The earliest text. Before the text. Before it became the text text. The thought before the thought before the book became the book.
Image description: A cartoon of a book lying open. It has blank pages. A thought bubble is emerging from it, which has ‘ur…’ written inside it. It is a line drawing – black ink on a white back ground.
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In the beginning, I learned to w r i t e s o m e s t u f f . School was about
recognising letters, recreating their shapes, forming my mouth around their sounds,
stringing them together into creations called w o r d s .
I loved this part — the trying on words to see if they ‘fit’. I loved
holding
their elusiveness
upon my tongue, like sweets,
like raindrops,
like snow.
I worshipped them. Became their eager postulant.
Before I understood each letter’s place in larger schemes of communication,
I was fascinated by their physical appearance on the page. I ‘copied’ them before I ‘wrote’ them
and I still love doing this today — as though they are something you look at and recreate
(in the same way I would draw a tree, cat, or cup). Letters are akin to logograms
or ideograms — how amazing to think of these marks telling
a whole world of stories!
S is a stream, a forest path, a swan’s reflection, a snake.
Q is a balloon on a string, a dog with a waggy tail, a cat’s toe with unsheathed claw.
C is a cosy cul-de-sac, a mouth wide and singing, a crescent moon.
X is dig here, don’t go here, your answers are wrong.
I read this quote from Dean Young, and it helped my treatment of letters (especially in early childhood) fall into place:
“…the early delight that a series of syllables and/or cryptic \
marks on a page can refer to the world…” (Young, 2010, p.159)
Once, we had no choice but to draw words. Once, we did not have typewriters, or keyboards.
Letters had to be shaped by with brushes, fingers, twigs or pens. If people could not read, the words could still be incredible pictures. Take illuminated manuscripts, for example. In 16th century Medieval Latin, manuscriptum meant written by hand. I imagine Eadfrith undertaking his incredible work —labouring tirelessly over the Lindisfarne Gospels, experiencing such
powerful, all-consuming devotion and joy
as he illuminated his faith through the magic of words. God was alive upon the page,
each letter a miracle. Perhaps faith to scribes like Eadfrith, was curls, knots, colours, and shapes —
soot and feather, snake and bird, verdigris and glare, gall, salt, and lead.
This is w r i t i n g a s a p o t h e c a r y ! The whole is written upon skin.
I look at my own tattoos and I feel a shiver of connection pass, century to century,
ink to ink. This is
something that somehow goes beyond reading.
Image description: A blue rectangle has white old-style text and celtic patterns drawn upon it.
How fascinating that we all come to words, in the very beginning, in this way. There are decorative marks upon a page. If we are fortunate enough to be offered the gift of reading, these marks will take on meanings way beyond what we originally imagined, on first contact.
Words are the cathedral.
Words are time and percolation,
permission and obsession,
worship and uncertainty.
Piety and dubiety.
Our notebooks / documents / voice notes are manuscriptums. The sacred, unique trails
of our handwriting, our prototypical fingerprints upon a keyboard, the individual tones
of our voice are the illumination of ourselves.
If I’ve given the impression that this essay will be the record of a religious journey, I must apologise, as it is not. It is, however, about faith. Poetry faith —
S o m e t h i n g I h a v e g i v e n m y h e a r t t o w h o l l y .
S o m e t h i n g i n w h i c h I b e l i e v e .
I have met many of poetry’s disciples at poetry events over the years — have noticed how each participant sighs with joy, or sheds a tear.
We run the whole gamut of emotions in one poem alone. As rhyme, rhythm, and language
tumble from our mouths, it can seem as if we are speaking in tongues.
Poetry is my chosen form of worship. Once, I could barely churn out a paragraph without knowing, before it was even on paper, that it wasn’t what I wanted to write. Writing was like trying to bake a sponge cake — you think you have correctly copied the recipe down, but every time
you open the oven door, you find a half-baked mess.
Throughout primary and secondary school, I tried to replicate
the styles and forms I saw in articles and books.
All I was doing, with this mimicry, was writing
f u r t h e r and f u r t h e r away
from myself.
I struggled with impenetrable, solid paragraphs. My eyes would fail to find a way in. I would try to replicate these paragraphs. They made little sense. I couldn’t make them represent the words inside my head. I couldn’t breathe inside them.
I smothered, drowned, gave up, assumed I must be as stupid as some people insisted on telling me
I was. The increasing difficulty of the content I wished to learn
coupled with its presentation on the page seemed to have robbed
me of any means of understanding or expression.
The resultant fatigue and sadness seemed unbearable. All the wonderment was gone from the page. The handful of people who know me well will tell you how wilful and defiant I can be. How I cannot help holding on to hope. How tilted I am toward digging in. There had to be a way of becoming what I believed I could be.
My stubbornness held me to my conviction that I wanted to be a writer.
I had no clue how this might be pursued — a lack of guidance around me meant all I could
come up with was keeping going to school, for as long as possible, learning whatever I could. I gathered up my sorry collection of unimpressive GCSE grades and went to sixth form college.
It was there I encountered contemporary poetry
for the first time. It seemed to be saying so much
while inhabiting the page in a completely different way.
I could sense my way inside it, under it, around it.
I found I could be linger. Pause. Contemplate. React.
Surely, something so powerful could feed into my whole writing practice.
Transform it.
I often wonder how it took me so long to put epiphany and epiphany together
and make my own miracle.
Could I use space to make reading happen?
Why not use space to make writing happen?
If I adopted segmenting — breaking up words so I could learn them
(sh/ – /i/ – /p/ sh-ip ship), I could also use it to break down sentences.
I could apply segmenting to those coffin-solid paragraphs, sentence by sentence too,
escape the solidity which repelled my reading
and create space that I could relax into. I gave myself permission to read
in any way I wished. If I covered sections up with small blank pieces of paper,
or made self-care allowances for my reading-triggered shutdowns, so what?
I told myself not to be embarrassed by my slow reading pace.
I’d rather it took me months to read a book than never read it at all.
The more I ‘prayed’ (if prayer be practise in order to become practiced), the more hope I found.
Since discovering hybrid writing, since finding the voices of other hybrid writers,
since deciding to unshackle the
s e l f f r o m r e s t r i c t i o n ,
I have joyfully, painfully, needfully tipped my whole
s e l f in t o t h e k e y b o a r d —
however the words shape, they were meant to be shaped.
Wherever they land,
they were destined
to land.
I adore discovering other writer’s opinions, breakthroughs, and ideas about writing.
When I come across them,
I find that I am either Not Alone (which is absolutely wonderful),
or I encounter something new (which is absolutely wonderful),
or find I have the confidence to disagree (which is absolutely wonderful).
It’s too easy to slip into thinking that you are alone, that your one-person crusade is the loneliest path you could have chosen. ‘Meeting’ others through the community of the page reminds us that
we are never truly alone.
That we are always learning,
that there is no such creature as the Utterly Complete,
who I imagine wears a halo of neon academic light, has teeth like typewriter keys,
and skin made from ancient dictionary pages. It is not a friendly beast.
If you make a study of other writer’s / poet’s studies, you will find many elements
of revelation / celebration, much of it in support of what you already do / have done /
want to do.
It was another person from the ‘community of the page’ that finally solved a particular word dilemma I had been on the horns of for quite some time. Allow me to relate a possibly dull story about an incident with a word, to demonstrate that everything to do with me and words is still very much an ongoing / learning thing. It probably won’t make sense but bear with. It might illustrate exactly to what levels of internal debate I am capable of, and how long it can take me to make the ‘right’ connections with a word. Here is the story of my long and curious relationship with the word
segue.
My first attempts to wield this word had me pronouncing it s e e – g o o.
I loved this word’s selection of letter shapes — everything neatly rounded, organic, curly-wurly.
You can colour bits of the letters in if you wish (it reminded me of school when people crowned the letter i with a heart instead of a dot).
I hesitate to label anyone’s negotiation of or interaction with words ‘correct’, by the way —
“…make of uncertainty a home.” (Hirshfield, 2016, p.39)
is an adopted motto of mine. I spend so much time in the House of Uncertainty,
I might as well move in and host a housewarming party.
Image description: A mispelled representation of the word segue, drawn in black fancy writing with blue decorative elements around the letters.
Later, I guessed the word must be pronounced s e e e g. I have used this word in a poem,
then read this poem at an open mic, happily using this version of the word.
Either people didn’t notice, or used this version themselves, or were too nice
to want to embarrass me by pointing it out. It’s all good.
Over the years, as I heard other people using the word it altered again inside my head.
I thought I needed to make an addendum to the word. It now became s e a g u e – w a y
on paper and s e g – w a y in my mouth. I submitted the aforementioned poem
to a magazine. It wasn’t accepted. I smile about this now — mistakes maketh me.
Why didn’t you just look it up? I sense some of you asking. I love researching the use, etymology and pronunciation of gazillions of words. It just that sometimes words like this become their own private island. Our relationship is insular, obsessive. We don’t need anyone else. It’s a secret fixation. There are other words that have held me in a similar grasp before —
pidgeon, suprise, alluminianinum, tangenital,
Appleindees and auseegooray*
*pigeon, surprise, aluminium,
tangential, Indianapolis and honestly,
I haven’t a clue yet which word that last one
is meant to represent — ideas
on a postcard please.
I get to fifty years old and the word changes again. Through experiencing another poet’s work,
I recognised a new the arrangement of s ea g u e on paper.
When the poet read their poem out, I learned a new translation on the tongue — s e g w a y .
Perhaps it was the unexpected witnessing of the word both written and read at the same time in the poem that caused the shift in my head, made me sit up and take notice.
I’m not embarrassed, not one little bit.
I was happy with my choices at the time.
Every day I’m under pressure to make manifold choices,
so it’s not surprising that some decisions slip through the net.
Hello, for what seems the umpteenth time, s e g u e.
Image description: A sketched representation of the word segue, drawn in black fancy writing with decorative elements around the letters.
I confess this latest discovery has left me a little uncomfortable. I don’t like change
and the word has become a bit of a stranger to me once more. But I’ll get used to it.
It is incredible that just one collaboration of letters
can stay with you so long,
and lead such a secret life.
I’ve been negotiating with language all my life. No matter how old you are, words can still surprise you, and that’s a gorgeous thought. No wonder then, that these piquant assemblages
that we make —
these things that we call poems — are so very blistering,
compelling and necessary to our lives.
Go on — laugh, if laughing at vulnerability in others is your thing. Or smile, because you feel relief
at someone else naming their own Deep and Possibly Shameful Secrets. Come and join me in the
Lake of Cathartic Confessions,
the water is lovely. It tastes of lollipops and freedom. There are paddleboats in the shape of swans. This is learning. T h i s i s a l l O K.
What is genius anyway, but a collection of ‘mistakes’
made along the road to doing something well?
I think of ‘mistakes’ as the U r t e x t R o a d . It links the text you wrote before
to text now, to text future. The primordial swamp to poetry’s silver lake. My work
now is probably at the ‘just scrambled out of the water and breathing air’ phase.
It’s starting to wear the sky upon its back. It’s growing a mind of its own.
It’s the road where an isolated person with autism (me) finds her writing feet and wanders
her way around. It’s the road that has carried me between many hours, weeks, months
and years of research, experiment and altering, the miles between the turning of raw fruit
into sweet preserve. The road that links memoir and fragment, where the thin milk
is processed into word butter (organic, calorific, salty, and spread generously over
everything you do).
Connecting who I was as a writer to who I wish to be as a writer has led me to
h y b r i d i t y of word, form and thought. Of course, hybrid writing is not new
but it was new to me. I have been liberated. I found
a p l a c e w h e r e s e l f a n d w o r d t h r iv e.
Don’t be afraid to experience literature in ways that feel right for you. Proceed
in directions that appeal most. Every letter that occupies your mind is progress.
It’s about finding that which suits your practice / practise.
It’s about making writing fit the self, not the other way round.
“…a poem’s meaning is not in its words, but in what
we make of those words.” (Hirshfield, 2016, p.51)
P o e t r y ! It’s integral to who I am.
Poetry activates. It has proved to be the big red button of my mind —
“…the writing of poetry, only a human life can depend upon it.”
(Young, 2010.)
There is always something to be changed / learned / expressed / discovered.
Hence my fear of conclusions (you might struggle to find any solid
conclusions in any of my output) —
after all, as Mark Doty says, “…meaning isn’t closed
or completed…things can’t ever be conclusive…”
(Doty, 2010, p,126)
There is no finished article, no pinnacle of all we can be, no Poetry Zenith.
We’ll die and still be massively imperfect inside our own poetry clothes. Let us never
“…fall into the insidious rut of complacent manufacture…”
(Young, 2010, p.156)
I discussed this curious notion of urtext (sprouted from the etymological seed ur (German prefix meaning original / earliest / original) with my writing mentor, A—. A— recalled reading,
many years ago, about (and I am paraphrasing here) urtables and urchairs.
You mean like the table before it was a table,
or the chair before it was a chair? I asked.
Or the table before the table table,
the chair before the chair chair?
Or the One Great Table or the One Great Chair — the ultimate ancestor,
the first furniture fossil known to humankind,
the nascent idea of a table or chair before furniture’s Big Bang?
Table or chair as a glint in the eye of an amoeba, as it worked its evolutionary way
into the form we recognize as ourselves today? The millions of contemporary tables
and chairs shaped in the image of their early Gods?
NB: if you do some research on the Internet in an attempt to unearth information concerning
urtables and urchairs, you’ll find only adverts for perfectly serviceable actual tables and chairs, not incredible, abstract concepts which leave you in marvellously evangelical, incomprehensible, enthusiastic conversational loops.
I had taken urtext to mean an original text — an author’s very first manuscript (the one
with all the typos, scribbles, gnaw marks, tear splotches and coffee stains throughout).
The one that may, in the end, after much pruning and polishing, end up a different creature.
I really loved the thought of urtext representing
the very first time you tried,
the very first time you found the courage
and self-permission to try,
the very first time your words took their place
on a page.
Of course, each time we begin a new poem, story, essay or whatever, we reset the whole urtext milometer and we are beginners, beginning, again. That’s one of the beauties of urtext.
We can create and recreate unto infinity.
What I didn’t say to A— (in case she thought I needed a lie-down in a dark room)
was that I saw myself as human urtext.
There was a first version of me that carried on as best she could,
all her confusion, regret, sorrows, humiliation and mistakes
writ large upon her skin.
Once I was the urtext me!
Don’t you just LOVE thinking? It doesn’t matter where you end up.
The journeys that you navigate and document, using these amazing tools called words,
are the important things. When I was a child, my parents had this plate nailed to their wall —
upon the plate was a lovely blue painting of a galleon in full sail.
Around the plate were the words (which I discovered later are attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson),
It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.
And do you know what? With the comfort of urtext in your mind, I think it might well be.
Sources
Doty, Mark. The Art of Description, Graywolf Press, Minnesota, 2010.
Hirshfield, Jane. Hiddeness, Uncertainty, Surprise: Three Generative Energies of Poetry. Bloodaxe Books, 2nd edition, 2016.
Young, Dean. THE ART OF RECKLESSNESS. Graywolf Press, 2010.
Jane Burn Poet & Artist 