It is my pleasure to reflect upon this issue of Other Terrain. I found myself immersed in voices of startling authenticity and yearning. The prose and poetry contributions in this issue indicate a willingness to engage with content and form in an experimental way. This is utterly refreshing: pushing boundaries of saying—of seeing, being, knowing.
There is a great deal to admire at the level of technical skill in this collection. There are flashes of humour and tenderness in unexpected places, as well as poignant and haunting themes simmering beneath rich, sensory detail. Contributors have produced sharply rendered frames that are attentive to memory’s shifting shadow.
Writers balance the playoff between ‘idea’ and sensory data—handling moments of dramatic tension with poetic restraint. In this way, I became immersed in the diverse array of writing in this issue.
In her Nobel acceptance speech, Toni Morrison untangles the myth of an old woman— blind, renowned for her wisdom. A group of children approach the woman and one of the children asks: ‘Is the bird I am holding living or dead?’ (Morrison 1993). Reflecting on her writing practice, Morrison suggests: ‘speculation on what (other than its own frail body) that bird-in-the-hand might signify has always been attractive to me’ (Morrison 1993).
This analysis goes to the heart of our writing and reading practice. It speaks to the seductive lure of the signification process—slipping away from ‘real’ time to a ghostly ether—where the frail bird-in-the-hand takes flight, where ‘unmolested language surges toward knowledge’ (Morrison 1993).
Thank you to all writers—for your lines of flight. And thanks to the editors, Wendy and Eloise, for the opportunity to reflect.
Julia Prendergast.
Morrison T, The Nobel Prize in Literature 1993
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1993/morrison-lecture.html
(Accessed 7 September 2016)
Image by Kyle Szegedi.