Truth or Beauty: Poetry and Biography conference

One thing I'm doing this year is organising, with Anna Jackson (celebrated poet and senior lecturer in English literature) and Angelina Sbroma (PhD student and all around awesome person), this conference, about biographical poetry. It will be held at Victoria University of Wellington from the 26th to the 28th of November. I am very excited.

It has its genesis in me suggesting to Anna, seeing as she had recently finished writing a long sequence about Ancient Roman woman Cloda Metelli (who is thought to be Catullus's 'Lesbia', if you are familiar with Catullus's poetry, which I wasn't), that we should do a poetry reading of biographical poems (I have written a number of poems with more or less biographical elements, most of which ended up in My Iron Spine). Anna said, enthusiastically, 'Yes, but it should be a symposium'.

We very quickly got a bit more ambitious, and now the symposium has become an academic conference - well actually kind of more than an academic conference. It's a conference where academics and poet practitioners will be able to get together and talk about and reflect on this shared space - the poetry. I am particularly excited about this, because I have been developing a really strong interest in better connection between the literary community and the academic community, and also in the academic community sharing more with the interested wider community. In the case of this conference, I hope the mixture will lead to a reflective, vibrant and sparky few days.

We realised, after hunting around a bit, that while biographical poems are not uncommon, there isn't a great deal written about them in that light - that the field of biographical poetry is just waiting for exploration. And we've found some people who want to explore it with us. We have three keynote speakers already lined up, our Auckland poet and creative writing teacher Robert Sullivan, and two academics (and poets) from Australia: Jessica Wilkinson and Toby Davidson.

In any case, the deadline for proposing papers or discussions or readings is coming up at the end of this month, and while we already have many interesting proposals from great people, there's still time to send in yours. You can read the call for papers here: http://poetryandbiography.net/ and we've just put out some more detailed guidelines for proposals: http://poetryandbiography.net/2014/06/22/guidelines-for-proposals/. Or you can just come along, without giving a paper, and enjoy the talking and readings that I know will be stimulating, thought-provoking and maybe even inspiring. The fees for the conference are a total bargain: http://poetryandbiography.net/2014/06/15/conference-fees/.

Martin Edmond on biography - this weekend's quote

If you’ve read my blog for a while, you might remember my flurries of posts about biography, and might be aware how much I love them. I found this wonderful quote today in Martin Edmond’s Chronicle of the Unsung (which I can tell is going to become one of my favourite books, even though I’m only up to page 39):

I was actually more interested in the lives of artists than I was in their works. I would read biographies meticulously, as if by tracing the life I could, like van Ryssel or Schuffenecker copying van Gogh’s works, find out who I might be. The reading of biography requires that you imagine being the person it is about, which is impossible but no more impossible than the same imaginative act with respect to a character in fiction – yet wholly different for the very reason that in a biography you suppose yourself to be imagining the real. Is this always why you sometimes feel compelled to imagine not just being that person, but being, as they are, the subject of a biography yourself? Or is it a recognition of the fictional nature of any life told retrospectively and from the outside; and, following upon that recognition, a desire to imagine a similar retrospective fictionalisation of your own day-to-day existence? To read a life knowing how it ends is to read absolutely outside the consciousness of the person whose life it was, who, even if they knew the hour and manner of their death, still lived open-endedly. Radical misunderstanding of how people live may be consequent upon the passionate reading of biography. The most dangerous error is to attempt to live like the subject of a biography yourself.

(p.15)

Empress Elisabeth

I mentioned this poem in an earlier post - it's about Empress Elisabeth, Empress of Austria, Queen of Hungary, aka Elisabeth of Bavaria. So far, it's the longest poem I've ever written. It's going to be in My Iron Spine, taking up rather a lot of pages, but I'm extremely fond of it. It also contains the line 'my iron spine', from which I have taken my title.

Empress Elisabeth
Elisabeth Wittelsbach, Empress of Austria, Queen of Hungary


Possenhofen, Bavaria

‘But you have to play my way
My father is a duke
yours just keeps our pigs’
But Gretel wailed
‘I don’t want to play with you anymore’
as she ran off through the corn field
and wouldn’t come back
until I said I was sorry

Papa laughed, as he always did
and tickled me under my arms
Mama sighed and sadly said
‘You should be playing with princesses’


Cousin Emperor

I was planning to run away to the circus
but Mama said, ‘Why don’t you come
to Bad Ischl instead? We are
going to marry your sister
to an emperor, she always was
the prettiest’

We arrived in our travelling clothes
my hair a thick plait heavy
between my shoulder blades
Helene smiles her sweetest smile
There are more people in the room
than I have ever seen

‘Is that the emperor?
But where is his grey hair?
This man has too much sparkle
in his eyes, is too handsome
Why does he keep looking at me?’

Helene won’t speak to me today
but Mama is happy, she says
‘One daughter is as good as another’


Vienna

In the looking glass
is a bride
I wonder who she is
and what they’ve done with me

Through the carriage windows
every pair of eyes
burns into me
and Archduchess Aunt Sophie snaps
that she thanks God
I am wearing a veil
Do I want the whole country to know
that their empress is a cry baby?
I dig my fingernails
into my palms

Emperor Franzi,
Cousin Franzi, Husband Franzi
alone with you at last
What is it you are doing?
Why ...?
Don’t, no,
stop, please...

‘Have you made me an heir?’
Mother-in-law Aunt Sophie leers

I sleep with the lights on
In this city of millions
I have never been alone before


Mother of the country

I think I am getting fat
I stop eating
‘That’s my grandchild’
says Aunt Archduchess
‘Eat up’

‘I’m so happy,’ says Emperor Husband
and holds me tight against
his warm shoulder
‘Mama says you mustn’t run
mustn’t fall
you know how much she loves you’

She took my babies away from me
one by one
They said I was fragile
I should rest
I should save my strength
So I hoard it and plan my escape


Empress

New shoes everyday sounds
like a fantasy, but I am drowning
in jewelled boots, velvet
slippers, delicate leather, fine fur
I feel them crushing against my rib
cage, pushing me down
under the deluge

And after all, I have only
two feet to stand on

Patrician ladies, old enough
to be my grandmama, get
down on their arthritic knees
and kiss my hand
with their brittle lips
I blush red
Last year they would not
have troubled to notice me


Crowning glory

I can’t fit another circlet
even if I wished it
but there is no need

Braids wind and snake
about my head
the colour of leaves in
late autumn

Everyday my tresses
are brushed and dressed
twisted and smoothed
and for hours I sit
while Fanny works her magic
She once curled the locks
of the finest actresses, until
I lured her
with the wages of a professor
She is worth every cent

Every three weeks is washing day
I lie back in a low chair
Fanny applies potions and oils
she massages, moistens, rinses
Today she favours cognac and eggs

‘Your mane eats more
than you do,’ she jokes

Once, when I was alone
I let my hair free
and it waterfalled
to my ankles
I wrapped it around me
a cloak more natural
than royal robes


One night of Venus, a life-time of mercury

The whispers reach even me
and I swell with his betrayal

He whimpers outside my door
I nurse my tight joints, will not see him

I slip through his guilty fingers
to Corfu, I breathe, I recover

And see now, I am alone
on this island surrounded by sharks


Hunter

There are too many hours
in each day
but I fill them

When I walk out
no one can keep up with me
I leave them all behind
at last

I hang
with the power of my own hands
from rings in midair
I lift and swing
feeling the satisfying stretch
of muscle beneath my skin

And the moment I am sewn
into my riding habit
I become a centaur
No fence is too high
no bank too steep
no mount too wild
I bare my teeth and eat my fear


Most beautiful woman in Europe

I have an album
of the faces of women
Postcards, photos
of queens, princesses
and actresses
the new aristocrats

These are my rivals
I compare myself
with each one, eye for eye
mouth for mouth

little mirrors

I am still the fairest
of them all


Hungarian victory

My enemy’s enemy
is my friend

‘The revolting Hungarians
are revolting again’
yawns Archduchess Sophie
My sudden interest in politics
surprises even me

I slip their language
onto my tongue to antagonise
the archduchess, the Viennese
but quickly I learn to love
it and them
their wildness, like mine

I have little left
of my Emperor Husband
but still I have his ear
‘Emperor Franzi, Husband Franzi
we are proud people
you must set us free’

My solution
is another coronation
a double kingdom
we are no longer
only emperor and empress but now
king and queen of Hungary
I am one of their own

My greatest triumph


Poison

My poor beloved cousin
Bavarian king
drowned, sunk beneath your swans
Mad King Ludwig they called you
and it was true
and your blood runs through my veins
your poisoned, rabid blood
‘Lace me up tight Marie
tightly tighter’
My sturdy backbone
my iron spine

I study the looking glass
and before my eyes
my face crepes and wrinkles
wizens and shrinks
‘Mirror mirror,’ she no longer
speaks to me

I ban all photographers


Sirens

On the voyage I made them lash me
to the mast
so I could be swallowed
by the storm and spat out
breathless

Once I was Tatania
Queen of the Fairies
in love with a man
with the head of an ass
but no longer

Now I am Odysseus
who, in truth, was not travelling
to return to his home
he was travelling
to stay away


Luigi Lucheni

He had not met me
He didn’t even hate me
But Prince Henri of Orleans
had already left Geneva and
‘One royal is as good as another’
he said

My surprise, when he bumped me
was for his insolence
I didn’t notice the pang
of his sharpened file
entering my heart

‘Hurry up Marie
quickly, faster’
And we made it to the ferry
before I fainted on the deck


Swan song

In my father’s house
there are many rooms
and in each room there
are many draughts and
we keep ourselves warm
by dancing all night but oh
how worn my dancing shoes

Biographies, part V: Some of my favs

Following on from my previous biography posts from a few weeks ago, I thought I’d share some of the biographies that have been important to me, or which I’ve especially enjoyed. And I hope you will tell me some of your favs too.

These are in no particular order of importance or chronology.

The Martyrdom of an Empress. I found this book in a second-hand shop in Otaki, many many years ago. I was attracted to it simply because it’s a gorgeous old, green cloth-bound, hard-back book, rather than by the subject matter, because at that stage I’d never heard of Empress Elisabeth (Empress of Austria, Queen of Hungary). It was written by an anonymous but devoted former lady in waiting – so it has a very biased angle, but I found it fascinating. Elisabeth was beautiful, wilful, Romantic, probably a bit mad, and doomed: the perfect monarch, and the perfect subject for a biography. I’ve since read several, and better, biographies of her, but none that had the same impact as the first. The longest poem I’ve ever written is the nine-page ‘Empress Elisabeth’ (which will be in My Iron Spine).

Vita, by Gloria Glendinning. It’s easier to remember the recent ones! I talked in recent post about how this biography affected me – motivated me to live and write more. Let’s see if that lasts…

Anaïs: the Erotic Life of Anaïs Nin, by Noël Riley Fitch. Way less sleazy than the title would lead you to expect – in fact it wasn’t sleazy at all. It was a really interesting insight into a complex person and writer, who was trying to do something new and different – and managed to have two husbands for many years – one on each coast of the US.

Helen Keller’s Teacher. I got interested in Helen Keller as a child, because we had the same name, and she was a writer and I wanted to be a writer. From somewhere or other I ended up with this book about her teacher, Annie Sullivan, who taught Helen Keller to communicate with a physical form of sign language. I read this heartbreaking and heartwarming story over and over and over.

Katherine Mansfield: a Secret Life, by Claire Tomalin. Despite my previous bitching about Katherine Mansfield biographies, I did really enjoy this when I first read it. I remember finding it really inspiring, especially given that she is from the same city as me – even though she did abandon it!


That’s all I can think of right now. What are some of your favs?

Biographies, part IV: Biographical Fictions

Back in nineteen-ninety-mumble, when I was doing honours in English lit, I took a course called ‘Biographical Fictions’. It ranged around quite a bit – from autobiographical fiction (The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath), to fiction that was biography (Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes), fiction that was fictionally autobiographical (Margaret Atwoods’s Lady Oracle), to theories and ideas about biography and autobiography, and ideas and theories about the self. It’s a fascinating area.

Sometimes biographers are people who like the idea of hanging out with people who would never deign to hang out with them in real life. Sometimes they are sycophants, sometimes they’re revenge-seekers. Though most of the time I think they are simply interested people who are trying to find some kind of truth and/or coherent story in the piles of untidiness that a life is.

I think one of the best books about the politics and practice of biography is Janet Malcolm’s The Silent Woman. Has anyone else read this? What did you think? It’s about the Sylvia Plath biography industry and, in particular, the ‘authorised’ biography Bitter Fame by Anne Stevenson – authorised by Plath’s former sister-in-law, with who she didn’t really get on. The Silent Woman is a wonderful mix of journalism, biography and autobiography. Last time I read it I decided it was one of the best books I’d ever read – though, weirdly, that wasn’t how I felt the first time (I seem to recall thinking it was mean-spirited, but I can’t any longer see why I thought that).

Another cool thing about the course was that for the major essay you could writing a piece of biography – though, being academic and all, you needed to explore some of the ideas about biography we’d been discussing in the course. I wrote what I called a ‘bio-autography’ – I stole the term from somewhere or other – about my friend Wiremu, who had killed himself when we were 18, and about the place where our lives – and his death – intersected.

I explored particularly that idea that when you writing about someone, you bring them back to life. Since he’d died, about three years prior to the essay, I’d been compelled to write about him. The essay was really cathartic – I healed a lot through writing it – I’d been carrying around his death with me every day for three years, but after that I was able to let it go.

I got a good mark too, but the lecturer, in his comments, did tell me he thought it was more of an elegy than a bio-autography, and that the greatest in English is Thomas Gray’s ‘Sonnet on the Death of Richard West’: ‘Take that simply as a reading recommendation; or as a subtle hint that Gray did it in 14 lines’! I've just reread the essay, and I have to say that he does have a point.

Biographies, part III: the real reason I like them

This poem, which was in Abstract Internal Furniture, possibly explains why we really like biographies:

The Lives of the Dead and Famous

i was reading a biography of
Dora Carrington
and don’t think
this is confessional, don’t
imagine i’m
deluded
enough to think
you’re interested in my life
my angst
my problems

because i know
we’re only interested
in ourselves
that we read books
about other people
out of a feigned interest
in their lives,
when all
we’re really looking for
are little mirrors
hidden in the text
small fragments of our-
selves imbedded in the lives
of the dead and famous

Biographies, part II: the ones I haven’t liked

Some of biographies I haven’t enjoyed, and sometimes (gasp) haven’t even finished, have been ones that are badly written in a particular dull kind of way. There have been surprisingly few of these.

The other kind of biography I haven’t liked are the ones that have such a strong ‘angle’ on the person that clashes with my own. Though you probably need to have read quite a bit about the subject to recognise the angle.

A few years ago I read pretty much everything about Katherine Mansfield. Apart from my own interest in her (and I’d read most of these biographies already because of that), I was also working with Sean on a screenplay for a biopic about her (which we will rewrite at a later date, when we’re better writers).

I ended up disliking all of the biographies, because of the way each biographer ‘owned’ and presented Mansfield. Anthony Alpers has his patronising ‘isn’t she a naughty monkey’ thing going, while Jeffrey Meyers clearly thought she was a bit of a grumpy bitch. I forget the problem with Claire Tomalin's, but she did keep on going on an on about that plagiarism thingy. Anyway, by that stage, after all the reading and thinking and writing and interpreting, I felt that I knew understood Mansfield – or rather, Katherine, as I was referring to her by then – better than those biographers. It’s kind of hard to stop yourself from feeling like you own your subject.

By the by, two of the KM books I most enjoyed were LM’s (aka Ida Baker) Memories of LM, in which KM really did come across as a bitch, and John Middleton Murry’s first and only (he never did finish the rest) volume of autobiography, Between Two Worlds, which I decided had the most accurate portrait of KM, simply because it was one I liked. I felt LM that at least they were entitled to their points of view, because at least they actually knew her.

Biographies, part I

I love reading biographies; especially ones about interesting and inspirational people. I particularly enjoy biographies of writers, looking at how they became writers and why, what they wrote about and why, and what they were trying to achieve – though I usually find anyone’s life fascinating – so long as the biography is half-way decently written, I’ll enjoy it.

Biographies are so wonderful because you don’t only learn about the biographee (if that is, indeed, a word), you also learn about their time and place in history, the people they knew. You get a glimpse into their world and what else was going on at the time. This struck me particularly when I was reading a biography of Ada Byron (aka Ada Lovelace) and I was introduced to steam engines and the difference railways made to people in England at the time.

One biography will usually spark me to another – suddenly I’ll become interested in a bit player. While reading a biography about Dorothy Parker, I wanted to know more about F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, so hunted around the second-hand bookshops for a bio. And recently I was reading a book that mentioned Vita Sackville-West, read Portrait of a Marriage, about her marriage to Harold Nicolson (and her affair with Violet Trefusis), and then read a rather large biography all about her by Victoria Glendinning. The biography had quite a bit about Virginia Woolf, and so I’m now reading a biography about her, and I have plans to read Mrs Keppel and her daughter, about Violet T.

The Vita Sackville-West biography had quite an affect on me. I didn’t really know that much about her – I knew vaguely that she’d written books – my impression was that they were all about gardening. I knew she had an unconventional marriage. The main thing people know her for now is her friendship/relationship with Virginia Woolf, and that Orlando was sort of about her.

Turns out that she was actually pretty famous at the time (‘the time’ being the 1920s and 30s) – better known and more widely read than Woolf. She wrote novels and poetry (the gardening books came later), she won awards, she seemed to be a serious prospect for poet laureate. Part of the reason, it seems, that she was both so successful early on and so quickly forgotten, is because she was already old-fashioned. She was an Edwardian, even though she only died in 1962; she was an aristocrat used to privilege. She was contemporary with people like T S Eliot, but it is like they were working in quite different eras. By the end of her life she was regretful about her writing. She didn’t rate it, she knew she didn’t understand contemporary poetry, she was becoming forgotten.

Reading a biography so quickly, particularly someone who had a pretty decent-length life (as opposed to the die-young tragedies), makes life seem so short. Makes you feel like you need to get out there and do stuff, and write stuff. (While reading the later part of the book I was feeling a niggling anxiety that I shouldn’t be reading this, I should be writing. I had to remind myself that it was around midnight on a Friday night and really I didn’t need to feel guilty about not writing at that hour.)

It also reminded me that I need to keep on challenging myself with my own writing – pushing the boundaries of art and form, as Virginia Woolf did, which is why we remember her, seems like too big an aim – but pushing myself to be innovative and original in my own work is important. And I’ll try to keep doing that.