Writing Story / Finding Poetry / Freeing Voice

May 6, 2008,

A breathless time, spring, with all its upheaval. Its approach, its elusiveness. Its promise.

Forgive my lack of blogginess. Lots of good work in the way, some of it to meet a publication deadline. My novella, The Stories of Devil-Girl, will be published in print in June 2008 by Modern History Press as part of their “Reflections of America Series.” The Series highlights autobiography, fiction, and poetry that explore the search to discover one’s context within modern society. Modern History Press is an imprint of Loving Healing Press. The novella was previously recorded on CDs, and is currently on sale as an audio file to be downloaded at this website, at http://anyaachtenberg.com/?page_id=46

Other news. I am soon to finish teaching Claiming Our Stories: Working with the Power of Autobiography and Autobiographical Fiction online with writers.com / writers on the net. It has been pretty glorious, and somehow gathered a group of astonishing writers, and astute responders to each other’s work. I will be teaching this same class online beginning June 23^rd, so please visit http://www.writers.com/ if you are interested.

And here’s something I really want to tell you about. I recently saw a film called Hunted Like Animals, by Rebecca Sommer, about the ongoing genocide of the Hmong Lao people. It is urgent that what this film contains become known and acted upon by more people. This concerns the 30 year campaign to wipe out the Hmong who remain in the jungles of Laos, and the coming push to send Hmong refugees in Thailand camps back to Laos, to be killed. I am beginning work to get this film shown more extensively than it has been in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota.

Here is more specific information:

HUNTED LIKE ANIMALS is an eye-opening documentary about an ongoing, but unknown, genocide — against the Hmong people in the jungles of Laos. Coerced into joining the CIA’s anti-communist efforts during the Viet Nam war, the Hmong in hiding are still mercilessly hunted, attacked, raped, tortured and killed by the military. Since 2004, the military crackdown on the Hmong has intensified and those who can escape seek refuge in Thailand. In this documentary, the Hmong Lao refugees speak for many thousands of voiceless people still trapped in the jungle, surrounded by Lao and Vietnamese soldiers. WorldFest Remi Winner 2008; Official Selection Amnesty International Film Festival 2008.

NOTE: Rebecca must be contacted prior to any showing of her film, and the film cannot be cut or edited in any way. DVDs are available for purchase from Rebecca.

Rebecca’s contact info:

Email: SommerFilms@gmail.com ; phone (718) 302-1949 http://www.rebeccasommer.org/ 

http://www.rebeccasommer.org/documentaries/Hmong/news.html

Hmong contact:

Kue Xiong, President

Lao Human Rights Council:  http://www.laohumanrightscouncil.org/

P.O. Box 17363 St. Paul, MN 55117

phone: (651) 253-3709 fax: (651) 488-9102

email: laohumanrightscouncil@yahoo.com

The information below comes from dear friend Marilise Tronto, active in work through the UN and elsewhere for the rights of indigenous peoples:

“It is vital for the Hmong to get their story out; particularly in countries that are large donors to the UN (such as Canada), and there are diplomatic solutions that can be achieved through the international community if enough pressure is brought to bear on Laos. The crisis is accelerated now not only for the 20,000 (?) still hiding in the jungle under daily attack from the Laotian army (documented in the film), but because the 8,000 Hmong in refugee camps in Thailand are set to be deported back to Laos by the end of 2008, where they will be murdered. Thailand can do this because it never signed the UN international refugee legal instrument. Additionally, the Laotian general in charge of the Hmong refugee camps is being changed. At present the soldiers guarding the camp are friendly to the Hmong; the new leadership coming in (May 1, 2008) is not.

…

“This film has already created quite a revolution in the UN. It documented the Hmong as targeted and threatened people, not as insurgents, as commonly believed. This is unequivocally a human rights situation in need of urgent attention and repair.

“One young woman among the handful of Hmong at the April NYC screening thanked the sparse audience who attended. She said, ‘The most important thing is that we have had a chance to tell our story.’ That is their prayer; their hope; that one person in one audience will take the next step, be it diplomatic or picking up the phone, passing on the tape. As I said to the Hmong at the screening, this MUST be seen widely; one never knows where help is going to come from but a call as clarion as this will not be ignored. There are diplomatic solutions possible under the purview of the United Nations Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) that would allow for resolutions. The International Declaration of Rights for Indigenous Peoples, passed Sept. 13, 2007, may help as there is now an international legal instrument that may give diplomatic efforts greater effect.

“Rebecca Sommer, the filmmaker, told me that at one showing of Hunted Like Animals, she went outside and there was a line of Hmong people literally for blocks. They stood there, silently, for 4 hours, while the meetings around the film/ the screening went on. She said their presence moved her so deeply. They told her they came because they wanted to show support.”

If you can set up a screening or can be of assistance in Minnesota in any other way, please contact me (Anya). If you want to set up a screening elsewhere, please contact the filmmaker, Rebecca Sommer.

Thank you so much.

Peace,

Anya

Dear Friends,

Get in on it! 

February 25, 2008 I will begin teaching an online class for Writers.com called Claiming Our Stories: Working with the Power of Autobiography and Autobiographical Fiction. There are not many places left, so if you have been fencesitting, jump in and sign up as soon as possible! I am very excited about it, and aim for it to really move each participant ahead in their projects, and their development of voices and forms that fully use the richness of autobiographical material, whether in fiction or nonfiction. Details are at http://www.writers.com/achtenberg.html 

Important, too! Just a few more days to apply to Intermedia Arts’ Writer-to-Writer Mentorship Program in Minneapolis. Here’s all the news about that; please carefully check the descriptions for my group in strengthening characterization, and for Sherry Quan Lee’s group in the power of poetry as memoir. Thanks!

Information:

SPRING 2008 WRITER-TO-WRITER APPLICATIONS STILL AVAILABLE!
EXTENDED Deadline to Apply: February 20, 2008

Calling all writers! Applications are now available for our spring session of Writer-to-Writer, the artistic mentorship program designed to give advanced writers the opportunity to reach their next level of artistic development. Writer-to-Writer creates intimate relationships between artists; mentors act as artistic catalysts and partners, providing each mentee with artistic feedback and professional guidance.

WRITER-TO-WRITER: SPRING 2008 MENTORSHIPS:

Anya Achtenberg (fiction/memoir)
DISCOVERING THE UNLIVED LIFE:
WRITING INTO THE MYSTERY OF YOUR CHARACTERS
The work of character development is central to discovering the real story, rather than imposing a story onto our characters. Full development of character in story work is not separate from the real work we do in the world, that of continually crossing borders—internal as well as external—with openness and knowledge, compassion and respect. For our characters to unfold their truths in their full dignity or brokenness, their astonishing beauty or cruelty, we must work to understand their deepest yearnings in a way that often goes beyond their own ability to articulate them.

In this mentorship, each participant will agree to “live with” one or two characters for the duration of the mentorship, although new characters may emerge, and new dimensions open of other, perhaps less central, characters. We will work to deepen our ability to bring the power of authentic beings into our writing, and extend our range to include characters we may dislike or fear, characters that puzzle or fascinate us, as well as those with whom we identify. We will challenge ourselves to go beyond our preconceived notions, our projections of our own points of view, our societal and cultural biases, our fear and lack of knowledge, into understanding the lives of others in our global community, in our own neighborhood or family.

We will go beyond the back story, beyond what a character has lived up to the moment that we meet them. An unlived life is hidden within the life each character must live to get by. You will explore your character’s internal terrain, a land of yearning bordered by frustration, overwork, social pressures, forgetting, distractions, and violences, large and small, yet charged by the deep human desire for expression and connection, for fulfillment of the individual and social self in creativity and community. We will look at these evocative and emotional issues in our discussions and in the illuminating work of diverse writers. We’ll work in far-reaching but focused writing explorations to cross boundaries that not only free our writing, but deepen our understanding of, and respect for, the worlds and characters we write about.

Sherry Quan Lee (poetry)
Bookmaking: Writing to Save Your Life
What does the map of your life look like? Are there stop signs, detours, back roads, freeways, and tunnels? Do you travel one particular road over and over again? Are you writing that one story over and over again? Does your collection of stories need closure? Is closure possible?

Memoir can be the stories remembered and made sense of as you chart the map of your life. Memoir can be the connection, the collection of those stories. Memoir can be your stories written in poetic form. Memoir can be poetry enhanced with pictures, and other visual materials.

In this mentorship, we will explore the healing power of poetry as memoir. Initially, we will examine the stories that navigate your life in order to discover the theme of your memoir. Your theme will be your writing prompt to gather more material. We will discuss poems belonging in your book, but emphasis will be on overall theme, organization, format, and production. This mentorship is for poets (who may sometimes write prose) interested in completing a chapbook or manuscript draft.
* * * * * * * * *

Read more about our Spring mentorships with Anya Achtenberg (fiction/memoir) and Sherry Quan Lee (poetry) online here: http://www.intermediaarts.org/pages/programs/literary/wtw.php. Applications attached, and available online!

This program is supported by the Jerome Foundation in celebration of the Jerome Hill Centennial and in recognition of the valuable cultural contributions of artists to society.

Ok, dear friends. The dancing continues, as does the writing. So, I can’t help but repeat this:

Please check out Rene Thompson and his Latin dance classes at the Midtown Global Market in Minneapolis! http://www.renedance.com/

Rene is one of the striking resources of the Twin Cities. With his international reputation, his long experience as Latin dancer and teacher of Latin dance, his deep knowledge of the roots and history of Afro-Cuban dance, and his building of diverse and interconnected community, he transforms ice to heat in the body and heart of Minnesotans regardless of the season. Blessings on Rene, and Nate, and all who help make this community what community should be.  Alabanza!

Peace,

Anya      

January 30, 2008 

I am thinking that every act is a creative act.

Only some creative acts provide an opening into something vital; other creative acts provide duplication, follow the path of habit, add to repetition, create walls - solidity - separation from the vital and the as yet unborn. And some acts, of course, create destruction. So, realizing that every act is a creative act; every act creates something; I realize I must, I choose to, work to bring each act into the vital realm of creativity, not the habitual, not the acts that amass repetition. Building a house means placing one brick on top of another, making mass, making solidity, and this is good, this is necessary, but building a house with the yearning for it to open into the wildness of the world, with a porthole, a skylight, a star on the ceiling, painted a color that shakes the body and galvanizes the mind or brings it the peace from which the parade of images wells forward, this is the vital creative act.

Every act is a creative act, and potentially a vital one.

As to acts which create destruction, more to talk about, another time.

But for me, these warm and cold days, the key to creative writing is in dancing. The way to get past the false steps, the dropped steps, the hiding of the deepest parts of the work, is to perhaps open up the shoulders and let the heart be accessible and vulnerable. The way to drop no more than one step — to stumble in the language without apologizing and beating oneself up, is to dance through it. Miss a step? No apologies, no defense, no dwelling in the mistake, in the lack of grace, in the foolishness and awkwardness, because the moment for that step is past, and now there is a new step. A new moment of revelation and joy, of truth of tongue and body. A new moment of the flow of language as the flow of the body in dance.

Remember, in a dance-y kind of way, how different are revision and proofreading. Don’t muck up your reworks with comma and spelling obsession. That’s proofreading. Go back into the dance of what you have envisioned in your language, and in that flow of the moments of your writing, of your story or poem, keep dancing, and let the language come that will throw back your shoulders and reveal the beating heart of what you have written.

And keep dancing. Let the blessed musics of the planet in. This which we fight to hear and to save. This which helps us live every moment, and write as if we are fully alive.

Dance on.

This one is for Rene Thompson and his Latin dance classes at the Midtown Global Market in Minneapolis, and for all the dancers! http://www.renedance.com/

Rene is one of the striking resources of the Twin Cities. With his international reputation, his long experience as Latin dancer and teacher of Latin dance, his deep knowledge of the roots and history of Afro-Cuban dance, and his building of diverse and interconnected community, he transforms ice to heat in the body and heart of Minnesotans regardless of the season. Blessings on Rene, and Nate, and all who help make this community what community should be.  Alabanza!

Peace,

Anya      

(and remember, purchase a download of The Stories of Devil-girl; see the previous posting for details)

On a simple level, here is an opportunity to support good literature at a time when The Market is often powerful at blocking quality and truth. And, in this case, this is an opportunity to help support organizations that are proven to be effective and bold and devoted to working to improve the lives of some of the people worst affected by war and poverty. So, this post announces that I am bringing back the full recording of The Stories of Devil-girl and making it available for purchase as a download for your MP3 or other listening devices, your computer, or to be burned onto CDs. If you go to the Devil-girl page, you will also find links to some excerpts of the recording at no cost. 

Here’s a bit more about Devil-girl and why her time is now.

We are facing a pile-up of the truth. So much truth it is unbearable, and it certainly feels inexpressible. The narrator of Devil-girl, who found her way to me, has a voice that moves in a way from her own belly button, the not so sweet ombligo of her youth, to those people her experiences put her in alliance with. It is a voice which abandons her, leaves her body, as our voices sometimes do, a voice that grows as it moves around the planet, as it discovers the hard lives of labor and abuse, the exploitation of others, of children and women, all around the globe. It is a voice that has no “place” except in the shadows or on the street. It is an imprisoned voice which becomes a roving voice.

We need narrators that aim to tell something of the horrible unbearable truth. This is coming forward in memoir, in journalism, in film. We need it in fiction, as well, in all forms.

This of course prompts me to ask you to describe the narrative voice in something you are writing, especially where it is not working, and you may suspect something is amiss within the complex workings of the narrator. Write down rapidly 10 words that come to mind when you think of that narrative voice. Now, 20 words. And then freewrite where that narrative voice is, where it sits or stands or runs or walks, where that narrative voice is speaking from.

Another reason to bring back Devil-girl now is this: at a time when the language I have may fail to tell of the true nature and depth of the grief that sits in the writer at the daily atrocity, there were moments when Devil-girl went to the edge of language and told me what is possible for me. I have been working a lot more since I wrote this novella to embody fiercely but in a more restrained way the stories and characters that inhabit me, but the voice of Devil-girl is one that remains close to my heart, as does the “character”.

We are in a world where restraint may be a privilege, one I embrace because a voice of full and immediate response to horror and grief is not always heard in its specificity. But it is heard, at least when the media opens its power to show us these responses as they happen. You know what I am talking about. You can fill in the blanks, the many blanks as to the many places on the planet and throughout the country where all the beautiful devil-children are being slammed. You can fill in the blanks as well of the terrible consequences.

I can begin that list, the list we run through our minds each day, but I think I just want to say that I am bringing back The Stories of Devil-girl at this moment when the demonization and discarding of children; their being exploited and violated, is global, constant, beyond the belief of a functioning heart. 

Here’s a couple of statistics to consider, because sometimes numbers push forward words.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12761: “…the UN Security Council in 2000 passed the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, which made no distinction between formal militaries and non-state militias, and which defined the recruitment of children under 18 (instead of 15) years of age as a war crime. Since then, UN-sponsored war crimes trials, like the one in Sierra Leone, have included recruitment of children into armed groups as a crime against humanity. As I write, however, it is estimated that 300 000 children are serving in various armies or militia groups around the world.” From “Child Soldier”, by Lansana Gberie, in part a review of Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2007).

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0012537  ”According to United Nations estimates, tens of thousands of children (under 18) are forced into the sex trade around the world each year. Some countries, including Thailand - long considered the world’s child-sex capital - are cracking down on the trade. In Cambodia, though, the industry thrives.” From “Child-Sex Trade Thriving in Cambodia” by journalist Susan McClelland, http://www.susanmcclelland.com/art.htm

The first time I read from the novella in public, my oldest friend was there. She lovingly called her daughter, then probably 5 or so, her devil-child. Her so smart, so verbal, so stubborn, so mischievous, so dramatic, so gifted daughter. Those elements that make some people want to take and crush the beauty of children. Those ways that make it possible for at least many of those children to survive it all. Even work to change it. And this child is African American. Quick to be demonized as would be her younger brother in a racist society. So, Devil-girl is a compliment, one that takes a word and turns its meaning around.

Please purchase a download of the full recording, by the author, of The Stories of Devil-girl. Go to http://anyaachtenberg.com/?page_id=46 and click on the “Buy Now” button. Remember, a percentage of the proceeds will go to two organizations doing some of the best work there is.

Peace,

Anya

I wrote the below last week, in a snowstorm. I want to remind you to check the previous post, some good newsy stuff to notice, and to let you know that Grand Web Master Brian Tanaka has pointed to January 11 for the likely release of The Stories of Devil-girl novella-download, so expect more news soon. In the meantime, see below, and come to the Intermedia Arts Readings in Minneapolis on January 7 and 9th…….

Currently caught in one of those — turn them over and shake them — globes, and the snow swirls and settles, and you shake them and the wild dancing of particles starts up again. But here’s the thing, I have been having some of the most serious conversations in a writer’s life, in many forms, with many writers that I love. We are, so many of us, caught in the swirl of activity, of being led away, subtly or dramatically, from the work of writing. Some of us love to write; some of us teach writing to wonderful students, some of whom claim they hate to write, and we give heart/soul to try to transform that into love or at least tolerance. Some of us have been writing steadily for decades. Some, in spurts. Some, in stolen moments.

But there is a shift for some of us, regardless of our schedules or genres, that, in a way, changes everything. For some of us, and this is not a necessary state of being for us all, writing is at the center of what organizes our being. I quoted this elsewhere, but it bears repeating; from a Carson McCullers’ story, “A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud.” A man is talking about the love of his life, a woman who left him, and says something to the effect of this: she was like the assembly line for my soul.

Writing is that for many of us. It organizes our lives. It assembles the pieces of us. It reclaims everything we are, everywhere we have lived, everyone we have loved. Everyone we have been. It vindicates, in some way, all that we have endured. It uses everything we have experienced, whether our specific experience fills our writing directly or invisibly, mysteriously, in subterranean and complex ways.

We fight it. Life helps us fight that integration, that surrender to a process that will bring us joy and growth because it is so hard; because it seems like a recluse’s way, and not really living; because there is a huge contradiction between the world of writing that bears gifts which circulate, and the world of writing which produces commodities; between our love for writing and our need to deal with the marketplace to bring it forward.

If you haven’t, please look at The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, by Lewis Hyde, at his discussion of art in the gift economy, versus, art in the market economy. Powerful, looking at this, and thinking about the impact of that marketplace on what we feel the worth of our writing is. Helpful, to refocus our understanding of what we do and see how it is part of a gift economy. Something in this is key for me in getting it–what we do as writers–and understanding why it can be so hard to feel the worth of what we do under the looming neon of the marketplace.

For many of us, we fight writing because it is the very thing we love doing the most. For many of us, we fight writing because we have incorporated whatever tells us that the only story in us is the story of our worthlessness, and so of course we are unworthy of being writers, and undeserving of the joy of our true vocation.

Rethinking our lives is something everyone does, writer or no, published or no, poet or storyteller, and transforming and healing our lives is something that writing does whether we consciously embrace that in the work, or not. Writing authentically, writing that demands inner exploration and search, with powerful connectedness to the world, transforms you. Bringing forth your experience and your witnessing, your memory and your imagination, integrates the pieces of your being. Developing the voice that can do all this, develops your being, expands your identity, makes possible your understanding of yourself at a new level. Makes identity. Makes growth.

So, the thing is, some of us write and benefit in a myriad of ways by the process. It’s incredible, we love it. And some of us struggle to a place where we realize that there is nothing to be done but to admit writing is at the center of what we do and who we are, that it is the way to integrate the pieces of our being, to heal, to grow our voice, our self, to come home to that which we are. For many, writing is prayer; for many, politics; for many, therapy; for many, love; for many recovery; for many, joy. It’s the simple Joseph Campbell statement in action, “Follow your bliss.”

My questions especially to you who ache to make writing your central organizing action at this point in life — which incidentally does not mean you leave your relationships and lock yourself up in a cabin in the woods (oops, it could), or abandon the world and your concern for it — and as well to those who just love to write, are these:

What will your life look like when you give writing its true place in it?

What do you want to spend the next decade doing in terms of your writing?

What do you need to change to be that writer, that person?

What do you need to do, to make that change?

Some huge list of tasks and revamping of your life?

Or, do you need to merely acknowledge the true place of writing in your life, and allow that full acceptance of your writing to do its work, re-organizing, reassembling, your life?

What do you need to do today, to make it so, to follow that bliss?

How wonderful, to ask the questions.

And of course, there is so much to be said about this sweet and bitter year. We want better for this planet, yes? Perhaps death should take a holiday.

Peace, from the swirl of snow,

Anya

Ah, newsflash!!

This Thursday I will be one of the featured writers on Write on Radio, which airs every THURSDAY 11 am - noon central time on 90.3 FM Minneapolis and 106.7 FM St. Paul and live on the web at www.kfai.org. Shows are archived for two weeks on line. Thanks, A

Please listen!

I have been waiting for some news necessary to get going with the re-release of my novella, The Stories of Devil-girl, but while our intrepid Devil-child is currently in a holding pattern, there is some light in the cave. I am anxious to get this recording to you, and to send a portion of the proceeds to Women for Women International and to the Somaly Mam Foundation, as I mentioned earlier. So, news very soon. D-g is a survivor, and will be not be quiet.

I am happy to let you know that I have been awarded an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board to continue work on my novel-in-progress, History Artist, and so would like to thank the Arts Board and the National Endowment for the Arts. It is so easy for me not to apply for such things, and I want to acknowledge my dear friends, including Indigo Moor, Kathleen Spivack, Amy Fisher, Bronwyn Mills, Sherry Quan Lee, Demetria Martinez, Marilise Tronto, Marcia Fine, Maya Gonzalez, Annie Lewis, Phyllis Johnson, and so many more who have constantly supported, yelled at, pushed me to the edge, edited, nudged, and affirmed that my work is of value and that I should apply for whatever I feel will help me get it heard, and get it done. And so should you.

I want to let you know that my Mentorship with Intermedia Arts is done, and will be celebrated with 2 readings January 7 and 9 at Intermedia in Minneapolis. I will be reading both nights as will Mentors Louis Alemayehu and Jude Nutter, and the stars will be the participants of the fall 2007 Writer to Writer Program. For information on the reading, http://www.intermediaarts.org/pages/programs/literary/lit_cal.php    

The group I have worked with in this program has been a joy, a real pleasure. I want to acknowledge them: Gregory Chamberlin, Kathryn Holmquist, Robert Karimi, Debra Stone, Meghan Stotko, and Mary C. Yang. A pleasure.

Some wonderful news is that I will be doing another Mentorship with a small group of fiction and memoir writers beginning in March; details will be available here soon, and at Intermedia’s website http://www.intermediaarts.org/

I will begin teaching an online course on February 25 for Writers.com called Claiming Our Stories: Working with the Power of Autobiography and Autobiographical Fiction. Please check out the course description and class outline at http://www.writers.com/achtenberg.html and consider signing up for it soon. I mean, sooner.

And here’s news about a wonderful new collection of poetry by extraordinary writer Kathleen Spivack. Moments of Past Happiness was edited by Ifeanyi Menkiti, owner of the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and published by Earthwinds Editions Press. Kathleen is a Fulbright Professor in Paris, a Pulitzer nominee, and an international writing coach. A friend and student of Robert Lowell, she has written about workshop members Sylvia Plath and Ann Sexton. Stanley Kunitz hailed her poetry as “rich in feeling and texture, compassionately aware and vividly articulated”. This is Kathleen’s sixth book — here’s how you can get it — go to http://www.grolierpoetrybookshop.org/ or email grolierpoetry@verizon.net or call 617.547.4648 or http://www.earthwindseditions.com/  or email karyl@earthwindseditions.com or call 617.889.0253.

Please do support this venture from Grolier Books, which has supported poets and poetry for so many years.      

Cecilia Woloch says, “The poems speak to us all, in a voice that’s courageous and direct and warm and deeply human.” D.H. Melham says, “Each poem is a discovery.”

I am going to get my copy. What I need to say about Kathleen’s work goes beyond her impressive credentials. Ok, picture a regular old classroom at a campus with lots of green. Skidmore College, actually, last June for the annual conference of the International Women’s Writing Guild. I get to the 9 am class with Rainelle Burton, whose smile and talent and smarts is unbeatable, and I hear she plays Nina Simone in her class. I teach at 10:30, so I am hovering in my chair gearing up for soon. And something happens, really happens.

Kathleen does one of her poems from The Jane Poems, a sequence of spoken songs, she writes, published in 1974, which she has performed with music in many places, before and after the Vietnam War. Nina Simone is singing, “Ne me quitte pas” — don’t leave me, a cry to her lover, from the play Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Kathleen does this poem with the song, “Jane’s child her precious her onliest.” We are all tired and have been too social and starting to close a bit; too much, you know, too many people, and suddenly we are electrified. Nina Simone’s cry to a lover becomes that eternal and deep cry, that deep knowledge and fear of the mother for how the world takes our children, and we know when this spoken song was first performed, and we know now, going toward the 5th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War, these deep and global fears, and we each know that call, that plea, don’t leave me, ne me quitte pas, and there is Kathleen’s voice and these compelling words and Nina, oh, Nina, singing more than singing, and Rainelle there making the magic of connection for us all, and we go deep. Ok, we are crying. Women all over the room, crying. Tough women. Can’t be fooled women. Heard it before women. Something in the marriage of it all, in the moment, and the container of grief and love we forget we hold as we walk through the day, bursts. Thank you, Kathleen, and Rainelle, and the astonishing forever Nina Simone.

Enough. It is true. It did happen. Ask anyone who was there.

Book-buying. Still quite in fashion.

Peace to you,

Anya

The Stories of Devil-girl is a novella which I recorded on a double CD set and released shortly before the war in Iraq broke out in 2003. It works at the crossroads of poetry and prose, and of autobiography and fiction, perhaps also of the brutal and the magical. I began writing it in 1989, perhaps pushed into it by my work then with young adults, 16-24 years old—dropouts, as they were called—at The Young Adult Learning Academy in East Harlem. I understand how thoroughly my students, whom I admit I generally adored and who taught me profound lessons, were demonized; the ills of society, as well as their own, were blamed on them even before birth. They got to be statistics before they ever let out a yowl or a giggle or a song.

I’d been cursed, too, the losses and tragedies and struggles of the parents heaped on the heads of the children. A familiar story for many people worldwide. Hence, the birth of Devil-girl. I am not sure when that name for her, for me, came about, but long before the writing began.

Now, the thing is, writing this helped me to move more fully into prose, into fiction, into the development of the voice of character and narrator, into allowing the developing point-of-view to grow through a series of short prose pieces, without, I think, leaving all of the music and compression of the poetic behind.

I know that there are writers out there who are struggling with works of mixed genre, or in between genres; works that are intensely personal and intensely political; stories of their own lives which leaped into the lives of others, and into a shock of fiction they hadn’t expected; and stories they felt to be complete inventions which somehow arrived back at the doorstep of their own lives. I know that writers are silenced by some of what they have experienced and witnessed, and that sometimes the only voice that can speak what they know is an outrageous one. You know, that inappropriate–liable to get smacked—speaking as if drunk voice—but so stone cold serious a voice, that it even scares the writer.

Maybe, to mess with George Clinton’s supreme advice, free your voice, and your mind will follow…

At any rate, if you are working at the crossroads of poetry and prose, or of autobiography and fiction; if you find your work coming forward in mixed genres (which might be just how it needs to be written); or if you have struggled or are struggling with difficult material and are birthing a wild narrative voice, please write a comment here below and share something of your experience, ask a question or share some answers.

So, to go back to the beginning, I will be bringing back the full recording of The Stories of Devil-girl and making it available for purchase as a download for your MP3 or other listening devices, your computer, or to be burned onto CDs. Details will be available on the forthcoming Devil-girl page, where you will also find links to some excerpts of the recording at no cost.

There’s more. Supporting good literature, in this case, will also mean supporting extremely worthy work in the world!

I will have listed, on the Devil-girl page, 2 organizations that do extraordinary work to improve the lives of women and children, with a link to their websites. A percentage of the proceeds from each purchase of the download of Devil-girl will go to Women for Women International http://www.womenforwomen.org/ , which helps women survivors of war build their lives, working with them in comprehensive ways, involving everything from economic development, health programs for people with HIV/AIDS, and education as to their rights, and the Somaly Mam Foundation http://www.somaly.org/, which works to combat trafficking in women and children for sex slavery, and to assist those rescued to rebuild their lives. (By the way, Somaly Mam, co-founder of AFESIP and President of AFESIP Cambodia in Phnom Penh, has also written her autobiography, The Road to Innocence.)

Somaly Mam is one of the CNN Heroes; you can see a video of her at http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/specials/2007/06/29/heroes.somaly.man.pt1.cnn

Some more details about The Stories of Devil-girl. The original cover for the CDs, which you will see on the forthcoming Devil-girl page, was designed and illustrated by Teri Micco, an extraordinary painter and graphic artist in New Mexico, who took some of the material bits and pieces and images of my life to make a cover that is durable art. A painting by Gary Jefferson in New Mexico was one of the elements also present in the many many layers Teri created to make the stunning cover. Teri also helped to edit the manuscript, and gave profound feedback which helped to shape it.

At, any rate, it’s time for Devil-girl to be heard again. More on this in a while.

Enjoy.

Peace, D-g

Neruda suggests in his poem Arte Poetica from the first volume of Residencia en la tierra published in 1933, that the poetic art, or at least the poet, works and flounders and suffers “Between shadow and space, young girls and garrisons”, which calls to my mind, somehow precisely, the situation of 4 young Muslim men from England, who, in going off first to Pakistan to meet the betrothed of one of them, and then going over the border into Afghanistan shortly after 9/11 to see if they could help, to see what was going on, were caught up in the fighting there. The three survivors were taken to Guantanamo. This is the subject of a terrifying film by David Winterbottom.

Neruda goes on to say, “…but the hard truth is if you want it so,/this wind that whacks at my breast,/ the unbounded expanse of night collapsing in my bedroom,/ the morning’s rumours afire with sacrifice/ now beg of me this prophecy I have, with mournfulness/ and a lurch of objects calling without answers,/ with a truceless movement, a name I can’t make out.” (translation by Nathaniel Tarn) And here is the thing; my head is in a whirl from watching this film and another by Winterbottom, In This World, a film that is “fictional” but merged into documentary in more than form, about 2 Afghan refugees trying to get from a refugee camp in Pakistan to London. They travel by way of an underground railroad set up as an elaborate moneymaking venture, running across some loving helpers as well along the way. They travel clinging to the bottoms of trucks. They travel by sea in airless containers. They travel with hope and tragedy.

Perhaps Neruda’s language and his voice even in his early “surrealist” poems are absolutely prophetic, descriptive, hard and concrete and in tune with the realities Winterbottom depicts. Perhaps poetry always has this possibility, as it is birthed in the unease, the horror, the fear, the yearning of the human heart; the reaching for the world, as refugees do; the lack of place; the home in language.

Perhaps poetry can train us to look underneath the trucks, for beaten and hopeful travelers; inside the compartments of trucks in the desert or tankers at sea, for refugees, both living and dead.

Perhaps poetry is this: warning and time capsule.

Perhaps the novel, too, yes, the literary novel, with its dense and layered language, its unbearable beauty, its unforgettable narrators and characters, its search within itself for its own true purpose, is a kind of time capsule, an illuminated manuscript of sorts that is one of the repositories of knowledge about this world, and of the instruments of perceiving and feeling that enable us to go on, to be of use, to not simply die from knowledge, but to live with it, as long as we can, and say what we know, and change what we can.

Eye trouble today, so the vision is inward; the images there crisp and full; the questions, the same hard ones.

Promising clear news soon of the return of The Stories of Devil-girl, a novella once on CDs.

Peace,

Anya

You know how everything you really want to do takes longer than you planned? Consider that the story of a writer. As well the story of this blog writer. There is something in store which has to do with my novella, The Stories of Devil-girl, and soon, I will be letting you know that news.

In the meantime, I have some other news. First, I will be doing an online class starting February 25th for Writers.com/Writers on the Net, called Claiming Our Stories: Working with the Power of Autobiography and Autobiographical Fiction. This is a 10-week course, Part One of Two, for writers of both memoir/creative nonfiction and fiction, at all levels of experience. I have done some of the material in these workshops in Manhattan, Santa Fe and Albuquerque, Michigan, and in Eleanor Roosevelt’s Cottage in Hyde Park, and am currently in planning for other venues throughout the country. I recommend it for people who haven’t worked with me, and for those who have, since I will be offering individual feedback as well as weekly written “lectures” of this material that zips by during workshops and retreats, and calls for being revisited. Note, as well, the testimonials of individual clients who have worked with me on their memoirs and other full-length books. Enough! For a full description of this online course, please go to http://www.writers.com/achtenberg.html 

A lovely thing for me: publisher/editor Alison Ross of Clockwise Cat: A Progressive Literary Magazine online, has written a review of my 2nd book of poetry, The Stone of Language, which appears in Issue #5 of Clockwise Cat. This webzine, says Alison, “encapsulates in its poetry, fiction, essay, polemic, review and visual art offerings a sense of ‘timely timelessness.’ As such, the webzine features works that are progressive in spirit, and not too mired in traditional forms or ideas.” To check out and to submit work to Clockwise Cat, please go to http://www.clockwisecat.blogspot.com/ and to see why I am so pleased with this review of my poetry, please go to http://clockwisecat.blogspot.com/2007/11/book-review-by-alison-ross.html

As is the way of the web, I crossed cyberpaths with an interesting poet I would like to mention here. Nimah Ismail Nawwab is a writer, photographer, activist, lecturer, and internationally recognized poet, the first Saudi Arab woman poet to be published in the United States. Nominated a Young Global Leader of the Young Global Leaders Forum, an affiliate of the World Economic Forum (WEF), she joined 175 people from 50 countries at the Forum to address global issues. She seeks to build bridges of understanding and was recently dubbed a ‘cultural ambasadress’ and a ‘voice for Arab women’. Her poetry has been published on several websites, translated into numerous languages, included in anthologies and taught at schools and colleges in Arabia, the U.S., Canada, Singapore, Japan, India and elsewhere.

Nimah says, “From child slavery to forced divorce, from conflict to peace, freedom and control… the inspiration to compose drives the themes and form of the poems….As a poet I feel compelled to cover emerging issues despite their controversial nature….” You can purchase her first book of poetry, The Unfurling, which has already sold 5000 copies, at http://www.amazon.com/  

Nimah also says that because of the powerful effect of her mentors on her work, she has now taken up mentoring young writers in workshops and individually, in person and long distance, and believes that her work with multinational groups is a wonderful way of giving back to the global community of writers and all the people they impact. She is now updating her website http://www.nimahnawwab.com/ to include resources for writers, poets, and photographers, so check that out as well.

I have to say, that while writers have often had the reputation of being reclusive and even quite selfish (that sounds rather appealing, doesn’t it?), I am continually struck by the generosity of writers who teach and mentor others, by their commitment to writers who will live beyond them, and their ability to help build community that takes on a life of its own. Working in this spirit is the wonderful poet Sherry Quan Lee of Minnesota, author of the memoir in verse Chinese Blackbird, the chapbook A Little Mixed Up, and the forthcoming How To Write A Suicide Note: serial essays that saved a woman’s life. Sherry says, “As a writer I often wonder if my writing gets better as my life gets better or if my life gets better as my writing gets better. I do know that I have been writing about identity for almost thirty years and the writing and the life depend on each other….I started writing about identity when I went to a feminist bookstore and realized there were no books about me, a mixed race woman, Black and Chinese. I wrote poem after poem which eventually became a chapbook, A LITTLE MIXED UP, published by Guild Press in the early 80s.” Her current workshops, Stories That Save Lives: an interdisciplinary workshop for women of color, are profound events that make room for so many of us outside the boxes of “recognized” identity, so many of us who have been culturally and historically disappeared, and come from people who have survived the literal forms of genocide. Her workshops are helping to build an enduring community of writers in Minnesota. Check out her extraordinary blog, used for her workshops,  at http://blog.lib.umn.edu/leexx065/writingmulticulturalidentity/

What can I say? Sometimes we just have to take a deep breath and celebrate ourselves.

Peace to you, writers.

Anya

So captured by the possibility of having a communal talk in cyberspace about this mystery of writing, that I am writing this, freewriting this onto the site, and it is, except in cyberspace, invisible. And this is what this posting is about, the invisible. And its power.

We know that at the moment we are at our computers, there are goings-on, everywhere, of dramatic and mundane proportions. We sense their truth, without inhabiting the same space according to the laws of old physics. We know that there are writers who manage to catch in the net of their language, and the extra-dimensional nature of their hearts, the truth of what is happening elsewhere, to others, even what is happening at different moments, in different eras. Even that which has never happened, or seems unlikely to.

There are writers with an abiding sense of the presence of the past, the dead, the gone, or with a powerful sense of the presence of the socially invisible, and of the historical that is censored or aphasia-ed out by social amnesia. We aim to write all that a moment contains, in a moment of story. We aim to indicate the complexity of each being we write about, even if they run in with a cup of coffee and disappear for the rest of the story. We aim to discover the invisible and the silent, to develop our own instrument of perception to be able to sense it all, and to write with the presence of the invisible filling our pages, whether crushed tree or mysterious cyberpages.

All this being said, as I was on task, getting together something I will tell you about, I realized some things: any readers of this blog haven’t heard from me for some weeks, although I have been working in a bit of a frenzy. This made me “invisible”. My hope was that you knew I was at work. That you knew that invisibility in this case meant either stopping and entering that slow quiet phase which is a deep part of the creative process we all know, the part we shudder at because it can feel like a deep freeze; the part of the year when Persephone goes underground to the land of the dead and the growing things on earth die, or sleep. Or that it meant that I was wildly working, doggedly working, light bulb on working, slow opening working, sweet dot at the end working. And that you knew that invisibility or silence does not mean something or someone is not present. Only not seen and not heard.

So, how do you work on that in your book, in your characters? How do you write about the invisible in your stories and in your poetry? Is it what you write about all the time, in some way or another? What is the invisible to you, in terms of your work?

If someone falls outside of the box of, for instance, identity, as the United States of America lists in the 5 check-one-or-be-invisible/other boxes, is that person without being? Or, if someone eludes the chick lit, murder mystery, romance, thriller, historical fiction, etcetera genre, is that person not writing to be read?

If one of your characters has, for instance, ceased to be present in the literary flesh in your story, how are they still present? How do you write about characters who are invisible or gone in your stories? How do you write about a city that is no longer itself, a home that is no longer standing, a village gone? Gone to invisibility? Or present in heart, memory, language?

And how do you bring forward the invisible in the tangle of words that is a poem?

Speaking of which, please check the Fall/Winter 2007 issue of Poet Lore, which was established in 1889 and is a publication of The Writer’s Center. I have a couple of poems in there from a series called Advice to Travelers, which came out of my visit to the Czech Republic. Check www.writer.org for more information.

And just know that, invisible I may seem, but there is a whole lot of work happening, some of which I will tell you about very soon. In the meantime, please send in your responses by clicking on Comments below this post and scrolling down to a perfect expandable box waiting there for you to write to the rest of us.

As for the cereal burning on the front right burner in the kitchen, it was invisible to me while I was working, out of sight, out of mind, until I smelled it, but it did make quite a statement. It had been heating up, cooking its truth, all the while.

Peace to you, in the fall.

Anya