My first collaborative project was for a class I did last year: Community writing, with Prof. Nancy Holmes. This class was a fantastic opportunity to do a project that would teach us real world creative writing skills, and how to be marketable, and many other things that writing students don't really seem to get in university. Naturally, as is my way I wanted to do a book of poetry. The community we were working on was Rutland so this was going to be a challenge. The thing was, there were two poets in the class who wanted to write a book of poetry, and the project only had room for one book of poetry. I was lucky enough that the other poet was the talented Sarah Megan Hunter, and together we wrote a book of poetry that I would never have been able to create on my own.
Working with another poet was one of the most challenging and fruitful experiences that I have had in university. It was a lesson in structure and compromise. We wrote poems together and separately, bringing them together through the execution of experiments on the poems. We blacked out each other's poetry, and wrote on the same topics. We cut them up and pasted them back together so that I can barely tell now looking back what is mine and what is hers, and ownership, on my end at least didn't matter because it was about the thing that we created together. It belongs to both of us like a kid, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.
And this is how I ended up mostly naked on the internet.
Not so fast there, I wasn't completely naked or anything or should I say am not completely naked or anything. Last week a friend of mine approached me. She is a video student and wanted to do a video that featured one of my poems. Naturally, I thought this was awesome. I had modeled for another friend a week or two earlier for her end of term project, which mostly involved me jumping around in a toga in a dark room, doing poses, and pretending to be serious. Honestly, it was fun and kind of a boost to my ego to be asked to help.
Photos from Tika Michelle Photography
I gave my friend a few poems to choose from and she picked one that we then projected on my mostly naked body while I did some vaguely yogic movements. The video ended up being beautiful.
Yes, you can see my breasts, but it is really very tasteful. The film plays with light and shadow, ideas of embodiment, and femininity. The thing I am struggling with is how much credit I want to take for it. I am comfortable with my body. I think we are all too hard on ourselves here in that department, and I think that the world is far too afraid of nakedness.
The question is, how afraid am I of being judged? What my friend created is a thing of beauty. She took a piece of poetry that I care deeply about and made it into something new and different. It was collaborative and something that I am shyly proud of. Giving over a piece of my art to create a whole between us is what collaboration is about. As a feminist why am I afraid? There is no sin in my body as an artwork, it's just a body.
Drop the Nets
March is a fish woman, water woman.
Fry poke their noses out of seaweed beds.
Rain hits the pavement.
There are things I think about sometimes:
the hands of my ex-lovers.
Rain hits the roof like hand drums,
and reminds me of the night I lost my virginity,
or Vancouver weather
or my Grandma’s house and running.
The base temperature of the lake never changes.
Hands are a family trait.
The lateral line allows fish to feel
vibrations in the surrounding water.
We dive deep like the philosophers,
fins, opaque, like rice paper fans.
Video by: Cortnee Chulo/Little Foxwood
Poem by: Jessica Bonney from Genesis (chapbook)
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