My bed is my
office. I have back trouble, or at least that’s my excuse for writing propped
against a padded headboard, pillows plump in support of my lower spine, my feet
up on a mattress firm enough to bounce well-balanced line off. Rather than prop
my aging laptop across my ditto thighs—which are usually bare because this is
Louisiana, where wearing pants is purgatory—I use a lap-desk. On a table next
to the bed I keep stacks of books relating to projects I should be working on,
including my dissertation. Also, my phone, and a mug that’s either full of tea,
or about to be. I have never broken my British habit of drinking hot tea with
cold milk as often as I can make myself get up to boil a kettle. Which is often.
I love a good cup of coffee, but tea is my fuel. I can’t write without it.
Honestly, I
can barely write out of bed these days. As the world spins every which way,
trying, it seems, to shake off what’s left of our humanity, I cling to my
keyboard and type. As the planet spins, as my old white head spins, shamefully,
I try at least to find words of regret, words of well-aimed anger, words of
courage. I hope for hope. My fingers can still be hooks.
The word or
phrase, the inchoate notion, that begins a new poem may take me anywhere—but
this is disingenuous. I have an agenda, and that agenda is always political. To
stay focused, and angry, I check in with the outside world at regular
intervals. Which is not to say that I actually talk to people, or leave my apartment.
I’m engaged with the world, but that doesn’t alter my deep love of my own
company, nor my need to avoid distraction on writing days. Sometimes, needs must,
I still write in coffee shops, airports, parks—always aware of my aching back,
and the chatter of unknown voices—but my best lines come to me when I’m sitting
propped up on my bed, in my underwear, with no one to challenge my devotion to
solitude. I don’t play music as I write, because I can’t then hear the music
inside my head, the music that stops my head spinning. On a good day, the room
will go dark, except for screen glow, and I will type on, oblivious.
Back to the
beginning. After I’ve made tea, listened to the radio, caught up on social
media, and made more tea, I convince myself that, in spite of the news—because
of the news—I should do some work. I type everything, because I can no longer
read my own handwriting. I taught myself to touch-type when I was eleven. I had
a portable typewriter back then, and I hammered those mechanical keys, strong
in my conviction that words mattered, even if I didn’t. I would be a writer,
for sure. What I actually became, in the short term, was a fear-ridden teenager
too caught up in getting from one day to the next to commit any part of the
struggle to a sentence. The next couple of decades, ditto. I made it to middle-age,
though, and finally, after flirting with prose forms, became a poet in my
fiftieth year.
At sixty,
I’m a fast but inaccurate typist—I type like a programmer, constantly
correcting myself, but I find such toing-and-froing to be an accurate model of
how my mind works. When I sit down to write something new, I either grab a
phrase from my fragments file, or scrabble fo something from the oddment drawer
that is my short-term memory. That drawer is always stuffed, the oddments spill
out, and if I don’t write them down, they will be lost to me. I’m okay with
that. I don’t feel like I’ll run out of ideas, nor do I feel that anything I
write is word-for-word precious. I throw some words on the page to erase the
blank, then edit as I go until I have a first draft worth contemplating. For as
long as the file is open, I can undo, of course—but once the file is saved, my
workings are lost. Nice irony, the poet in me feels compelled to mention. But
the sixty-year-old who travels light says, good riddance. Old notions are excess baggage.
Most
usually, my writing day begins, not with a new poem, but with revision. From
the drafts that seemed worth saving, including those I’ve forgotten, to the
already-published work that no longer feels right, I get my biggest kicks out
of rebuilding. Many of my poems turn out to be fixer uppers, but a
well-designed addition, or even a slap or two with the paintbrush, is for me
the best part of being a poet. A single page, not blank, but filled with
possibility. Re-visioning feels hopeful. And once the changes are saved, once
again, no earlier drafts exist—except those that have already been published. We
are our past, but we don’t have to live there.
Would it
surprise you to know that, twenty years ago, I quit my old life, walked off the
lot, and did my best to disappear? Or that several years later, when it looked
like I might finally get into print, I changed my name? No earlier drafts exist,
except those already stuffed into the oddment drawers of other people’s
memories. If I hadn’t broken up with my past, I would never have become a
writer. Do I mine those years for material? Of course. Do I live underground
with my memories? Not if I can help it. Writing helps. Wanting to change the
world helps. At least I can try.
Jude Marr teaches, and writes poetry, as protest.
They are currently a PhD candidate at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette,
and their chapbook, Breakfast for the
Birds (Finishing Line), was published in 2017. Other recent credits include
Nightjar Review, 8 Poems, and Oxidant Engine.
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