This week we can either:
1. write about being naked in a truck full of strangers in another, imaginary, world. how will we SHOW the differences, sociologically and anthropologically, by the interactions between us and our fellow prisoners. (Ref, Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness)
2. construct a physical world and write about it.
3. write about love without the use of gender pronouns.
I pick 3.
Please excuse the French in the first draft, as I have put this all down very quickly – any corrections gratefully appreciated (plus my Petit Robert fails me on limerance and liminal!)
frontier love
to love = aimer
| we love without borders
in limerance I give myself to you no holding back, no baggage our love is perfect hold this/that moment
je suis tu es nous sommes nous tombons nous sommes tombé(e)s amoureux
a border divides us, a sea, a language I don’t know why I think I can love in French when my love in English is imperfect
nous aimons nous avons aimé(e)s nous aimons quand … nous avons aimé(e)s |
nous aimons sans frontières
en limerance je me donne à toi sans retenue, aucune bagage notre amour est parfait maintiens ce moment
I am you are we are we fall we fell in love, we fell loving
une frontière qui nous divise, une mer, une langue je ne sais pas pourquoi je pense que je peux aimer en français quand mon amour en anglais est imparfait
we love we loved we were loving when … we used to love
|
under au dessous de La Manche, 250 feet below sea level, ca c’est soixante seize mètres a toi, I pause, je m’arrête, weight of water (l’eau) crushing me m’écrase
as I travel again comme je voyage encore
liminal space/espace liminal
my life divided/ma vie divisée
from yours
no we. oui?
If you say tomber en amour to a French(wo)man, s/he/they/we may start looking for holes.
to see: voir
the sea: la mer
je traverse la mer de te voir
je deviens une mère/un père
tu deviendras un père/une mère
nous serons des parents
unspeakable difference
38to39 
dear lord, the first option is hard to read let alone write!
Love that you have written the non-gender poem partly in french, which of course gives away the gender immediately unless you add both m and f.. adding both options gives it a certain clumsiness which i think adds to the unsettledness of the narrative. Even objects are masc. and fem. which makes it hard to write about for example the sea loving the earth without some kind of gender statement. I wonder if french poets are aware of that tension when writing about these ‘things’ ?
sorry about my muddled thoughts ….
Thank you. It seemed very important to do this, to some extent) in a gendered language. I wanted to capture the discomfort of a cross-border relationship – any type of border – and tried to use the ‘French lesson’ metaphor … I’m glad it’s unsettling … I think that might very much be a theme for this term.
Excellent excellent. I love unsettling themes they are so good to work with. You will be able to go deep …. The sea is a great border to explore
Wow! I have to say that I absolutely love the piece at the end under the boxes of text. There is something romantic and beautiful about it. Thank you for linking to Prose for Thought x