photo: Dean Tomlinson

A. rawlings writes a different kind of poetry. Her sensual first book Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists arouses not only its subject matter but the text itself, waking it - at times shaking it - from its sleepy slumber. Words rise and fall, sleepwalk and enchant, and the interplay of sound and silence alone will keep you reading. She opens up spaces to a larger experience where "we push ourselves out of ourselves, into our sound our hand our sweet wet hot our path, mourn, rake, master or muster." This book is a perpetual romp through the dream state.

Rawlings says she blends her artistic talents in theatre, dance and literature to "explore their intersections." But she is one multidisciplinary artist who would like to settle down. "One thing I've struggled with the last five years is finding time to pursue my personal creative impulses," she says recently from her Toronto home. She spends her work hours with literary contracts and her spare time with community projects like the poetry series lexiconjury, which has also provided a discussion space for a number of poets in an e-mail community. She recently hosted Heart of a Poet through BookTelevision, has given support to Toronto's Scream Literary Festival, assists with the Mercury Press, and co-edited the avant-garde poetry anthology Shift & Switch.

Now rawlings is coming to Ottawa, part of a nine-poet feast at the spring edition of the Ottawa International Writers Festival, and just in time to celebrate National Poetry Month. The three-part Poetry Cabaret series, with rawlings appearing in the "cutting-edge Canadian poetry" component, will involve a performance/reading from her new book alongside poets John McDonald and Gary Barwin. There will likely be a Q&A session after the reading, but I pose a few questions myself about Wide Slumber.

When asked if she planned her book to be read as a cumulative experience from beginning to end, rawlings says she considered five possible reading strategies:

First, "Seeing the book, not reading it in depth. As an object, it has its own aura. You can read the vibe of the book by seeing and touching it."

Then there is "The linear read: I considered the book might be read end-to-end, so it is constructed as a long poem in six segments."

You can also "Flip and dip: With some books of poetry, I like to flip the book open and read poems at random. While the pages in Wide Slumber interconnect linearly, they can also work as stand-alone poems on their own."

Or you can "Choose your own adventure: This is a more intensive, invested version of flip-and-dip."

Finally, rawlings suggests "Stichomancy," the neat idea of "fortune telling" through random selection of text, kind of like the I Ching in the '70s.

Rawlings' evocative form and shifts between movement and sound aren't the only challenges to her reader. She says she also bred the "vocabularies and ideas of two disparate subjects together: lepidoptery and sleep/dream studies." And just what is lepidoptery? Why, the study of butterflies and moths. Rawlings says she made the connection between lepidopterists and insomnia because "the phrase 'wide slumber for lepidopterists' occurred during a free writing session, and rattled around in my head for a week.

"The subjects intersected. What happens when a person obsessed with a subject dreams at night? Does the subject matter affect how she thinks, how she dreams, how her body processes information?"

Reading Wide Slumber is an involved experience. Her work is suggestive of 1940s poet Charles Olson, who introduced the idea of a blank page as a "field" in which the poet then has "to behave, and be, instant by instant, aware."

"I will say, briefly, that I'm fascinated by text's and language's visual, aural and kinetic materials - from the shapes and sounds of letters to our bodies' physical response to text," rawlings says. "I find it important to consider language's sensual materiality in as many ways as I can.

"I think the act of publishing any book pins the text in a way. Wide Slumber has metamorphosed over the last six years from a five-page poem to a 112-page book. I'd say the book acts as a snapshot of a particular moment in time for that text, but it doesn't necessarily mean the text won't metamorphose again."

So how would a. rawlings want someone who is unfamiliar with poetry to approach her work? "Head-on," she says, "in an orderly, single-file manner; slowly in the standings, over the course of a long season; brandishing a torch and pitchfork; with calipers, to assess its physical fitness; with disbelief."

OTTAWA WRITERS FEST
POETRY CABARET #2
W/ A. RAWLINGS, JOHN
MCDONALD, GARY BARWIN
FRIDAY APRIL 21, 8:30 P.M., $15/$12/$8
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA
395 WELLINGTON STREET
WWW.WRITERSFEST.COM

 
 

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Profiling Language's Sensual Materiality.............     a. rawlings certainly sounds like the kind of girlfriend that would blow away your parents when they first got a gleen of her intense intellect, free spirit and range of intuitive energy. She is analytical and yet, so very polite. "Bring that friend over again, she was really nice and we had such a great chat last time" chimes your mother wanting to meet her again. Probably a cup of coffee with this literary babe would have you rethinking most of what you thought you really banged your drum about, until that meeting. I fully endorse intellects like rawlings that shoot from the hip, reinvent their style again and again, and are unafraid to express their thoughts without any reservations. Lots of people may feel inferior around her depth and range of thinking, but she certainly appears to be in full bloom producing new material and challenging even her own conventional thinking. Work like hers is like unconditional free-thought at it's finest with some of the most innovative and entertaining material to hit the blank page.
Steve Landry	{34 votes}	April 20th, 2006
Oh no, its a parent. Better put it in a box.     A. Rawlings sounds interesting and thought provoking to me. I am a parent. I can still appreciate poetry and intellect. What a weird idea that parents would necessarily behave in the ways described by either Steve or Wanda. Do you think that all parents are somehow stamped out on some kind of assembly line? Do you think that will happen to you once you are parents? And why is a female poet a babe? What is a male poet then? A babe-o? And why would any poet or intellect have to be endorsed by any of the rest of us? I thought we endorsed ideas, if we endorse anything, not people...at least not in the sense that Steve endorses this poet. It sounds kind of like he is agreeing to allow her to exist. I have not read her book, but Rawlings sounds to me like the kind of writer who can help a person to see beyond the boundaries that she has created for herself. It is unfortunate that we in our society have often been conditioned to be afraid of intellect, especially when it does not follow one of the pre-constructed paths that we may recognize and feel comfortable with. It is equally unfortunate that people have constructed little boxes to contain parents. Not only does it affect the interaction between the children and parents, but it also suggests that when one does become a parent, one must behave in a particular manner and the possibility of change will disappear. We can raise our kids hoping that they will inspire us to change and work with them to create a world that we all want or we can raise our kids to maintain the status quo. However we raise our kids, they probably will not be anything like we expected when we first saw their angry little wrinkled ups faces---which is a good thing, I think. I hope that people who discriminate against parents will eventually be able to confront that problem and maybe become parents who will raise kids who don't grow up with a bunch of preconceived notions about how they and others should behave.
Susan Turansky	{1 vote}	April 26th, 2006
Buy the book     Well put, Steve. Although it's been my experience parents can't hack the intensity of poetic conversation. You just end up looking weird and other-planety while they smile and pass you peas, moving the wine bottle two inches further past your reach. You may also be interested to note that bright literary babes in fact do exist all over this great country (why, perhaps even in your own neighbourhood coffee shop), and come with a full range of achievement, innovative thought, and talent. Invest in a Lisa Robertson book, for instance, to see just what us gals are doing in avant-aware poetry these days. You should also familiarize yourself with the Montreal poets (like myself), the Calgary school, the Vancouver gals, and the Toronto team. It's happening right here in Canada. And yes, even Ottawa has some raw new talent. The entire world awaits the pen and charm of the female poet. It's happening, people just haven't been paying attention. We are taking things as we should--one anticipated step at a time, with careful considerations and with deliberate intent. And enjoying every minute. Explore the innovators. Buy poetry books. Start here: http://www.bookthug.ca/
Wanda O'Connor	{12 votes}	April 21st, 2006
Sounds like an interesting event....     but I have to say I saw the title and immediately thought of J.K Rowling and the Harry Potter series. Images flashed thru my mind, dragons, magic, and pure havoic in Ottawa as thousands of parents and kids rush the stage to get her autograph. Luckily, that isn't happening. Just a reminder - the Ottawa International Writers Festival, Spring Edition runs from April 17 to 23, 2006.
Joe Shebib	{3 votes}	April 20th, 2006

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