Around eight years ago, I created a couple of chapbooks with the name Stumm. These were collections of texts that could be given the name poetry; I was heavily influenced by the writers that gathered around the journal, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. This was writing as research - serious play - where a volatility in language (what Mina Loy describes as "the radium of the word") was hunted out, recovered and thrown to the surface.
The chapbook I'm currently working on takes the same name but is a different creature altogether. It's messier, for a start. I'm not so concerned with results or deliberate outlines. What I'm making is a thing; I'll be done with the making at some point. However, it isn't closed. There are burst blisters and abrasions all over.
I like what I am doing now. I like the magic of it, the urgency that has me scrawling and collating and writing and the time spent staring at these oddments, wondering at their otherness. An old tutor taught me that it's never worth aspiring to a level of competence. I'm beginning to know what this means in practice.
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