Before I get going, I want to mention that I tend to revise and edit a lot. A lot lot. So in order for this blog to serve its purpose and not become a whole project in itself, I’m setting a timer for every post. Ideally, 15 minutes. 30 max. It won’t be my most carefully constructed work, in other words, and shouldn’t be seen as representative of the kind of prose I can produce with more time. I hope to blog twice a week, though it might vary!
Onward. The Book Blog Project is my effort to share the process of composing a book of poetry with my students in all the courses I teach: English 101, 102, Creative Writing, Poetry, Nineteenth Century British, whatever else comes my way. This book is a kind of docupoetry, which means it’s based on–and will probably integrate–primary source documents that I locate through research. I want readers to be able to see what in-depth research can uncover and how it can change the researcher. The documents in this case are primarily family and social/contextual history. I’ll share what I find and how I find it; what I just can’t find no matter what I try; the unexpected paths research revelations take me down; how it challenges both my craft and my self, such as it is. So while a lot of readers might not care much about the poetry, I hope they can see how engaging and rewarding research can be, especially when you connect yourself to the work in a personal way.
My book has a working title, but I’m not putting it out there until I see if it fits what I end up creating. In my vision–and in the work I’ve started over the spring/summer–the book is a sort of origin story, a way of looking in the mirror and asking the very same question I posed above: What the hell is this? Contemporary discussions of origin/history/ancestry often involve the concept of “the body keeps score”; in other words, our very genetics alter due to generational trauma. (Side note: I hate the overuse of the word “trauma” and generally avoid it, but I won’t digress on that now. Suffice it to say that I only employ that particular word when no alternative works.) Research about this assertion is sketchy (another digression I’ll avoid) and I approach it with the squinted eyes of a skeptic. Although I’m not convinced the Irish Potato Famine altered my family’s genetics, I’m absolutely sure that the experience of boarding a famine ship in 1848 and somehow ending up digging the I & M Canal affected my ancestor Laurence Walsh in a way that impacted his children, their children, etc. Somewhere, along one line, there’s a piece of me that came from a man who left all his family behind to dig ditches in Morris, Illinois. And that was supposed to be an upgrade, a better life.
Where is that piece? What has it given/taken/changed? What can I learn from it? Those questions inform the more creative element of crafting poetry. But for students who aren’t writing poetry, maybe learning something like that could lead into a deep dive into Illinois history, or a better understanding of how the Irish came to be such a force in the US, or a look at racial/ethnic exploitation in labor.
My clock has run out for today, and it’s off to the poems.