It is important to name things: Keeping Bees Closes a Decade
It is important to name things (as Picasso said), to stop and take stock of things, to celebrate. And so, taking stock, I am celebrating today, and naming an achievement: 10 years ago, on March 29, 2014, Keeping Bees was published. I launched the book in the basement of an Opticians’ shop; thinking back on it, it was such a special night. I wore a blue dress with white polka dots; I still have that dress, and still wear it (the white dots have faded, but still, every time I put it on, I remember that night; I had bought the dress specifically for the occasion). I was (and am) so happy, and so proud – of the work, and of myself. I did what I said I was going to do when I came to Dublin, and (so much) more. I love this about myself; I love that I know this about myself. I love that this book is in the world, and has been, for a full decade now.
To begin, taking stock, I start here, with Lorca (always):
“To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.”
– Federico Garcia Lorca
A decade is a long time, and then, also not so long at all. Time moves fast and time moves slow, and in some ways, this anniversary snuck up on me, even though I had clocked it a little bit earlier this month. Ten years – one full decade (I am imagining it like a circle; a decade as a round thing). I have taken some time to reflect on it – where ‘it’ means the book, and what is in the book, and the time it took to do it, and the time (and space) it continues to take (up), as something that exists in the world, as a thing – a something (and the sum of a thing) between my eye (the dilation of my mind’s eye) and hand (it’s motion) (Spoiler alert: it was worth it). In other words (in some sum of words I wrote after Keeping Bees was already out in the world), the collection is a bringing together (a summing) of the eye and the hand; more than this, it is a yielding (in)to - I yielded, then, and continue to yield, now, to the duende, to this:
“The motion of the hand, though, it’s beginnings, what puts the hand to work, for me, has its origin elsewhere, in the elemental of every black sound, something that can only be captured by the O of the poet’s eye. Duende, Lorca writes, ‘is a power, not a work, a struggle, not a thought…its arrival always means a radical change in forms. It brings to old planes unknown feelings of freshness, with the quality of something newly created.’”
– me (from ‘We Cannot Be Trusted With Chairs, gorse Issue 8, 2017)
I have always described Keeping Bees as a collection of work that is concerned with the body. Keeping Bees is a book about bodies and love; it is a book about bodies in and out of love. I still believe this to be true. It was true then, and it is true now (a full circle of a decade later). I can remember my body, in place (sitting (mostly) at a kitchen table) in a place (in a house with a blue door, in Ranelagh) and myself, there, every day, for the better part of three years, writing. At the same time, I was falling in love with someone, and without knowing it, until I did, some of the poems in the book captured this act of falling – I can clock the beginning, and the middle of it, and I love that these poems anchor this book – they are poems of action, and to read them now, 10 years later, I can feel myself in them, in time, in the flow of action, the flow of falling, the flow of loving. I love that these poems exist – and that they do the important work of naming things: I was in love, then; in naming things, it is also important to mark the time between now and then: I was in love then; I am not in love now. To name the passage of time is to be clear about it: Keeping Bees may have started out as a soft thing in my eyes; over time, it has grown a sharp edge, as I imagined it would, the more time passed, and the more out of love I became and have become (with the man that was at the centre of my attention, in and at tension with my mind’s eye, at the time). This is me, taking stock of things: that the book exists in the world is a beautiful thing; that it captures the bodily experience of actively loving is perfect; to have come out of it, reminds of something I read recently, that Joni Mitchell said, and it speaks to the spine of it all:
“I wanted to be capable of being responsible for my own errors. If there was friction between me and another person, I wanted to be able to see my participation in it so I could see what could be changed and what could not. That is part of the pursuit of happiness. You have to pull the weeds in your soul when you are young, when they are sprouting, otherwise they will choke you.”
– Joni Mitchell
Ten years later, I take responsibility for putting something out in the world that is erotic (a joy!) to me, and (I can only imagine) a pain(ful rem(a)inder) to the man who had all of my attention, until he did not. I love that there is no going back; I love the nothing that exists now (so much so that I made nothing the central concern of my second collection). I could not have asked for a more beautiful zero.
Speaking of zero, in time, I have come to see Keeping Bees less as a collection, and more as a zero-point for (and of) preoccupation. I didn’t know it, at the time, but, over time, I would begin to position myself so as to be in opposition to / in conflict with / up against language. And English in particular. I am bilingual; my second language is English. My first is Greek, and looking back at Keeping Bees, I see now, that although the words on the page are English, it is more accurate to say that the poems represent a ‘writing through’ – I have written in Greek through English. My mother tongue has put its weight onto my other tongue – in Keeping Bees, I wrote towards a bending; with my second collection, I have written to breaking point. I look at the work in my first collection, and can see / feel the soft spots, those places where, if I had known what I was doing at the time, I might have applied just (a little bit) more pressure – instead, I held back. This is not a short-coming of the work, or my ambitions. I like the bending that exists in Keeping Bees. Sometimes, to bend, and not break, is the point. I like the way Keeping Bees yields – gives in, offers up, again and again, over time, and does not break.
When the book came out in 2014, this coincided with the issue of The Stinging Fly in which I was the Featured Poet (March 2014). I was invited by then editor Thomas Morris to write a short piece about the book, what had gone into it – a reflection on my practice and style, all towards the eventual publication. I returned to this piece earlier this week, and I stand by it. I think it has aged well in 10 years, about a book that has also aged well, over 10 years. With one exception. Among other things, I wrote (then):
“I believe the act of writing is destructive; it destroys in order to create. The moment I understood that, I wrote differently—better, and from the absolute soles of my feet.”
– me, ‘Keeping Bees’ and The Body (or why I will never f*ck a man who is not a feminist), April 2014
I am not sure I believe this anymore (or that I really understood it when I wrote it). Maybe I meant something else. Yes, I think I did. Writing isn’t destructive. I have turned my attention to things that pleased me, picked at my curiosity, drove me to obsession, to the point of being in and at tension with them. It is never my or my eye’s intention (when in and at tension with some thing) to be destructive. To write is to create, is to make new, is to form sum out of nothing. I misunderstood something then; in time, I see it like this – and again, I return to my essay in gorse, to the sum of eye and hand:
“Ask me to explain it and I will raise a hand in space, and after a second, tilt it; here, the action of the small movement is a tiny shift, where the familiar becomes new, alarming and true again. Duende dilates my poet’s eye, and my eye sees the black sound in a familiar thing, and the familiar thing is tilted, changed by the action of the small movement; the tiny shift creates a crack in form (there is a crack in everything; yes, everything): light rushes in and the world, the world is blown wide open. "
- me (from ‘We Cannot Be Trusted With Chairs, gorse Issue 8, 2017)
To be clear: to blow the world wide open is not to destroy; it is shifting perspective, and that radical change in form Lorca speaks about. I think this is what I meant; it is what I mean. Keeping Bees played with the idea of all sorts of things: dogs and horses and bees and fish; peaches and honey and figs and oranges (the O of the orange is a sustained preoccupation, and I love it; the same with fish). Each time, I aimed to tilt and shift. I like what I have done; I like that I continue to do it, in my second collection. I like how unconcerned I am about ‘the reader’ (I really don’t care; this is not a circle I am interested in being a part of; what interests me is my own preoccupation). As for everything else in that piece for The Stinging Fly, I stand by it; it captures a writer’s reflection on a thing she has created, from nothing. Ten years later, I would still not fuck a man who is not a feminist; I like the idea that there will always be (more) cock (in so far that I am always looking to be in and at tension with the male body (in a good way) – it is so beautiful to me (there is nothing casual about it, for me) and my eye yields to it, easily); and I love the sweet turn of myself, writing into the world, from the very centre of myself, in celebration of (and from) the power and grace of a woman’s body.
Which brings us back to the importance of naming things: time to take stock of the cover of Keeping Bees. 10 years later, and it still feels new to me, as if I am looking at it for the first time. I remember everything that went into its making (the material gathering of making). Ria came over to my house (the one in Ranelagh where I spent most of my time, writing the book) one evening. I had made a big bowl of caramelized onions (because she loves them) and Greek salad, and there was cheese, and white wine. We sat in the front room (and I am sure I have a photo of a moment of that evening captured somewhere) and we talked, and we ate, and then, once the bottle of wine had been drunk between us, we grabbed several apples out of a fruit bowl in the kitchen, and then…a few weeks later, Ria would return with a beautiful print, of me holding ‘peaches’ and surrounded by many of the things I had written about in the book. It feels so special to have this work – it is colourful and it holds everything, just right. I love how honest my body looks – this is it, as it was then. Even my hair is precise and precisely as I am (as I was). As it stands, the cover engages with the work and the work engages with the cover, and I am grateful to her for knowing exactly how to make a cover that could do such a thing (but, she has a knack for it, and hit the nail on the head with my second collection as well; and I’ll gladly let her cover my work, for as long as she is willing).
In reflecting on 10 years, I have been thinking recently about my body, in place in space; the cover of Keeping Bees isn’t the only experience I have of being captured in/by the gaze of another. For the most part, I have enjoyed every experience; that said, to put another body out into the world (as Ria described it when we were speaking about this, and other things a couple of weeks ago), to be looked at is something I have been thinking about more and more. At some point, I might return to this thought (though I like the idea of perhaps doing something collaboratively on this topic with Ria herself). I have many feelings and thoughts about looking – about looking and being looked at (I’ve written about this in another essay for gorse, on Leonard Cohen); more than this, I have many thoughts about what is and what is not transmitted in/by a photo of a woman (the body / her body / my body). In looking, what part of the experience of weight, weighting, the state of weighted-ness (and what it means to feel the weight of some body) is conveyed to the one who is looking? I am always reflecting on what is being given / taken for granted, in (and between) bodies, in space, in and at tension (a never-ending circle / spiral, spiraling out, from the very centre of some sum of the self). For now, I return to always to the feeling of looking, as if for the first time, on the cover of Keeping Bees and that, even 10 years later, feels exciting and dynamic and strong (always). And that’s some sum.
As a way of marking a decade, this feels like a good place to land, to take stock, and celebrate Keeping Bees; here’s to decades more, and circles upon circles. I am glad and grateful and proud that I made it. It came from nothing, and then (the summing up of) my eyes and hands, the tiny shift, the radical change in form(s), and I love it.
To begin, taking stock, I start here, with Lorca (always):
“To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.”
– Federico Garcia Lorca
A decade is a long time, and then, also not so long at all. Time moves fast and time moves slow, and in some ways, this anniversary snuck up on me, even though I had clocked it a little bit earlier this month. Ten years – one full decade (I am imagining it like a circle; a decade as a round thing). I have taken some time to reflect on it – where ‘it’ means the book, and what is in the book, and the time it took to do it, and the time (and space) it continues to take (up), as something that exists in the world, as a thing – a something (and the sum of a thing) between my eye (the dilation of my mind’s eye) and hand (it’s motion) (Spoiler alert: it was worth it). In other words (in some sum of words I wrote after Keeping Bees was already out in the world), the collection is a bringing together (a summing) of the eye and the hand; more than this, it is a yielding (in)to - I yielded, then, and continue to yield, now, to the duende, to this:
“The motion of the hand, though, it’s beginnings, what puts the hand to work, for me, has its origin elsewhere, in the elemental of every black sound, something that can only be captured by the O of the poet’s eye. Duende, Lorca writes, ‘is a power, not a work, a struggle, not a thought…its arrival always means a radical change in forms. It brings to old planes unknown feelings of freshness, with the quality of something newly created.’”
– me (from ‘We Cannot Be Trusted With Chairs, gorse Issue 8, 2017)
I have always described Keeping Bees as a collection of work that is concerned with the body. Keeping Bees is a book about bodies and love; it is a book about bodies in and out of love. I still believe this to be true. It was true then, and it is true now (a full circle of a decade later). I can remember my body, in place (sitting (mostly) at a kitchen table) in a place (in a house with a blue door, in Ranelagh) and myself, there, every day, for the better part of three years, writing. At the same time, I was falling in love with someone, and without knowing it, until I did, some of the poems in the book captured this act of falling – I can clock the beginning, and the middle of it, and I love that these poems anchor this book – they are poems of action, and to read them now, 10 years later, I can feel myself in them, in time, in the flow of action, the flow of falling, the flow of loving. I love that these poems exist – and that they do the important work of naming things: I was in love, then; in naming things, it is also important to mark the time between now and then: I was in love then; I am not in love now. To name the passage of time is to be clear about it: Keeping Bees may have started out as a soft thing in my eyes; over time, it has grown a sharp edge, as I imagined it would, the more time passed, and the more out of love I became and have become (with the man that was at the centre of my attention, in and at tension with my mind’s eye, at the time). This is me, taking stock of things: that the book exists in the world is a beautiful thing; that it captures the bodily experience of actively loving is perfect; to have come out of it, reminds of something I read recently, that Joni Mitchell said, and it speaks to the spine of it all:
“I wanted to be capable of being responsible for my own errors. If there was friction between me and another person, I wanted to be able to see my participation in it so I could see what could be changed and what could not. That is part of the pursuit of happiness. You have to pull the weeds in your soul when you are young, when they are sprouting, otherwise they will choke you.”
– Joni Mitchell
Ten years later, I take responsibility for putting something out in the world that is erotic (a joy!) to me, and (I can only imagine) a pain(ful rem(a)inder) to the man who had all of my attention, until he did not. I love that there is no going back; I love the nothing that exists now (so much so that I made nothing the central concern of my second collection). I could not have asked for a more beautiful zero.
Speaking of zero, in time, I have come to see Keeping Bees less as a collection, and more as a zero-point for (and of) preoccupation. I didn’t know it, at the time, but, over time, I would begin to position myself so as to be in opposition to / in conflict with / up against language. And English in particular. I am bilingual; my second language is English. My first is Greek, and looking back at Keeping Bees, I see now, that although the words on the page are English, it is more accurate to say that the poems represent a ‘writing through’ – I have written in Greek through English. My mother tongue has put its weight onto my other tongue – in Keeping Bees, I wrote towards a bending; with my second collection, I have written to breaking point. I look at the work in my first collection, and can see / feel the soft spots, those places where, if I had known what I was doing at the time, I might have applied just (a little bit) more pressure – instead, I held back. This is not a short-coming of the work, or my ambitions. I like the bending that exists in Keeping Bees. Sometimes, to bend, and not break, is the point. I like the way Keeping Bees yields – gives in, offers up, again and again, over time, and does not break.
When the book came out in 2014, this coincided with the issue of The Stinging Fly in which I was the Featured Poet (March 2014). I was invited by then editor Thomas Morris to write a short piece about the book, what had gone into it – a reflection on my practice and style, all towards the eventual publication. I returned to this piece earlier this week, and I stand by it. I think it has aged well in 10 years, about a book that has also aged well, over 10 years. With one exception. Among other things, I wrote (then):
“I believe the act of writing is destructive; it destroys in order to create. The moment I understood that, I wrote differently—better, and from the absolute soles of my feet.”
– me, ‘Keeping Bees’ and The Body (or why I will never f*ck a man who is not a feminist), April 2014
I am not sure I believe this anymore (or that I really understood it when I wrote it). Maybe I meant something else. Yes, I think I did. Writing isn’t destructive. I have turned my attention to things that pleased me, picked at my curiosity, drove me to obsession, to the point of being in and at tension with them. It is never my or my eye’s intention (when in and at tension with some thing) to be destructive. To write is to create, is to make new, is to form sum out of nothing. I misunderstood something then; in time, I see it like this – and again, I return to my essay in gorse, to the sum of eye and hand:
“Ask me to explain it and I will raise a hand in space, and after a second, tilt it; here, the action of the small movement is a tiny shift, where the familiar becomes new, alarming and true again. Duende dilates my poet’s eye, and my eye sees the black sound in a familiar thing, and the familiar thing is tilted, changed by the action of the small movement; the tiny shift creates a crack in form (there is a crack in everything; yes, everything): light rushes in and the world, the world is blown wide open. "
- me (from ‘We Cannot Be Trusted With Chairs, gorse Issue 8, 2017)
To be clear: to blow the world wide open is not to destroy; it is shifting perspective, and that radical change in form Lorca speaks about. I think this is what I meant; it is what I mean. Keeping Bees played with the idea of all sorts of things: dogs and horses and bees and fish; peaches and honey and figs and oranges (the O of the orange is a sustained preoccupation, and I love it; the same with fish). Each time, I aimed to tilt and shift. I like what I have done; I like that I continue to do it, in my second collection. I like how unconcerned I am about ‘the reader’ (I really don’t care; this is not a circle I am interested in being a part of; what interests me is my own preoccupation). As for everything else in that piece for The Stinging Fly, I stand by it; it captures a writer’s reflection on a thing she has created, from nothing. Ten years later, I would still not fuck a man who is not a feminist; I like the idea that there will always be (more) cock (in so far that I am always looking to be in and at tension with the male body (in a good way) – it is so beautiful to me (there is nothing casual about it, for me) and my eye yields to it, easily); and I love the sweet turn of myself, writing into the world, from the very centre of myself, in celebration of (and from) the power and grace of a woman’s body.
Which brings us back to the importance of naming things: time to take stock of the cover of Keeping Bees. 10 years later, and it still feels new to me, as if I am looking at it for the first time. I remember everything that went into its making (the material gathering of making). Ria came over to my house (the one in Ranelagh where I spent most of my time, writing the book) one evening. I had made a big bowl of caramelized onions (because she loves them) and Greek salad, and there was cheese, and white wine. We sat in the front room (and I am sure I have a photo of a moment of that evening captured somewhere) and we talked, and we ate, and then, once the bottle of wine had been drunk between us, we grabbed several apples out of a fruit bowl in the kitchen, and then…a few weeks later, Ria would return with a beautiful print, of me holding ‘peaches’ and surrounded by many of the things I had written about in the book. It feels so special to have this work – it is colourful and it holds everything, just right. I love how honest my body looks – this is it, as it was then. Even my hair is precise and precisely as I am (as I was). As it stands, the cover engages with the work and the work engages with the cover, and I am grateful to her for knowing exactly how to make a cover that could do such a thing (but, she has a knack for it, and hit the nail on the head with my second collection as well; and I’ll gladly let her cover my work, for as long as she is willing).
In reflecting on 10 years, I have been thinking recently about my body, in place in space; the cover of Keeping Bees isn’t the only experience I have of being captured in/by the gaze of another. For the most part, I have enjoyed every experience; that said, to put another body out into the world (as Ria described it when we were speaking about this, and other things a couple of weeks ago), to be looked at is something I have been thinking about more and more. At some point, I might return to this thought (though I like the idea of perhaps doing something collaboratively on this topic with Ria herself). I have many feelings and thoughts about looking – about looking and being looked at (I’ve written about this in another essay for gorse, on Leonard Cohen); more than this, I have many thoughts about what is and what is not transmitted in/by a photo of a woman (the body / her body / my body). In looking, what part of the experience of weight, weighting, the state of weighted-ness (and what it means to feel the weight of some body) is conveyed to the one who is looking? I am always reflecting on what is being given / taken for granted, in (and between) bodies, in space, in and at tension (a never-ending circle / spiral, spiraling out, from the very centre of some sum of the self). For now, I return to always to the feeling of looking, as if for the first time, on the cover of Keeping Bees and that, even 10 years later, feels exciting and dynamic and strong (always). And that’s some sum.
As a way of marking a decade, this feels like a good place to land, to take stock, and celebrate Keeping Bees; here’s to decades more, and circles upon circles. I am glad and grateful and proud that I made it. It came from nothing, and then (the summing up of) my eyes and hands, the tiny shift, the radical change in form(s), and I love it.
To order a copy, visit Doire Press: https://www.doirepress.com/
To see more of Ria Czerniak-LeBov’s work: https://riaczerniak.com/
To see more of my work: http://www.dimitraxidous.com/
To see more of Ria Czerniak-LeBov’s work: https://riaczerniak.com/
To see more of my work: http://www.dimitraxidous.com/