Monday, July 11, 2016

Béatrice Machet: About process, strategies, influences etc

Béatrice Machet: About process, strategies, influences etc

As Lizz mentioned, what she wrote seems very interesting to me, I’m looking forward to reading others’ words… Since I’m French, and not exactly bilingual even though I love writing poetry in English (it’s great fun, different sounds thus different ways to express myself, also different rules and a different “spirit” to this language compared to French so I can “discover” another “me” thinking in English … but I still remain a very typical French idealist kind of person!!!!) Anyway, I can try giving some clues about my momentum to write in English, and first in English for this 366 project because I don’t allow myself to look at my French abilities and background at this very moment of the day, I must confess I have music coming to my ears most of the time, whether it’s real music (classical, folk, jazz, rock, songs, ethnic musics…) or “reading music”, meaning poetry: Denise Levertov, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Heid Erdrich, Layli Long Soldier, Erika Wurth, Jennifer Foerster, Lisa Dordal, Sylvia Plath, E.Cummings, Carlos Williams , Frank Bidart , Diane Glancy, Adrienne Rich etc etc … I also must confess I have no discipline, my writing is very spontaneous, and if I am rigorously pursuing a specific goal when writing into French so as to gather a consistent collection of texts which happens to be a long poem divided into sections, when writing in English my ambition stays to a lower level. I basically translate feelings and reflections, thoughts and emotion, in a playful turn of mind if possible, if my mood allows it. .. Much later perhaps I’ll see a coherence emerging from all these drafts with a possibility to gather a collection as well, but it’s less obvious to me!
Does it make sense to other nonnative English speaking people?

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