Entry Four - Stuck In A Rut. Digging it Deeper.
Creatively, I’m having quite a strange summer. Earlier this year I had such high hopes for what I’d write in this time. Summertime is my time, it’s usually when I feel most inspired and most connected to myself and everything around me. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to write, but I knew it was going to be good. Strangely, and unfortunately, I’ve found myself stuck. I’ve had the time to do anything I want, write anything, anywhere, anytime, but I’m just frozen. I sit in front of a blank computer screen for no more than five minutes, then close it. I jot the tiniest slivers of inspiration down in my notes app and never touch them again. I’d say I’m fatigued, but I’m not sure from what exactly. And I wouldn’t call it writer's block, because I’m not writing anything to be blocked.
After a long month of stagnant inspiration, I decided to use my recent trip to Saint Marteen as a sort of “inspiration retreat.” I sat on the beach and watched the waves crash on the shore hoping it’d conjure something inside of me. I listened to strange music and took walks at dusk looking for something, someone to move me. And while all these things brought me joy, they didn’t inspire me. In the end, the inspiration came from reading, as it always does.
In the essay, Lorde says “ The white fathers told us, I think therefore I am. The black mother within each of us - the poet - whispers, “I think therefore I can be free.” I realized that after two long semesters of full literary theory, psychoanalytic readings, and extensive research I found myself aligning my thinking with the “white fathers.” I was looking for a logical reason to validate my feelings and by extension my existence. I thought only when I could name this feeling could I conquer it, and when I conquered it, then I could finally be a writer. I was using logic and intellect to pinpoint emotion, to try and give it a name that already existed. What I failed to understand is that I couldn’t conquer this feeling. It’s through this nameless form that I find my craft. Through poetry, these feelings won't be explained to me, but I’ll be able to understand them. I’ll have a name and a place for it.
See you soon :
A picture of me, chilling on vacation.
One of the books I brought on my trip was Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde, a collection of essays and speeches by Lorde. I read a few, all of them masterful and thought-provoking but one answered every question and concern I had about my so-called “writer's freeze.” In Poetry Is Not A Luxury, Lorde describes why poetry is so vital to Black Women in particular, and how it plays an important role in our liberation. She describes the use of poetry as illumination, “for it is through poetry we give name to those ideas which until the poem, are nameless and formless.” My “writer's freeze” is something nameless and formless and I think that’s what terrifies me the most about it. It’s unrecognizable, and I felt that if I could figure out what it was, if I could pin it down and name it, only then could I fix it.
Reading Poetry Is Not A Luxury didn’t make my strange feelings of stuckness disappear, but it did help me figure out a way to move forward. All along the remedy to my “writer's freeze,” was to write. And while that might sound obvious to you, it really didn’t make sense to me until I read the essay. In pursuit of writing my way through the dark, I’m making a promise to both myself and anyone who’s reading this. I promise I will have a new short story up by the end of the month, (or the beginning of next month). If I break this promise, I’m not exactly sure what the consequences are yet. Hopefully, there will be none because I will write like my life depends on it (in a way it does.) To hold you over in the meantime I wrote a review of the Barbie album for the WERS blog that you can check out. I would apologize for my absence on here, but I’m literally a girl and therefore should not have to apologize for anything. Instead of an apology, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Poetry Is Not A Luxury,
“For women then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity for our existence. It forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams towards survival and change, first made into language, then into ideas, then more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give the name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons and hopes and fears are cobbled into our poems, carved from rock the experiences of our daily lives.”
