yesterday in my blog post i made a couple of jokes and used a little irony and i think some of that was lost on a couple of you. maybe it’s because i’m british and we use sarcasm and irony so much that it can often resemble normal speech. 

i’d like to again point out i am not into girl hate and slut shaming. i don’t have any dislike for this writer. i am indifferent to this writer as a person, it is the literature produced that i have opinions about, and that doesn’t relate directly to them as a person, i am seeing the literature as a stand-alone rather than an extension of the writer. maybe this is something i learnt at university when i was spending hours poring over poetry and poems and discussing their meaning and worth. maybe i’m a little too stuck in those traditions. 

my problem was precisely that: *my* problem. my own concerns over what this means for the rest of the female alt lit community who are already relatively over-looked unless they are very slim and beautiful, which is a very contentious thing to say indeed, but i am not slim nor am i beautiful, but i am a good writer. when i write something i take an idea and i expand on that and i try to do that in an artful way. i spend time sometimes researching the thing i’m writing about, or i’ll carry a notebook around and write down the odd word or phrase that i think might be useful and try to weave it in later. i read a lot of work by poets writing today, a lot of alt lit too, and these are all mechanisms working toward the construction of the work. 

but this is 2012 and of course literature can be produced and experienced on many levels. rather than go about literature the way i do i could instead be “living” and writing about that. i could be copying and pasting, i could be getting myself involved in red-hot situations with questionable men, the whole time knowing that i will later use this as part of a piece of literature. every word exchanged in my head i could be thinking “i could use this for something” and whilst it might make the exchange slightly contrived and insincere, it’s still a method of writing. it’s called collage, it’s also found writing. it’s legitimate and i accept that. it is not the standard of literature i’m contesting. i have always argued that absolutely anything and everything can be art, i love conceptualism, i love dada, surrealism, everything. when i first heard about flarf i felt completely content knowing this was a movement that existed. 

as stated before, my problem was just my problem. i am not going to try and use the word feminism any more because i’m not entirely convinced that some people really know what i mean when i say that word. there are many different kinds of feminism, no two feminists are the same. i am clearly from a different chapter of feminism and that’s fine. i do not wish to tell marie calloway what she can and can’t do. i do not wish to “slut shame”. a friend said to me that this wasn’t writing, it was just whoring, and in this instance i disagreed with their comment. no woman should be called a whore, or slut, or anything like that. those words shouldn’t exist in our vocabulary. 

so this is perhaps a kind of rebuttal. i shouldn’t have an opinion on this, i suppose it just briefly hit a nerve. today i woke up thinking why can’t we all just stop fighting and get on and yes, girls getting at eachother’s throats isn’t a good idea in any situation.

as marie calloway sarcastically told me yesterday “don’t worry one day you’ll get in the new yorker!” - well, maybe i will, probably i won’t. but if i ever do i think i’ll feel pretty happy knowing that it was down to a lot of hard work and dedication and love for my craft, reading as much as i can and trying to create something innovative and “good” and the way i produce literature is completely my choice, the same way that how marie produces hers is her choice too. who knows. maybe one day she’ll get in mcsweeney’s.

whitehotvelvet:

I really love Marie, Gabby, and Sian, and from what I’ve read of theirs/how I’ve interacted with them, I think we do have a lot of similarities in worldviews/experiences/etc (a lot of differences too, as is obvious in this post.) I don’t know how universal this is, but in my own experience, wanting to sexually degrade and/or be sexually degraded has been tied up (har har) with deeper desires, psychological things, etc. Which is why I don’t really think that a bunch of screenshots of chats and emails involving a woman very coolly asking men if they want to piss on her face is feminist, nor is it non-feminist. There’s a power dynamic there that is interesting (again, in my experience) of being the girl behind the computer screen who can get men to say horrible things, making them sound like hungry little animals — and likewise, there’s the power that the men feel, imagining themselves getting another person to do, at least in their minds, whatever they want. (Wow I think the pronouns got mixed up there whatever.) Marie wrote on facebook that she’s surprised this piece has gotten such a quick response, and I am too. It’s not a story. It’s not even really written. It’s just a bunch of pictures of words and then some pixelated nudes.

Re tits: What Sian says about girls showing tits basically being the easy way out as far as getting attention goes, there is validity to that. I don’t really know why the majority of alt lit girls write about sex as much as we do. I write about sex very often and part of the reason I do that is because, yeah, it gets attention easily, people like feeling they were offered a glimpse into your ‘personal life,’ but also because sex is such a handy metaphor and catchall for so many other feelings/themes. (Note: I am not saying that everything written in which sex plays a large role also represents larger emotions and ideas, just that sex CAN do that.) I think Gabby is right that showing tits esp. in a non-sexual way is a way to defetishize patches of flesh, and I agree with this mostly because it’s really hot outside and I want to be able to take my shirt off and ‘beat the heat’ but I CAN’T because my boobs will either a) make it hard for people (esp men) to ‘go about their day’ on account of being ‘turned on’ or b) disgust people because my breasts aren’t ‘magazine-ready.’ And I also agree that a dialogue on issues like rough sex is cool and good. But like Sian wants to be able to write about her experiences with sex and not HAVE to include a nude just to get ‘hits,’ and I agree with that, too.

In conclusion: we are all the Avengers and patriarchy is Loki and patriarchy wants to tear us apart and distract us with our issues with each other to keep us from realizing that the patriarchy is the enemy and we need to get the blue cube away from him uh-oh where’s the hulk the hulk is gone this is bad call in sammy jackson pronto

1. Me and Pillow Boyfriend’s Last Hurrah

me and pillow boyfriend have decided to see other people. 

it’s not pillow boyfriend, it’s me. and i told him this whilst he sat there crumpled into the top left corner of the bed like a brown paper bag full of spat out black cherry stones. “i still love you pillow boyfriend” i told him but he didn’t say anything. it was summer and the sky was colourless, i was naked and hiding beneath the covers. 

me and pillow boyfriend decided to go for one last stuffing before ending it, a moment of grace where I take him far outside of himself and ruffle up his feathers, making his shape inflate and swell, his dense form transforming into a near-floating weightlessness, before I ram him hard back into his case again, and fall with glee onto his body feeling the air billow out of him and onto my legs.

“and you say you want to see other people?” said pillow boyfriend afterwards, as i poured wine from a carafe that was the same shape as someone’s kidney. I sighed. 

“jessica and martin are having that dinner party next week” i told pillow boyfriend, whilst catching my breath, “and they said they’d love to finally meet you”

“as much as I simply adore the idea of spending many a tedious hour sitting at table heaving with empty bottles discussing poetry and listening to you and your poet friends battle for position over who can talk about themselves the loudest and who has had the most success, and watch you seethe with polite resentment as you realise you’re the only one there without a first collection…” a pause. “well i’m afraid i can’t” he said. “you have other plans?” i asked. 

“no” he said. “i am, you forget, just a pillow, and i do not have the sophisticated digestive system required to take dinner with friends. Sorry.” I frown like a colon followed by an open bracket. “Besides” he said. “You said you wanted to see other people and I’ve got a date”.
I look out of the window and then back to him, who now lies next to me expressionless and it dawns of me that I’ve never seen pillow boyfriend smile, and it is at this point in time I feel it necessary to alert the reader that the narrative form of this piece has rather cleverly started in the middle of the story rather than at the beginning, and to humbly disclose that the rest of the vignettes following this one will continue with this rather quite innovative form. 

whatshouldwecallpoets:

hello i’ve spent all night on the phone w/ you

and now i’m thinking of calling you again

in case i missed out anything

i am sitting by the trees in the sudden summer

i’m dipping but please allow me this

you’re bad for my health because you make

the sugary syrup of the melting landscape

take on a glittering black shimmer

but i lose weight when i’m depressed

i can thank you for this

my stomach has always been far too unsightly. 

i am at my own doorway waiting

i am at your house and i am waiting

i am lonely now, i am quite deserted. 

there are perfume clouded dreams i cling to

they don’t shift into focus

they taste like lilac

they are pink and sprinkled with dust

it’s time to let go of those dreams

nobody has the right to be adored

but you do

and maybe that’s what i love. 

hello i’ve spent all night writing

and now i’m thinking of writing again

to document my thoughts

because what if 

i completely got you wrong? 

as wholeness offers itself, after sadness, now I’m

in the tunnels without. He offers a songbird hum,

and lieu of love songs baby, in 

lieu of your lubricity. 

then watch it, babe, 

let me wake, having slept for

days, now. 

my eyes are bloodshot thin, tired and 

old, i wish i could bring you in

set my hurried heart at ease

turn your face to me, with 

pretty, pretty, simpering adulthood. 

and so the love falls before it swelled.

two years thorns and hawthorne scent. 

whipping in a bitter wind. 

bigger than the setting sun. 

no, we’re not that, any more. 

i think about some summer bedroom, 

daughter in a separate room, 

i relent without warning, i love without

caution, i kiss without knowing:

but see the prickly, heated talk

and fall beneath the root and stalk

your pride lives on beyond our love

waves of love and more love

i allow you this claim of unknown love

but i’ve got the words.

i’ve got the illness.

i’ve got the love.

i’ve got the knife —

i’ll do nothing with it -

but it does tend to look at me.