Each other, floating & glancing - writing about writing

Chap*books features a review of Winterling Series One (my two self-published chaps) - in the chapbooks 26 post. This wonderful blog is dedicated to chapbooks - a really important form of publication for emerging writers. The author of the blog (Steven) writes entries tracking his thoughts about chapbooks he collects (or is given). I happily facilitated a great chapbook swap with Steven - the observations of my writing are interesting and of course, I appreciate the encouraging, supportive comments. Thank you! xE

naming my press; Winterling

I came across the word ‘Winterling’ in Literature Nation by Maria Damon and Meikal And.


How to recognise: a/the/such as, "winterling".


Suffixing winter with-ling, makes the "winter": pejorative, diminutive, small or refers to a person described in the/as "winter".


I am moving beyond botanical drawings, seasons, or a creature.



Winterling: is not like when something breaks, but more, it is, as distance (smallness, diminuation) - but always locatable. "Affect", and when, there is sound. It is something material, like object. Registering. It also comes before there is sound, much like splintering something, broken in fragments and simply left - sounds - like words. With sound and as though, with or not, -ling, a long trembling and feeling like "facing down" or "looking away". But looking toward the splintering, but occurring not before it.

More Winterling Packettes...

For my next set of chapbook swaps I wanted to create an alternative cover/sleeve. I decided to make simple large envelopes - without seal or adhesive, these may be opened and closed by the tie at the top.

I decided to pare the collage for these covers right down - the back of the envelope looks very similar. I am basically working with part of a map/some kind of numerated diagram image - so cutting up found material and then using a basic computer illustration program to erase most of it, aswell as the evidence of my cut up procedure.

I think I will keep generating more ideas and possibilities for these packettes and try to establish a kind of loose aesthetic 'feel' for the Winterling project. Please be in touch if you would like to do chapbook or an "anything else" swap! (There is a link to my email on my profile). Thank you so much for those who have responded so far - your packettes will be posted at the end of the week. I hope you will enjoy them.

More soon! X

P.S. I was not sure if the US Postal Service would let me send thank-you-note-twigs from New Zealand - so I made a little collage and printed it on handmade paper instead!

Winterling Packette - Chapbook Exchange

I am very excited about the first chapbook exchange with Michael Steven - a wonderfully interesting poet and the creative mind behind Soapbox Press, an Auckland based small press initiative, Winterling is happily associated with! Click here to be directed to Michael's blog.

I decided to do an illustrated cover of sorts for the chapbooks - more like a sleeve to keep them in (although I'd like to do more thinking about the possibilities for these). I also wrapped a thank you note around a wee branch, in case you are wondering what that is all about! I love sticks, and Winterling is all about branching out.

- Emma X

Winterling Activity: A Project Completed & A Call To (Writerly) Arms...

Determined to publish ten copies of two different chapbooks ... Winterling Chapbook Project One is finally complete! Check out those lovely sewn signatures... After endlessly long and busy days at university sitting in front of a computer and/books working hard, meant any time I could squeeze in for chapbook making was always a happy and welcome change. I particularly enjoyed repeating a set of delightfully creative but methodical actions - the book making process has been certainly rewardingly relaxing for me these past few weeks.


Chapbooks one and two from Winterling Series One, are As For We Love, At The Instant As Being Entirely Different From It. & there is always the impossibility of being able to move sideways. Thank you to Campbell for single-handedly taking the printing task on board, I am sending you my love here. (We are using an ink-jet to print these, and for anyone who prints books like this will understand the initial trials and tribulations that accompany this process and the difficulties in trying to explain it to someone else - perhaps this should be limited to the extremely patient, but I must say, a great way to start making your own chaps).

I have posted about there is always the impossibility of being able to move sideways chap - in case you missed it, click here.

The other chap ...

... takes a line from Lyn Hejinian's My Life ("As for we who love to be astonished") as the starting point.

This chapbook, is self-assuredly a poem (different, however related to, much of the loose form/method/style of poetic prose, or the faux genre of prose-poems, I tend to use mostly for writing). It is concerned with pushing sentimentality to its limit, or outer-edge but also simultaneously constantly, almost exhaustively, reduces all to sentimentality. This poem was also written for someone, I had a particular recipient in mind and consequently I certainly feel something shifts or is shifting in the writing as it is read.

Plans for Winterling

I would love to hear from, firstly, anyone interested in participating in Winterling in any way, shape or form - I am hungry for writing (I want to make it clear I am just as much interested in publishing others), or anyone with an interest in book arts, making, crafting, illustrating or being part of this new-ling poetics community. However I should mention that I will be one hundred percent focused on the five University projects that I must finish over the next four weeks and am then going overseas for four weeks after that - so I will not be starting anything in terms of production or meeting with interested folk until after that - and it also unfortunately means that all my other writing projects are currently on hold, not that they haven't been stagnant for awhile now :-( However, I would still love to talk plans, potentialities and speculations via email, so please get in touch as soon as you wish to!

And secondly, anyone interested in receiving one of these chapbooks as part of a gift exchange - please email me! I am interested in trading my chapbooks for other chapbooks, materials, paper supplies, interesting ephemera, random collected things, with others - any artists, poets, writers, crafters, or anyone who wants to be a part of this ....

More soon! X

I HEART POLYSYLLABICS - a promise to come back to you...

In my first blog entry I published a sample of writing that was to be part of a book length poem, a forthcoming Winterling Press publication. This publication is still coming. I have not, until very recently, continued to work on these sequences. I guess this is due to the fact I have been extremely busy, having little time to work on any writing (unrelated to university) and when I have been doing writing unrelated to university I have been preoccupied with other projects.

I have made some progress - established a working title, Anathema, and not deflagrations or associations with length and completed the first three sequences for the publication which I have posted below. (However I think this will be subject to future alteration and change, and to what extent I cannot say at this stage - so if you find what I write in the chapbook radically different to what I have posted here you will know why).

Anathema, and not deflagrations or associations with length

1.

The influence of eaves, and from, movements of – and sounded in my bedroom. Alight and this kind of becoming, uttering like word, between swollen seeds from grasses that numb your lashes – though not, we.
At the bowl’s lip.
I write, “Welcome home”, this, contained to and looking up from low pictures, are seen in light, a light, in front.
From the side. You – and it is cardboard, and down from, stretched.
Pacing kitted bone and on the boardeon, lying flat on your stomach and on your back.
We stayed in there for some time and no one wanted to come in, too, though this could never be inisolable, like bending a leaf.
Extending far beyond the captions to not a picture, so connected at once suspended and moving, like the clutter of day, around.
It could be pointed out anywhere, a row of sounds, like scales.


2.

Bodies and not parts or them, is lifted and not to be a face. More simply oblique enabling such, we drift through the front.
Wrist on window tactility, I write, “On your lip”, although constructions do not produce. Something spoken of, semi-solidity nothing meant glass or flesh.
Unveiled by the movement of fluids, water is where you collected various fluids. The place, but water is not the substance.
This is unveiled by water.
It is where you collected various fluids.
You found a deepening, an assimilated inurement.
Boned skies, a weighted throat.
Cephalic programming becomes the task of weighing up and relating the difference between what is imagined as seeing, and what is said to be seen.
Salts on paper edge along watery, the place, but water is not the substance.
This is unveiled, is where you collected various fluids, now opening.
Scoring membrane is invasion. In real-time, but water is not cut over, you should, closer up. And come back – so that down at the sides, come away from.
Without the flexing side, come away from the side.




3.

Not everything seen, where every sky is produced singly, and thought.
Could, and no cutting, not a passage through.
Without warning, it is gone. Withheld to the base of the spine, there are some spaces that enclose borders.
Losing stability, this interpretation extends away from the sound, come away from the side. I saw staying flatness, spilt out on the floor.
A voice’s resin, columnar. Traveling toward,
toward the miser trading materials ( ) for another’s thought. Boned skies, where every sky is produced singly, and they thought they could, turnings, not excitable or turning into, not of a floating. I write, “Play a game with me”, though I fail to see it is where you collected the meanings of glass or flesh.

Plans for Winterling Press

I am concurrently working on my first two Winterling Press chapbook series - each series will be made up of three chapbooks. Eventually (yes eventually, press activity is not an easy solo gig when you are attempting to do all the writing and publishing - and yes, eventually I hope to expand and get other writers on board), I hope to make these chapbooks available (for trade with other artwork, chapbooks, writing & or interesting collected/found materials or alternatively for a very small cost, but hope to make the exchanges mostly trade based). I will give more detail of this soon. X

Making Chapbooks & Winterling Press

Today I am posting photographs of my latest chapbook printed by Winterling Press. Winterling Press is my own ongoing creative project in self-publication. I choose a plain white handmade paper for the cover and printed the title in grey which gives the effect of the text being barely perceptible. This idea of “being-perceptible” is carried throughout the short story by the moving letters of the five “word-ships”. The "word-ships" are often difficult to see or grasp as they form rapidly and move quickly, break apart and come back together, as the narrative progresses. The idea of "word-ships" came to me as I wanted the story to be centered around something that is conceptually abstract but that could also be concretized on the page (but not necessarily in a literal way). I like the "word-ships" because they emphasize the materiality of the language, narrative and the page as a space where letters, words and sentences are mobile and difficult to pin down.

I have used a basic single signature binding technique for this chapbook, using pale pink thread. I should also mention that this story is largely an investigation into 'voice' as it exists and the myriad ways it manifests, develops and shifts within a singular narrative. I initially thought of this story as a dialogue between two people. They are speaking to one another but then they are not. Theirs is a failed dialogue. I was thinking about communication as an impossibility and the ways in which full desired communication is always impossible. When we communicate we are made aware of the distance between ourselves and that which we want our voice to move toward. During the writing process I felt that I also wanted to consider 'voice' more as a singular entity. Multiple voices may be embodied by a singular entity, and shift amongst what is heard, said, imagined and remembered. I am interested in the simultaneity of 'voice' that is between, within and that never reaches. I also wanted to evoke a voice that is moving, particularly moving further away as the narrative goes on. It is interesting that the "word-ships" by contrast actually become clearer, visually, and more perceptible. However, their function as words on the page is perhaps still obscured by a 'voice' that is lingering on the page but can no longer be present.

But there is nothing like that, a voice – you expect it,

and that couldn't be anything other than what it becomes to us and as a sound it wills to me, not frightened, soft. “I love you”, seems to smooth for you and without expectation, this breeze is lit. Drooping, idler, made by dropping and next to you and out and under you. I can feel it more, now, and it comes to me like a memory, and more strongly still. I’m not of the details, correct temporal sequencing is beguiling and not because you are we and them and they feel certain about such things. I would give you more but I can only offer more than I would have given back, moving back to then and the concept of the “same time” and keeping time. We are not sure of the size of boats and the withering reigns that may be holding, and at certain times we may feel the inches and the cool growth of plants and long before that, and the presence of other people, their weathered hands and they have heads with faces and it spreads more quickly than this written creature.

This sequence will be part of a book length poem, that is currently untitled, a forthcoming Winterling Press publication.

Working Notes: This piece of writing is the seventh (I think it will be the seventh) sequence in a long series of sequences that will make up a book length poem. I am really excited about this current project as I feel that it is, so far, a cumulative project and I have imagined myself using a kind of cumulative process for writing for about two years but have not started to write it until quite recently. Sentences are often repeated in later sequences, but return conflated or altered in some way. But in saying this, I cannot claim this work as a procedural piece as I have not always been working progressively in the sense you would expect for a procedural piece of writing. I am not writing the sequences or the sentences within the sequences in order. Some of the later sequences are already written and some earlier sequences are not yet begun. I guess the writing appears quite organic, (I have so far the title pieces for all the sequences, from which my sentences will stem) but it feels to me like "progression" is in fact a result of synthetic decisions I make, at the level of a sentence or a sequence, after having written a particular sentence or sequence.