker-thick and grabby;
the drag and flash of the apple’s giddy show,
crinoline or crepe (words the meaning of which
I don’t even know!), blowsing like a dancer’s skirt;
when ruckus and sweet and plain good like this
my dead friend came to me,
some fragrant winter flower now,
his blend of incense and body
and wool overcoat frayed at the sleeves,
while a glaze of ice made all the bones of my garden shine.
Cynthia Arrieu-King
& Ariana-Sophia Kartsonis
We work in so many different ways: enough to fill a chapbook, enough actually, to be a book. Sometimes we begin with a news article and just send it along to the other without explanation. In awhile, (an hour, a day, a month) a first line or stanza shows up in our email and then, like a protacted, erratic tennis match, (is it too late to wish it badminton instead—that parachute-bird, that impromptu net) we bat it back and forth until it lands. Sometimes we zip through a poem with little pause (those are likely our December poems, giddy with holiday sugars and the sweet relief of semester’s end) and sometimes we wander the bakery of each poem, unable to settle on a particular pastry. A few poems live in our email accounts in perpetual limbo. Each time, there’s delight in how the other’s mind takes us (all these many years later) by surprise.
*
This poem appears in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing,
< DRAFT >
< REVISION >
POSTCARD FROM ICELAND
I like to think of you surrounded
by tall, tawny summer grasses
and irritated sheep
Or steam time and lasagna,
a toad on the linoleum,
because I'm not getting much
from the black sand
or the sour tops, except
age, not wine's fine costume
but the wear dropped in the weary
I like to pretend the volcano
laughs under the glacier's
frozen mountain wine, solid
with inebriation, each grape's
last wish a giddy lava of
green sweetness and weather.
Where have you been
shepherd? Where have you
slept, drunk purples of pre-night?
Does the traffic of destroyers
bleated and bone, dry on the inside
crash into your final dream?
the black ice of trickery tumbles us
smooth, like stones, but inside,
we're quartz and chevroned
Horizons. They say the smoke
comes just before change,
change just before offering
a light, small fire-claw
at the mouth.