RORAIMA, ALASKA

Palpitations in a vacuum.

The hours a whipped cream

in a cup of fog.

On the bureau there used to be

a map of Brazil

made of foam rubber

where every state

was a different piece:

my long lost town

was way up there,

nothing more than a puzzle.

High

on the map

there was

an isolated state

where no one goes;

I know no one

who’s ever set foot there:

It’s called Roraima, and its existence is known only

because the Yanomami indians

still live there,

the most primitive

and wisest tribe

– so they say –

remaining on the planet.

Roraima is the Alaska of Brazil,

I thought,

amused by the idea.

There too are

high mountains and deserts

always covered with mist,

which rises from the jungle:

The Pico da Neblina.

A Mount Olympus

humid and of no use

for atheists and monotheists

like us.

I was looking at

that map on the bureau

through the little hole

in the metal clip

of the paperweight.

I pinpointed

the Bay of Guanabara

and centered it on my house.

I fantasized

that if I were

to pass through that hole

I would arrive straight away at my house

from the other side of the world.

What a strange thought!

After this I had

a coughing fit.

Since this morning I knew

I was on the verge

of a cold.

Then it happened

that the door of the refrigerator

refused to close

because there was too much ice

in the freezer.

I turned it off

and defrosted it.

I cleaned and dried it

and with this

the cold hit me

as it had wanted to do for some time.

But what was I supposed to do?

Leave the fridge

sleeping all night

with the door open?

What does the refrigerator have to do

with the mountain in the mist?

And where is the poetry,

my friend?

Well,

everything has to do with everything,

and poetry is everywhere,

my friend.

Everything has to do with everything.

Shall I show you?

My cold

resembles the water that dripped

inside the turned-off fridge.

It has to do with the music

that I am listening to as I write:

it’s “Dracula”

by Philip Glass.

It has a lot to do

with the mountain in the mist

or with a door

that refuses to close.

Yes, because the fact is

that everything has to do with everything.

The moon is related to

the waves of the ocean

– so they say.

The ass has to do

with the pants.

Honey has to do

with grease,

and the journey

with the calluses.

And then,

the grave awaits

with its stench of mildew

– and here Dracula

rears his head again.

There is the desire

for great things

and the enjoyment

of little ones.

(I saw a film this evening

on TV

in which a man dies

and leaves his lover pregnant

with their first child,

who he will never see.

In silence

I thanked the I-don’t-know-who

who has allowed me

to live long enough

to meet my own.)

You’re all good company

(a little too unobtrusive,

it’s true),

but please excuse me now:

a cup of hot tea

will help my cough.

The eskimos of Alaska,

do they too catch colds

and drink tea?

The eskimos of Alaska

are surely no less wise

than the Yanomami, I think.

Poetry is of course a beautiful thing

and it’s a beautiful thing to write it.

But who said

that poetry

is worth more

than a cup of tea?

Even Eliot quarreled with himself

in this way

before the taking

of a toast and tea.

I, however,

– I’ve already decided –

I will take my tea

with biscuits and butter.

And that’s the way I take life too.

At least I try.

Translated by Don Stang and Helen Wickes

RORAIMA, ALASKA

Batticuore nel vuoto.

Ore montate

su una tazza di nebbia.

C’era sul comò

una mappa del Brasile

fatta di gomma piuma

dove ogni stato

era una tessera colorata:

il mio paese perduto

era lì sopra

niente più

di un rompicapo.

Là su in alto

nella mappa

c’era uno stato

isolato

dove non va nessuno;

non conosco nessuno

che ci abbia messo piede:

Si chiama Roraima, e si sa che esiste

perché lì vivono ancora

gli indios Yanomami,

la tribù più primitiva

e più saggia

– così dicono –

rimasta sul pianeta.

Roraima è l’Alaska del Brasile

– ho pensato,

divertito dall’idea.

Anche lì ci sono

montagne alte e deserte

sempre coperte dalla nebbia

che si alza dalla giungla:

Il Pico da Neblina.

Un Olimpo

umido e inutile

per atei e monoteisti

come noi.

Stavo guardando

quella mappa sul comò

attraverso il buchino

della molletta di metallo

del fermacarte.

Ho centrato

la baia di Guanabara

e lì ho centrato casa mia.

Ho fantasticato

che se io riuscissi

a passare attraverso quel buco

arriverei subito a casa

dall’altro lato del mondo.

Che strano pensiero!

E mi è venuto

un accesso di tosse.

Da stamani sapevo

che ero sull’orlo

di un raffreddore.

Poi è successo

che la porta del frigorifero

si è rifiutata di chiudersi

perché c’era troppo ghiaccio

nel congelatore.

L’ho spento

e l’ho fatto scongelare.

L’ho pulito e asciugato

e con questo

il raffreddore mi ha colpito

come ben voleva da tempo.

Ma cosa avrei dovuto fare?

Lasciar dormire

il frigo tutta la notte

con la porta aperta?

Che c’entra il frigorifero

con il monte delle nebbie?

E dov’è la poesia,

caro mio?

Eh be’,

tutto c’entra con tutto,

e la poesia è ovunque,

caro mio.

Tutto c’entra con tutto.

Vuoi vedere?

Il freddo dentro di me

sembra l’acqua che gocciolava

dentro il frigo spento.

C’entra anche la musica

che sento mentre scrivo:

È il “Dracula”

di Philip Glass.

C’entra benissimo

col monte delle nebbie

o con una porta

che si rifiuta di chiudersi.

Sì, perché il fatto

è che tutto c’entra.

C’entra la luna

con le onde del mare

– così dicono.

C’entra il culo

con i pantaloni.

C’entra il miele

con il grasso

e il percorso

con i calli.

E poi,

c’è la tomba che aspetta

col suo lezzo di muffa

– e qui c’entra Dracula

nuovamente.

C’è il desiderio

di grandi cose

e il godimento

delle piccole.

(Ho visto un film stasera

alla TV

in cui un uomo muore

e lascia l’amante incinta

del suo primo figlio,

che lui non vedrà mai.

In silenzio

ho ringraziato non-so-chi

che mi ha permesso

di vivere abbastanza

per conoscere i miei)

Siete una bella compagnia

(un po’ troppo discreta,

è vero),

ma ora mi scuserete:

una tazza di tè caldo

mi farà bene alla tosse.

Gli eschimesi dell’Alaska,

anche loro si raffreddano

e prendono il tè?

Gli eschimesi dell’Alaska

non saranno meno saggi

degli Yanomami, credo.

La poesia è senz’altro una cosa bella

ed è una bella cosa scriverla.

Ma chi ha detto

che la poesia

vale di più

di una tazza di tè?

Anche Eliot si imbatté

in questo dubbio

before the taking

of a toast and tea.

Io invece

– ho già deciso –

prendo il tè

con i biscotti al burro.

E così prendo anche la vita.

Almeno ci provo.

CACTUS FLOWER

Canteloupes and misanthropes,

Bills and thrills,

Inspiration and perspiration.

Money and verses.

Sad pairings.

And meanwhile

the bills arrive

and the poet suffers.

A lifetime

on the edge of eviction.

Indoor spaces

always precarious,

provisional.

Walls are expensive.

For the poor poet,

unwelcome to the landlords,

rejected by the walls,

the outdoors remains.

Camping out.

About my life

in the great outdoors

I’ll tell you one story,

for free, as always.

There is a place

where there is no television

and newspapers are not delivered.

It’s a sort of desert.

It’s lovely to visit there at dawn

when the cactus bloom.

There I have known

the irony of plants.

The ugliest cactus

is the one with the most beautiful flower:

a giant lily,

fragrant,

multicolored,

that opens only at dawn.

It’s understandable.

In those parts

the sun is so strong

that the flower

has no choice

and must remain closed

the rest of the day.

But calm down.

Resist

interpretation.

This little story

is not a metaphor

for the misery of the poet.

It’s only a memory.

A recollection perhaps.

A pang.

A little thing,

mental

and priceless.

Translated by Don Stang and Helen Wickes

FIOR DI CACTUS

Cambiali e minotauri,
saturnali e minestroni,
angurie e folgorazioni.

Soldi e versi.

Tristi accoppiamenti.

E intanto
arrivano bollette
e il poeta soffre.

La vita intera
sull’orlo dello sfratto.

Gli spazi chiusi
sempre instabili,
provvisori.
Le pareti costano.

Al poeta povero,
sgradito ai proprietari,
respinto dalle mura,
resta l’aperto.
L’addiaccio.

Sulla mia vita
all’aperto
ve ne racconto una,
gratis come sempre.

Esiste un luogo
dove non c’è televisione
e non arrivano giornali.
È una sorta di deserto.
È bello visitarlo all’alba
quando fioriscono i cactus.

Lì ho conosciuto
l’ironia vegetale.
Il cactus più brutto
è quello dal fiore più bello:
un gigantesco giglio,
profumato,
variopinto,
che si apre solo all’alba.
Si capisce.
Da quelle parti
il sole è così ardente
che il fiore
non ha scelta
e deve rimanere chiuso
per tutta la giornata.

Ma state tranquilli.
Trattenete pure
le interpretazioni.
Questa storiella
non è una metafora
della miseria del poeta.

È soltanto un ricordo.
Un richiamo forse.
Una fitta.
Una piccola cosa,
mentale
e inestimabile.

In Search of Benevolent Immortality

Someone I loved once
gave me a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this too, was a gift.
—MARY OLIVER
"The Uses of Sorrow"

My mother sacrificed so much.
I try to mend fractured relations,
let light flicker into the sheltered past.
We packed whole lives into bundles
in search of what chooses us,
what wants to come back to the surface,
what needs to be said.
We had so many dreams
we didn’t know what to make of them.
And so with leopard’s ears
I hear beyond the range of sound
the ineffable, the sublime, my mother’s
breath, grandmother’s smile, ancestors’
voices, to soothe and heal the sorrow.
 

“In Search of Benevolent Immortality” was first published in
 Life in Suspension (Salmon Poetry, Ireland, 2016)

Hélène Cardona was born in Paris and raised all over Europe before settling in the US. She earned her MA in American literature from the Sorbonne, where she wrote her thesis on Henry James. She is the author of 7 books, more recently the bilingual collections Life in Suspension, called “a vivid self-portrait as scholar, seer and muse” by John Ashbery, and Dreaming My Animal Selves, described by David Mason as “liminal, mystical and other-worldly.” Cardona’s luminous poetry, hailed as visionary by Richard Wilbur, explores consciousness, the power of place, and ancestral roots. It is poetry of alchemy and healing, a gateway to the unconscious and the dream world.

Her translations include Beyond Elsewhere (Gabriel Arnou-Laujeac), winner of a Hemingway Grant; Ce que nousportons (Dorianne Laux); Birnam Wood (José Manuel Cardona): and Walt Whitman’s Civil War Writings for WhitmanWeb. She contributes essays to The London Magazine, and co-edits Plume, Fulcrum, and Levure Littéraire.

MY CREATIVE PROCESS

How would you describe your own (very individualistic) poetic voice? What are your intentions in your poetry?

I write as a form of self-expression, fulfilment, transcendence, healing, to transmute pain and experience into beauty. For me, poetry is a process of self-revelation, an exploration of hidden dimensions in myself, and also a way to express the profound experience of the fundamental interconnection of all in the universe. Writing is cathartic as it extends a search for peace, for serenity, rooted in a desire to transcend and reconcile the fundamental duality I see in life. Ultimately, I seek expansion of consciousness.

We are stretched to the frontiers of what we know, exploring language and the psyche. The poem is a gesture, an opening toward a greater truth or understanding. Art brings us to the edge of the incomprehensible. The poems, in their alchemy and geology, are fragments of dreams, enigmas, shafts of light, part myth, and part fable. Mysticism constitutes the experience of what transcends us while inhabiting us. Poetry, as creation, borders on it. It is metaphysical. It offers a new vision of the universe, reveals the soul’s secrets and mysteries. These lines from the poem “The Isle of Immortals” encapsulate my philosophy:

The ultimate aim is reverence for the universe.
The ultimate aim is love for life.
The ultimate aim is harmony within oneself.

What defines my writing is the sacred dimension of the poetic experience. And it is founded in very concrete reality, a reconciliation of the spiritual and the carnal. It speaks of transformation and seeks the unison of all that lives. 

Clearly, your poetry is enjoyed by a wide range of different readers; but I was wondering if you have a kind of ideal reader? That is, who is the reader you imagine when you are writing?

Thank you for saying that. I’m delighted to have a wide range of readers. But I don’t write for a specific kind of reader. I’m hoping my poetry leaves the reader in awe, with a renewed sense of wonder and of the sacred. 

Your poetry collections Dreaming My Animal Selves and Life in Suspension are bilingual, and you write in French and English equally fluently. What are the challenges of presenting your work in this way? For example, are there things that one language can do which the other can’t, and vice versa?

English has been my language of choice for a long time now. French is my mother tongue but English became the dominant language when I moved to the United States. Actually it took over even before, when I wrote my thesis on Henry James for my masters at the Sorbonne. I was already an anglophile, having lived and studied in England, and I loved writing in English. I feel as if English, even though it was my fifth language, chose me. So I write in English first and then translate into French. I love this exercise of going back and forth because it enables me to make beautiful discoveries. I’m also influenced by other languages, including Spanish, German, Italian and Latin. It’s very stimulating and enriching. I was born in Paris and grew up in Switzerland, France, Monaco, England, Wales, Germany, Greece and Spain, absorbing different cultures and ideas. 

When I wrote my first collection in English, I did not originally intend it to be a bilingual collection. It was my first publisher’s idea that I present it as a bilingual collection. This turned out to be a brilliant idea. It was fascinating because it rekindled my love of the French language and of writing in French again. The French translation absolutely informed the English version. I made discoveries with the French and it became a dance between both languages. I also felt more freedom than if I were translating someone else because it was my own text. This has been the process for all three collections.

To answer your question, there are always things one language can do which the other can’t. And so the process is a bit like that of a detective searching for clues and of a mathematician looking to solve a problem.

In my interview with John Ashbery for Le Mot Juste, which was also published on the Poetry Foundation, I commented that French leaves less room for ambiguity. It’s a very precise language. So is English but English is more fluid. Interestingly, Ashbery responded that he needs “sort of a sfumato effect to hide in or to find material in.” 

How do all the languages influence you and your writing?

I think they stimulate the mind in different ways. I’m naturally curious about other cultures. Having been raised in a very international environment makes me a citizen of the world. Both my parents were immigrants. My mother left Greece to move to France. My father escaped the Franco dictatorship so as not to be jailed for his writing. That’s how my parents met. I am an immigrant too. After moving to the U.S., I became an American citizen. So I’m keenly aware about not fitting into molds. I wasn’t the typical French girl growing up. At home, all my parents’ friends were foreigners. My dad worked for the United Nations in Geneva and Paris, among other places, and his colleagues were mostly from South America or Spain, but also from Iran and other countries. I literally grew up in the U.N., which is a microcosm of the world.

So very early on I would transition between languages and countries. It’s harder to be nationalistic when you’re made of several countries. It opens up your mind. When you learn new languages it creates synapses in the brain. They inform my writing, consciously, and unconsciously. All kinds of associations come to mind when I read or write.

Your poetry draws heavily on dream, mythical and psychoanalytic imagery and archetypes. In this sense, I suppose it’s not really “poetry of the everyday,” perhaps.  Why are you drawn to this kind of imagery in your poetry?

I like to cultivate a relationship with my inner self through dreams and love to remember them. I keep a notebook by my bed and write them down. You always dream, it’s only a matter of remembering. The day is the waking dream. When I trained with Sandra Seacat at the Actors’ Studio in New York, she introduced me to a particular form of dream work, which could be called Jungian. I have done this work for many years now. It’s very therapeutic. And it can also be used to develop a character in a play or movie. Your inner self has all the answers and will give them to you, as long as you’re meant to know what you’re asking for. 

In the dream you are connected to your inner self and to the divine. We experience the dream’s intelligence and the world psyche. Everything in the universe is connected. Dreams provide insight into the personal and archetypal dimensions of the unconscious. I’ve continued to train with different teachers and shamans. Dream work is medicine for the soul and helps us integrate our conscious and unconscious selves so we can explore our path, gain self-insight and wisdom, and fulfill ourselves. Many poems are born from dreams. It’s a wonderful gift to be given to hear a new melody or lines this way. For instance, the poem “My Mother Ceridwen” came from a dream: my mother appeared to me as the Celtic goddess Ceridwen.

You’ve talked in interviews about the “transformations” of self involved in acting, costumes and performance. What are the similarities and differences, do you think, between the kinds of transformations of selves in your poetry, and those involved in, say, acting?

Acting and writing are two creative outlets for me, two ways of expressing who I am. It helped me a lot when I was in drama school studying Shakespeare from a performer’s perspective that I had already read most of the plays and knew the language. The fact that I had studied so much literature made it easy for me to analyze the texts. But then you want to get out of your head as an actor. And studying the Meisner technique was very useful for that. It helps you be in the moment and react to what’s going on in the room, to be acutely aware of your surroundings, of others. It shifts the attention from you to whoever is with you. Which in turn is helpful when you read poetry. There is an audience you want to address, you can’t just be in your head. And you have to project. There isn’t always a mike. So good diction helps. I also like to hear what I write, the sounds and rhythms. If I stumble, maybe I need to change a word.

As an actor I am drawn to films that are visually beautiful and poetic. At the same time, I always pay close attention to the screenplay. It’s the backbone of the film. I was lucky to work with Lawrence Kasdan (Mumford). He writes all his screenplays, and they’re usually original screenplays. He’s a terrific writer and director. I was also lucky to work on Lasse Hallström’s Chocolat. Robert Nelson Jacobs’s screenplay was nominated for an Oscar and won the BAFTA award. It’s based on the beautiful novel by Joanne Harris. Great writing helps the actor. 

Acting and writing both raise your consciousness and in that sense, enhance one another.
On a personal level, it’s very satisfying to have more than one creative outlet. If I’m not working on an acting project, I can write. I can always use my time creatively.

Which of your many talents - acting, voice-over, poetry, etc. - do you enjoy spending time on the most?
I’ve worn many hats over the years: teacher, writer, actor, translator, dancer, shaman, dream analyst. I have multiple selves. To be an actor you have to be a chameleon. The search for fulfillment is a recurrent theme in my life. It’s the title of the thesis I wrote about Henry James. Jean-Claude Renard writes that “I” by essence becomes “Other,” that is to say “someone who not only holds the power to fulfill his or her intimate self more and more intensely, but also at the same time, can turn a singular into a plural by creating a work that causes, in its strictest individuality, a charge emotionally alive and glowing with intensity.” In that sense the work’s artistry affects others and helps their own transformation. This applies to any art. I’m happy as long as I can express myself through art and I love to work. Whether writing or acting, I find myself in an exalted state of concentration and consciousness, like a meditation or trance. It’s as if time stops or expands and I’m able to touch other worlds and keep a sense of connection with what is bigger than me.    

What are you working on at the moment?

With my partner John, we have adapted his novel Primate into a screenplay and we’re looking to get it made into a film. 

I just co-translated, with Yves Lambrecht, Walt Whitman’s Civil War Writings for WhitmanWeb. It was commissioned by the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. It was a ten-month long endeavor. The Civil War Writings retrace Whitman’s writing and service as a volunteer nurse during the American Civil War. We also translated the in-depth commentaries that scholars Ed Folsom and Christopher Merrill wrote for each text. The poems and texts are thus bookended with a foreword and afterword. They explore how writing and image can be used to examine war, conflict, trauma, and reconciliation in Whitman’s time and today. 

Ce que nous portons, my translation of What We Carry by Dorianne Laux, was recently published by Editions du Cygne in Paris.

Adapted from an interview with Jonathan Taylor in Everybody's Reviewing

Conjuring a Whole Narrative from Scraps

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity,
goodness, and truth.

—LEO TOLSTOY
War and Peace

If you ask an artist who creates crazy quilts how they come up with their designs, that artist will likely tell you that each finished project originates from an emotional place. Each quilt is different because it is made of many found scraps and pieces of cloth in different sizes with no regular color or pattern—the sleeves of an old work shirt, perhaps, or the skirt of a wedding dress. Similarly, the writing of a novella-in-flash involves working with flash fiction fragments and stories by linking them together to form a layered, narrative arc. Working in both art forms demands an improvisational spirit regarding the creation of both content and structure. A novella-in-flash writer and a crazy quilt artist both become familiar with navigating incompletion and juxtaposition.

"Shabby Chic Crazy Quilt Detail" © Constanza Both art forms involve delving into the most unlikely places and finding pieces which, when put together, create an untraditional whole. The aim of a novella-in-flash is to create chapters that can stand alone as individual stories, while at the same time moving the narrative toward the larger, overall story arc. Just as a crazy quilt artist takes the time to prepare and stitch each patch, the flash pieces are written and polished as independent stories.

My novella-in-flash Here, Where We Live was born out of many of my poems and stories from the last twenty years. I conceptualized the storyline by beginning with older pieces that had been collecting dust in my metaphorical scrap bag. I had written stories and poems over the years involving a teenage girl and her mother—stories that felt in some way connected. It excited me that while searching for and gathering up my old writings, new ideas began to form in my mind about the narrative arc for Here, Where We Live and the significant characters began to take shape. As I stitched the stories together, the juxtapositions brought with them fresh energy and new meaning.

Beginning with the two female characters from my older stories, my process for piecing together the structure for Here, Where We Live was a little unusual. I had written another novella-in-flash the year before and ultimately decided the entire ending of that book didn’t work for that particular narrative. But the ending worked in other ways and became the inspiration point for building Here, Where We Live. I began working my way forward from that lost ending. Finding my narrative arc involved imagining what might happen when so much goes wrong in a young person’s life; exploring how she might cope with various stresses and joys; and, especially, how she might contain within herself the contrasting qualities of wisdom—born of hardship—and the stubborn immaturity of a teenager.

While writing Here, Where We Live, I looked to many of my older fragments and poems to guide me. A crazy quilt may be made of scraps of silk, velvet, wool, cotton, and linen. Bits of a family wedding suit might be sewn next to a patch of fabric from a childhood toy, and both may be next to a just-discovered piece of fabric. Similarly, writing the novella-in-flash involved integrating preexisting flashes and giving them a home surrounded by new neighbors—an entirely unexpected new order that ends up feeling just right.

If you look at the Beatles’s album Abbey Road, for example, and notice the order of the songs, you’ll discover how each song as been placed before or after the others to create a unique overall effect. With Abbey Road, considered by many critics to be one of the best rock albums ever created, each song is individually stunning. Yet, what brings the listener to her knees is the way “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” comes right before “Here Comes the Sun,” which is followed by “Because,” and on and on. The brilliance is in the way each song is placed—sad followed by happy, followed by funny, followed by strange. You never really know what is coming around the bend, and even when you do know, it is surprising again, retaining—because of its careful ordering—the ability to strike the listener anew. Like songs in an album, each chapter of the novella-in-flash must feel whole and strong so as to enhance the overall feeling and to bear up under repeated readings and rereadings.

"Crazy Quilt Block"
© ConstanzaTwo books that reward this kind of sustained and repeated attention and that influenced my love for this form were written before the term “flash fiction” existed: Mrs. Bridge (1959) and Mr. Bridge (1969) by Evan S. Connell. A master at showing the reader just enough, Connell wrote linked vignettes in both of these novels, which allows the reader a window into the lives of his characters. Connell’s vignettes, though seemingly uneventful, are a mixture of poignancy and unflinching sadness. At the end of each book, one is left with a strong feeling of having known his characters as though one had lived with them, with the order of the stories contributing heavily to that intimate character encounter.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention a film that I admire, one that creates the feeling of an entire life, by showing the audience just a sliver. Cléo from 5 to 7 is a French film made in 1962 by Agnès Varda. The movie focuses on an anxious hour-and-a-half in the life of a woman as it plays out in real time while she waits to hear the results of a medical test that will possibly confirm a diagnosis of cancer. Varda shows the audience Cléo’s character by focusing on tiny actions and details. As with effective flash fiction, it is the details that haunt the viewer: We see Cléo walking past shop windows and looking at her reflection in the glass; we see her waiting for a visit from her lover, as if for the first time. We see her driving with a girlfriend and trying to feel carefree, the way she felt before she knew she might have a terminal illness. This brief and compact film addresses existentialism, mortality, the nature of despair, and what it is to lead a meaningful life, and it proves that a work of art does not need to be long to leave the audience contemplating it for a long time after.

To return to the crazy quilt analogy, these means of compressed and fragmentary, almost scrap-like composition remind both the author and reader that life unfolds in minutes, hours, and days; in weeks and years. Some moments are colorful and brilliant, many are normal or even drab, and others are sad and desperate and misshapen. We humans frequently have very little perspective on our own stories while we are living them. The novella-in-flash, divided into tiny bits of action, mirrors life this way. I do not believe that life as it is being lived has a “narrative arc”—and if it does, it does not become clear until a person is gone.

Bearing this in mind, each time I experimented with the order of this odd assortment of chapters in Here, Where We Live, it felt as though the novella could easily take an entirely new direction. This was tricky. My hardest decisions involved defining what felt true and consistent with the characters I was creating. Only after rearranging the order again and again could I define a desirable narrative arc. Next, it was time to write what felt as though it were missing. This was like writing connective tissue—or seams to hold the patchwork narrative together.

"CQ Detail" ©Lisa SorensenUnique to this form, the novella-in-flash contains frequent pauses when chapters end, with each story chapter being under a thousand words. I’ve come to see these spaces as where the reader takes a breath, which creates a rhythmic reading experience overall. I enjoyed exploring how breathlessly close to ruin both daughter and mother become in this novella-in-flash. I wanted, as the writer, to have them relive the same issues and themes again and again with sporadic progress, like gasping for breath.

Another book that fostered my desire to attempt my own novella-in-flash is Why Did I Ever (2001) by Mary Robison, whose stunning depictions of messy lives are rendered imaginatively by working with tiny fragments assembled together that highlight the way ends and beginnings of chapters can be used to create rhythmic gaps like breathing. Robison wrote Why Did I Ever on hundreds of note cards over a long period of time. Some scenes or chapters are only one sentence long, whereas others are a few pages. Robison’s white spaces are structurally significant, as they are with my own novella-in-flash, where there are frequent pauses between chapters in which the reader takes a breath and makes the leap from one story to the next, following the threads of narrative mapped out by the author.

After all the patchwork pieces have been found, assembled and reassembled, sewn together with equal parts seams and gaps, only then does the larger quilt or narrative become clear. As the writer, now I can stand back from Here, Where We Live and see exactly where each fragment belonged and how each one contributes to the larger work. And my hope is that the reader will feel equally intrigued when reading the novella—wrapped up in a narrative made of overlaid, stitched-together stories.

First published in My Very End of the Universe –
Five Novellas-in-Flash and A Study of the Form
(Rose Metal Press, 2014)

Falling From Mirror

forgive me for the terrible things I’ve seen
among you
because i walked away from you with violets in my hand
forgive me
–LÂLE MÜLDÜR
“The Cyclamen (Mary-Incense)”

Translated by Burak Erdoğdu / Roza Publishing
Read Turkish version
Narin Yükler's Creative Process

Stories of homes are hidden in its roof

In its color there are  burns of the sorrow

Roads can not be used for traveling

At the borehole there is a sad song of the bride that tears apart the morning

Bread that made from the fame which sieved thinly heats the bare foot

Sits on the fire, a mom’s unburned sadness

A sleepless history records rooms

At the back of the door mom smokes the memories

Lots of lives reflects on the mirror 

The line that falls from the mirror settles under the eye

Girl stays still with her long hair

Frame is the enemy for mudbrick walls that does not break the memories

Her daughter who runs away is worst thing for the mother                                          

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Aynadan düşen

evlerin hikâyesi saklıdır damında

renginde efkâr yanıkları

önünde gidilemeyen yollar

kuyu başı yeni gelin türküsü yıkar sabahı

ince elenmiş undan pişirilen sac ekmeği ısıtır çıplak ayağı

ateşte durur, bir annenin yanmamış âhı

uykusuz bir tekrar tutar zaptını odaların

kapı ardında bir anne tüttürür hatırayı

yük yerine dizili yastık sayısınca ömür düşer aynaya

aynadan düşen çizgi yerleşir gözaltına

orada durur kızı, uzun saçlarıyla

çerçeve hısmıdır artık kerpiç duvarın, kırmaz hatırayı

bir annenin kaçıp gitmiş kızıdır en sızılı yanı

Narin Yükler was born in Viranşehir of Şanlıurfa in 1988. She graduated from the Tourism and Hospitality Management School of Gaziantep University and from the Faculty of Business Administration of Anadolu University. After graduation, she started to work as a hotel manager. She got married in 2012 and had her daughter in 2014. During that time, she took part in the activities of various non-governmental and human rights organizations, especially women’s rights organizations.

Many of her stories and poems about Middle Eastern–especially Kurdish/Ezidi–women were published in several newspapers and magazines in Iraq, Belgium, Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey. She held meetings in refugee camps where she read her poems written in Kurdish and Turkish languages. She has written theatrical plays on the human and women’s rights, some of which were staged. Being a woman, a mother and a refugee in the Middle East. Her poetry books include Aynadaki Çürüme and Rê û Rêç. Her awards include KAOS GL Short Story Award – Selection Committee (2015), Hüseyin Çelebi Poetry Prize (2015), Ali İsmail Korkmaz Poetry Prize (2016), Golden Daphne Award For Young Poets – Selection Committee (2016), Arkadaş Zekai Özger Poetry Award (2017) and the Arjen ArÎ Poetry Award (2017).

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MY CREATIVE PROCESS
Can you tell us a little about the origins of this series of poems?
My poetry deals with war, women, and migration.

Why do you write?
To cling to life. I live in the Middle East and have seen many countries in the Middle East. I wrote scripts and poems during these travels. Writing is a way of defending life. And therefore I see literature as necessary. Yes, we can not change the world by typing, but we can tell what causes war and immigration. I want to tell everyone about it.

Tell us about some of your formative influences and teachers who have been important to you.
My teachers encouraged me to read. I started to study philosophy. I write poetry and I cannot write poetry without reading philosophy.

The Future – What are you currently working on?
I'm working on a Kurdish poem. I am living in the heat. I want to develop projects related to refugee flags and children. I am interested in making documentaries, films, and poetry workshops.

In My Dreams

“Hours of patient sleep, waiting for the dream to come.
And now—nothing, worse than nothing..."
–ETGAR KERET
“On the Nutritional Value of Dreams”

In my dreams we are moving through corridors and taking each other by the hand and there is music playing in other rooms, but we barely hear it for the pulse of blood that leads us to leave our lives behind. All the children and the mothers and disappointed lovers who are waiting for us in other rooms with all their obligations and timetables and needs and certainties and clockwork lives.

In my dreams there are no clocks, only shadows and cries of love, and arguments which end in lovemaking. In my dreams there are no mornings, only nights and late afternoons, and cats climbing in and out of windows like acrobats, arching their backs and purring and asking to be petted. There are flowers on windowsills which sometimes break and shatter but never make a sharp noise which could cut our ears. And anyway in my dreams we don’t hear the voices of others, only raindrops and footsteps and children playing outside our window. I close the blinds and watch the sunlight filter through making strange shapes upon the ceiling and walls and the sheets of our bed. A car passes and I am removing my dress with its pattern of flowers and snowflakes. I feel your fingers slipping between the zip and feel myself being slowly unwrapped like a present on Christmas Eve. First the bow and then the wrapper and then the lid is cracked and I am there inside, naked and waiting.

In my dreams we do not speak or I do all the talking. You are quiet, or more quiet than you are with others, with whom you joke or feel a need to please. To be smart and earn their praise. You know you need to do nothing to please me. I am already yours.

Are you dreaming the same dream as me? Or is your dream just a cheap fantasy and my part could be played by any bit player, any woman at all would do. As long as she has a nice face and a good figure and is willing.

I want to clarify your intensions because if it is one of those dreams, I don’t want to be a part of it. It would be so easy to stay here under the covers with my eyes closed. Is that your dream–it will be hard and it will hurt–but if that’s your dream I will force my eyes open

And I will rise

and wake to a world

without you.

"In My Dreams" is currently being adapted for a dance performance. It will be filmed and included in our short film series which we are doing in collaboration with Etgar Keret and Dov Alfon's StoryVid project. If you are a writer, director or film student and would like more information on collaborating on short films, please contact us.
Music by: Shigeru Umebayashi

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Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process, an exhibition of her interviews and painted portraits of over 100 esteemed writers, which is traveling to universities. Her portraits of writers and artists appear in many public collections, including the U.S. Library of Congress, Dublin Writers Museum, Office of Public Works, American Writers Museum (forthcoming), and other museums and culture centers. Funk has received many awards and honors, including the Prix de Peinture from the Salon d’Automne de Paris and has exhibited at the Grand Palais, Paris. She was commissioned by the Guinness Cork Jazz Festival to paint their 30th anniversary commemorative painting of over 20 jazz legends. Her paintings of Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud won the Thames & Hudson Pictureworks Prize and were exhibited in Brussels for Bacon’s centenary, in Paris at the American University, as well as international arts festivals in Europe. As a writer and interviewer, she produces a column and podcast for Litro (UK) and the Portrait of a Writer column for TinHouse.com, and contributes to various national publications. She serves on the National Advisory Council of the American Writers Museum.