I
Just because you’re rich doesn’t make you gay
– bus conversation
I came out
It was 11.11
by the kitchen clock
*
I discovered about 4 pm that he was weakening
I therefore reminded him of the agreement
made before leaving camp
in case either of us should show signs of exhaustion
his comrade should tell him
in order that necessary steps
might be taken to prevent disaster
and I again urged upon him
the necessity of returning to the sleeping bag
for rest and shelter [1]
*
Twice I’ve had this premonition
this time the hair stood up
on the back of my neck
*
on striking the first care is to catch the
line behind one leg so as to act as
a strong check and for farther security
a hitch is also taken round the ring
finger which sometimes can be terribly
lacerated and even torn off by
the struggles of a large victim the females
which have their young with them are far more to
be dreaded than the males every one
is distinguished by a particular
name and the angry repetition of
it has an effect as instantaneous
as an application of the whip which
instrument is of an immense length [2]
*
Yesterday
while driving to Pt Chev
today in the same place coming back
*
I gave him some brandy and spirits of ammonia
which seemed to revive him
I now lighted the lamp and prepared some warm food
endeavoring to start him
in order to keep him from freezing
but it was all in vain
He was too weak to stand up
and his mind seemed to be taken up
with recollections of his relatives and friends at home
of whom he spoke
*
IT’S NOT
TOO LATE
DRIVE SOBER
*
opposite each other with the flat sides
parallel a neatly formed case contains
the bow and a few arrows a little
bag attached to the side contains a stone
for sharpening and some spare arrow-heads
carefully wrapped up in a piece of skin
the bow is held in a horizontal
position and though capable of great
force is rarely used at a greater distance
than from twelve to twenty yards we saw no
regular chase and as we could only
judge from report and from the expressive
pantomimic description of the hunters
I cannot pretend to furnish an account
*
Black plastic bag
hanging from a traffic light
two turns of twine around it
*
I felt more like remaining there
and perishing by the side of my companion
than to make another effort
but the sense of the duty which I owed
to bear back the sad tidings of the disaster
sustained me in this trial
I stopped and kissed the remains of my dead companion
and left them there for the wild winds to sweep over
The death of my companion made a deeper impression
on my mind than any experience my whole life
*
thinking that he might have
something on his person
I searched his clothing
•
II
My other shirt is on your girlfriend
– on a spotty youth
Examiner’s Report:
Before the Disaster:
A sequence of poems and prose-pieces
submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for Honours in Creative Writing
Recommended grade: C+ / B- (64-65)
There are pleasing aspects to this assortment of fragmentary pieces. The central (unnamed) character seems to operate as little more than a spokesperson for the author, but frequent flashbacks enable us to flesh out that character's past a little, and even to meet some of the “Significant Others” who moulded him/her. The Gothic, mean-spirited mother is a little obvious, perhaps, as is the promiscuous yet golden-hearted hooker Melody. Franz the monomaniac kitchenhand is more interesting, though, as is (to me) the distant, inaccessible, long-dead father. I don’t know what to say about the psychoanalyst uncle “Professor Joy”, as I’m not sure I fully understand his function in the work. A catalyst? A commentator? He might be seen as either of those – more probably, alas, as neither …
Which brings us to what I think is the central problem: the disaster itself (or – as the author refers to it at times – “the catastrophe”). Here we encounter the apprentice writer’s typically limited sense of an audience for what he or she has written. It appears to be a fire, principally, but a fire where? In a building, yes, but was anyone caught in it? was anybody killed? The author makes obvious reference here to Lorca’s famous elegy for a fallen bullfighter, “Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias” (1935), with its persistent refrain of “a las cinco de la tarde” [at five in the afternoon]. The clocks here appear to have stopped at eight in the morning, though.
Setting aside such an understandable hommage, my real fear, and the reason for the somewhat niggardly mark I have suggested, is that the author’s raking over the same set of ashes again and again makes for dull, solipsistic reading. The sequence seems colossally long (though it isn’t really). This repetitive-compulsive, Beyond-the-Pleasure-Principle mode of composition clearly works for its author, but it’s hard to imagine it engaging a less partial reader. Elementary errors in punctuation, layout, paragraphing and spelling abound – each another reason to doubt the unwavering control of the author.
It's not clear when (if?) the main character goes definitively off the rails, presumably an event which precedes the opening scenes. One would tend to conjecture that it was after the fire / disaster referred to in the title, but this is mere guesswork.
Next time it might be better to pay more attention to plot and to have fewer inexplicable sets of random signs and images. The pursuit of concision through the editing scissors is a process which the author has not yet deployed to any great advantage.
Nevertheless, there’s a promising verve about the main character, and his (?) blundering attempts to have an adult relationship with Melody also have a kind of manic comic brio to them.
I therefore feel a grade in the high C’s or low B’s would be appropriate. The sequence is flawed, certainly, but offers many little treats along the way.
Dr. Marco Sauvignon (B.A., M.A. D.Phil)
Lecturer in Creative Writing
School of Culture and Harmony
University of Nutirani
•
III
30 at the roadworks = 50
– Bumper Sticker
News Feed:Tuesday January 8, 08:09 AM:
Fire sparks emergency response
There is a massive turnout of emergency services this morning to a big fire in an office block in the coastal suburbs of the City.
It is possible that people are trapped inside the building. A huge plume of smoke is visible from the CBD.
Shore Road is blocked from Central Ave to Union Street. Eleven fire engines, along with police and ambulance crews, are there.
*
Pathologist's Report on the victims:
- Smoke-inhalation
- Lacerations, both deep and superficial
- (injuries consistent with breaking the glass of a window with one’s hands)
- Massive internal haemorrhaging
- (injuries consistent with a fall of several stories onto hard concrete below)
- Scorching (severe)
- Extensive third and fourth degree burns
•
IV
Why did you take your present job?
- Tired of working on the building site
- No good at anything else
- Thought I had something worthwhile to offer
- Liked the bathroom
- Good pay, time for other things
- Like to sleep in in the morning
- A Coke, please
Internal Assessment:Before the Disaster:
A sequence of poems and prose-pieces
(presented as a final assignment for Honours in Creative Writing).
Assessor: Lorraine West (Creative Writing Tutor)
Recommended grade: A, 85%
Overview:
I’ve been glad to see such an improvement over the year in this student’s work. What began as a series of discrete poems and stories aimed at various fairly obvious social problems, in naïvely realist fashion, has become a far more demanding set of psychological explorations of inner space.
Strengths:
What I like best about this work is the strong sense of doom running through the (apparently) disparate pieces collected here. We don’t ever really learn what the disaster was, but knowing (as I do) its intimate significance in the author’s own life, I can see how ingeniously inexplicit this whole sequence is. The point is that we can each fill in the gaps with our own catastrophic events, and re-experience the after-the-fact premonitory quivers that seemed to foreshadow them. Does it matter that we deduce that a member of the author’s own family died in just such a disastrous way?
Weaknesses:
Some of the characterization – especially of the minor figures – seems to me a little weak. The strength of this collection is its apocalyptic tone, but I feel that the recurring ghost (always a distinctly fishy odour, always at the same height in the living room) , doesn’t really bear the weight of significance attributed to it. The uncle, however, Professor Joy, seems to me to make up for it. His psychological pronouncements also serve to enliven some rather pedestrian sex scenes.
The illustrations are a different matter. Here I think less might well be more. I understand that there’s a certain effectiveness in collecting morgue photographs of unidentified victims and coupling them with captions from a porno site, but the horrific character of the results should probably have suggested a bit more restraint. The other, more iconic visions of disaster seem, by contrast, far more effectively employed.
Suggestions:
I feel this writer would benefit from a wider experience of the demands of the publishing scene. Many of these pieces could easily appear separately in magazines, even if the sequence as a whole (with its book-within-a-grammar-textbook formatting) is beyond the scope of anything but a chapbook series. It’s time to launch out and test the water!
Some compromises might have to be made with formatting, of course. The whole device of the dual-text in Esperanto might be a little beyond the technical resources of even our leading literary journals …
•
V
Les montagnes sont des bâtiments
sur les collines de Wellington
fenêtres sur l’océan
– chanson française
A seagull wings ahead
of ink-black clouds
in a still sunlit sky
0800-SCRUB-4-U
on the side of a white car
having difficulties turning out
*
tipped-up dark glasses
in the HIACE
van
*
Boy walking up the hill
with three pieces of fruit
each in a plastic bag
Another boy walks
downhill
cellphone to his ear
*
a fragment of chicken clings
to plastic
clingfilm
*
Walking faster to avoid
saying hello
to the elderly neighbour
wheeling her groceries
up the long steep
slope
*
fish jumps from wine to spirits
the young girl in the dairy
seems to call you back
*
/ KNOCKED U P
/ PIRAT ES OF THE
CARIBBEAN 3
In the Post Office
decorations for Dhiwali
– everywhere
*
WORKS END
THANK
YOU
*
a natural instinct for
alliteration
in the child behind
Tina’s getting tired
observes her Mummy
hopefully
•
VI
You make me want to la la
– Ashlee Simpson
Creative Writing Project Assessment:
Assessed by (Prof) Wendy Nu
Head of Programme
The discrepancy between the A (85) recommended by the internal evaluator and the borderline C+ / B- grade (64/65) advocated by the external evaluator, though perturbing on the surface, presents, I feel, little real cause for concern. I suspect it lodges in the internal evaluator’s knowledge of the student in question, the immense strides which have been made in moving from amateurish social realist prose to a more emblematic style. On the other hand, there are the external evaluator’s perceptions (some justified, some subjective) of the project’s failure to communicate directly to an unprepared audience.
Some of the external evaluator’s comments are right on the mark. The story is inexplicit, the doomladen catastrophe never fully delineated. But is this really as problematic as he suggests? Surely this is as much a question of genre-definition as of successful communication of a clearly pre-defined intention. Do the experiments of the L*A*N*G*U*A*G*E poets count for nothing in our evolving discourse?
Two of his remarks, however, do set off warning-bells for me:
- “Here we encounter the apprentice writer’s typically limited sense of an audience for what he or she has written.”
And yet, clearly, our student has found an enthusiastic audience in the internal examiner. This shows the danger of assuming that one’s own reactions will be those of any other similarly “informed” reader – the necessity, in short, for humility before the mysteries of reader-response.
- “the author’s raking over the same set of ashes again and again makes for dull, solipsistic reading … Elementary errors in punctuation, layout, paragraphing and spelling abound – each another reason to doubt the unwavering control of the author.”
Similar mistakes in orthography might be found in many of the world’s great authors. Some people are precise about such matters, others not – in itself this doesn’t seem to me worthwhile evidence either way. In terms of assessment, admittedly, this might be expected to incur some minor penalty. The politics of presentation are another subject which might well occupy our external examiner’s thinking. Is he familiar, for instance, with Susan Howe’s work on the normalizing implications of the editing of Emily Dickinson’s or Herman Melville’s literary remains?
Given that the external assessor writes that he would be comfortable with ‘a grade in the B’s,’ and that both I and the internal assessor are comfortable with the original A (given this student’s progress and work in the course), I judge that a fair compromise would be to award a B+ (77).
•
VII
Give blood
go skateboarding – Boy’s T-shirt
I’m going to wear jandals
today
taking a walk
on the wild side
when you just know
there’s nothing
they can
do to you
a tentative attempt
becomes the hero’s
salmon leap
our cat Zero
’s attack
on a blank
puppet
made of calico
I fulminate
to captive audiences
(taking the piss
no doubt
in furtive whispers)
not
the leap of faith
we bargained on
the fear that dogs our days
•
VIII
Have you ever think about something that can turn over your thoughts
and are you ready to to appear in the best place of the earth
with the help of the glariest toys who want to hug you
without any cents!
– LeeLoveYou dot com
Correspondence:
From: Marco Sauvignon
Sent: Friday, 30 November, 8:33 a.m.
To: Lucy Halliday (ARTS AFA)
Subject: MCW examiner's report
Dear Lucy Halliday,
I shall be returning “Before the Disaster,” the verse & prose sequence I was asked to externally assess, by mail today, and am taking this opportunity to forward you this advanced copy of my examiner’s report, as requested.
Apologies if it’s a little late, but there are many deadlines at this time of year, as I’m sure you well know.
yours,
Dr Marco Sauvignon
*
From: Lucy Halliday
Sent: Monday, 17 December, 3:10 p.m.
To: Marco Sauvignon
Subject: RE: MCW examiner's report
Dear Marco,
Thank you very much for your recent evaluation of an Honours final assignment for our Creative Writing programme. The sequence was also internally examined, and I attach the internal examiner’s report on it. Given the discrepancy between your own suggested C+/B-, and the internal recommendation of an A, the sequence and both reports were passed on to an assessor, whose report is also attached. The assessor is suggesting a compromise grade of B+ (77%).
Once you have had a chance to review these two reports, I wonder if you could let me know by return e-mail if you would be willing to accept the assessor’s recommendation and go with the grade of B+? Our regulations state that all examiners and the assessor must attest to the same final grade for assignments of this kind, so it is important that we obtain your consent for the B+ to be awarded. I would be very grateful if you could let me know about this in the next few days, as our aim is to finalise these grades as soon as possible, so that our students are not kept waiting for their results.
Many thanks,
Lucy Halliday
*
From: Marco Sauvignon
Sent: Tuesday, 18 December, 8:51 a.m.
To: Lucy Halliday (ARTS AFA)
Subject: RE: MCW examiner's report
Well, it’s interesting to get different perspectives on the sequence. I guess I can live with a B+. Obviously I would have a good deal more to say on the issue if any kind of conversation had been suggested about the various issues raised in the assessor’s report, but at present I simply note the points which have been made.
(I will add, though, that the contention that clear formatting belongs outside the province of our assessment of a student’s creative writing seems a trifle contentious to me, especially as it comes in a context implying that I’m “unaware” of the effects on our “evolving discourse” of the (thirty-year-old) experiments of the L*A*N*G*U*A*G*E poets.)
yours,
Dr Marco Sauvignon
*
From: Wendy Nu (Prof)
Sent: Tuesday, 18 December, 10:51 a.m.
To: Marco Sauvignon
Subject: RE: MCW examiner's report
Marco!
What are you wanking on about?
It’s just a fucking mark, for God’s sake!
Have you really disappeared that far up your own arsehole?
You couldn’t stand the illustrations, could you?
Listen, do you think we don’t know it’s a piece of crap? If you saw some of the other stuff we’ve had to contend with this semester … At least this student’s got a bit of spunk.
So how about cutting the sarcasm and getting with the programme? What goes around comes around, you know …
toodles, wenz
*
From: Lucy Halliday
Sent: Friday, 21 December 3:10 p.m.
To: Marco Sauvignon
Subject: RE: MCW examiner's report
Dear Marco,
Thanks again for participating in this process, and for being willing to accept the grade of B+ proposed for “Before the Disaster.”
I have one further thing to ask of you: I understand that you have been promised a payment for your assessment of this work. Our Examinations Office process the payments for examinations of this kind, but in order to do so, they require a printed bank deposit slip with your name and the account number in full on it. Would you be able to send a deposit slip to me so that I can expedite your payment? Many thanks, and all the best for the festive season,
Lucy
•
IX
3 sisters
^^ ^^ ^^
– T-shirt logo
Have you slimed yet?
the Aussie Sheila
asks
the uptight city Brit
lowering the tone
I guess he’d call it
she
keeping it real
a certain inconsistency
of purpose
characters
attracted & repelled
by the same things
from frame to frame
the more
jaded they are
the less alluring
a fashion-conscious
6-year-old
chased crabwise
by the surf
Notes:
[1] Sergeant Frederick's report on the death of 'the bravest and noblest on the [Greely] expedition' [1881-1884], quoted in David L. Brainard, The Outpost of the Lost: An Arctic Adventure. 1929. Foreword by Geoffrey E. Clark (New York: Skyhorse, 2018).
[2] Account of seal-hunting quoted from George Francis Lyon, Private Journal During the Recent Voyage of Discovery Under Captain Parry (London: John Murray, 1824), 329 et seq.
Bill Direen, ed.: Percutio 2 (2008)[30/11/07-14/2/08]
[3094 words]
[Published in Percutio 2 (2008): 74-80;
Kingdom of Alt (Auckland: Titus Books, 2010): 105-26]
•
