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?
No comments:
Post a Comment