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Midland Arts and Culture Magazine | SUMMER 2012The CollaborativeSpaceby Eileen CaseyHow then does a poet collaborate withself in order to produce a poem?Michael Longley once said: “if I knewwhere poems come from, I’d go there.”Longley puts forward the belief thatpoems come from a certain pre-ordainedplace designated ‘there’.However poems arrive, it’s safe to saythey do not arrive in delivery vans. Thereis no idea factory out there belchingfumes of blood sweat and tears. Nor isthere an introduction agency on a sleazybackstreet waiting to match the perfectpoem with the poet. If Longley focuseson arrival, the departure point shouldn’tbe forgotten. Poems arrive mainlybecause the poet has been able to exitthe departure lounge and keep faith andsome degree of nerve until the craft issafely landed.Isaac Bashevis Singer once said: “Everycreator painfully experiences the chasmbetween his inner vision and its ultimateexpression.”This ‘space’ can be a minimalist’s delightor cluttered up with feelings, images,word play or what poet Anne Waldmancalls “goofy profundity.”The collaborative engagement with thecreative self requires courage, trust andan uneering instinct for following thedirections on those quirky departuresigns.Picasso maintained: ‘The artist is areceptacle for the emotions that comefrom all over the place: from the sky,from the earth, from a scrap of paper,from a passing shape, from a spider’sweb.” Trusting in both self and theuniverse inspires the confidence thatcomes from hoping whoever is pullingthe strings will, on a particular day, giveenough loosening of doubt, enoughstarlight to write, paint, sculpt, artisticallycreate by, enough energy and generosityto get the work done.Bridging the collaborative space betweentrust and finished work, means being ahoarder to some extent, gathering‘ordinary magic’ from ordinary places,smells, tastes, sounds; noticing how a lilypad and a broken umbrella can betenants on the same fully paid up terrorof the blank page. In seeking their owncollaboration, these disparateneighbours might make mischief thendecide to make up, or not, as the casemay be. While they share the samespace, they are essentially seeking to34make their presence available inwhatever shape the poet, having signedthe contract on the dotted line, is fullycommitted to.American Poet Susan GoldsmithWooldridge describes the collaborativespace between this trusting in self anduniverse as “finding the coyote in thepoet; seeking out the nearest place withwildness in it, driving there if necessary,even for one hour”.Negotiation between the poet and thereader of the poems is not always, norshould it be, a symbiotic relationship.The meaning of text relies on social,cultural and historical factors. Theprowess of the artist lies in an ability toprovide the necessary gaps and chinksso that the reader is able to find enoughairholes to be able to respond to thework without recourse to an oxygenmask.Encaustic artIn 2007 I began working with encausticart, or candle wax, using the imagesproduced to generate themes andmoods for the poems to come. Thespace between what can burn so brightlyand painfully one moment and thenfreeze so solidly the instant it leaves theflame is, for me, a potential source ofintrigue for me. The resultingcollaboration between ‘reading’ what Isaw and felt in the resultingmetamorphic qualities of the wax and‘writing’ the draft poems and thefinished work went on show under thetitle Reading Fire, Writing Flame at Arásan Chontae, Tullamore, in 2007. Theprocess of the work, the raw images, thedrafts of the poems were on display also,together with seven of the completedworks sign painted on 6ft x 4ft Perspex.It was interesting to watch people usingthe council offices for all sorts of otherengagements; stop and read the work.A seat was even provided for theirconvenience. Builders in hard hats,working in the offices at the time, whomay also be committed library goers, satand munched their sandwiches and readthe poems. Does poetry taste nicer whenflavoured with the collaborative miracleof mayonnaise or pickled onions?Reading Fire, Writing Flame featured inPoetry Ireland, Issue No 92, edited byEiléan Ní Chúilleanáin. In NíChuilleanáin’s essay Where is Poetry,she explores the role of the poem inpublic places, describing it as being“unpredictable” and saying it “can be illtempered,so it might snuggle downunder the hotel duvet or snap back evenas it is quoted. Perhaps it doesn’t mindbeing co-opted into the regional piety”.Collaboration with Emma BaroneBetween 2008 and 2011 I’ve enjoyedtwo collaborative productions with visualartist, Emma Barone. Our first meetingwas rather a collision rather than anarrival or departure. I was runningthrough an art exhibition called ShoeShow by Emma when I bumped into her,almost knocking her sideways but I knewI wanted to write poems based on herwork. The visual aspect of the work wasalready there and I was collaboratingwith completed work. Many of the poemsin this collection are Haiku, Shoe Haiku.Birds Take off/At the end of sling-backdays/Wings slapping skywardsFly Agaric Summer was suggested by thetitle of one of Emma’s shoe images but itwas her innovative use of mushroomdesign that sparked the central image:‘Ball gowns balloon a soon ofscent/ Plumed headdresses glistenwith pomadeRouge brightens leaded faces –everywhere / Fluer-de-lys. In thedrowsy gardensFun.gal, cap and stalk, strippedpileus / Lamellae, gilled, frilledwings – / Spread beyond thePalace walls, / Where, clamorousas small-pox / The mushroomingmob. / Sounds of hurrying feetSculpt a rise and fall / – whatsurely must come / - and follow – inthe long hall/At Versailles.’Our next collaboration occurred in 2011,the fruits of which appear in our jointpublication From Bone to Blossom. Forme, as poet, the collaborative space tobe negotiated required, for some reason,the purchase of a yellow notebook, andthe commitment to include poems aboutenvironmental themes. Emmainterpreted her vision through nontraditionalrepresentations whichexplored a collaborative relationshipbetween the earth bound object ofnatural art that a tree undoubtedly is andits ability to transform and transcend.When we completed the work, we invitedDedalus Poet Grace Wells to write anintroduction for us. This was of particularinterest because it brought anotherdimension into the collaborative space, acritical focus that we couldn’t articulate.Grace Wells saw the overall collaborationIn its broad sense, collaborationmeans to enter into a process,agreed or otherwise, with anotherout of which a product or purposedevelops or emerges. This ‘other’can be interpreted in many ways,including one’s own creative self. Italso encompasses the relationshipbetween the author of the work andthe consumer of it; whether thecollaboration is a friendly one, or atraitorous one and what’s generatedwhen the collaborative space isreinterpreted with a critical eye.as being in some ways symbiotic,while both artist and poet retainedcore individualism. Wells describesthe collaborative space in From Boneto Blossom as ‘shared’, that wordand image work off one another,Barone’s striking images of CoastalTrees complementing engaging poems.Jean Cocteau said that ‘an artist cannottalk about his art any more than a plantcan discuss horticulture.’ It’s as if thepoet and the visual artist have beengiven a third eye which is not distorted,a glass that magnifies and zooms in onplaces which might well be overlookedotherwise. In this sense, it’s safe tosay that the introduction of a thirdperspective into the collaborativespace results in a lens through whichthe individual artist finds another wayof seeing.ConclusionIn conclusion, the collaborative spaceis an available space, interesting,challenging, conversational andindeed, necessary. Emerson once said:“Everything in creation has its appointedpainter or poet and remains in bondagelike the princess in the fairy tale ‘till itsappropriate liberator comes to set itfree’.” MAbout EileenEileen Casey is a poet, writer andcreative writing facilitator from Birr,County Offaly and lives in Tallaght,County Dublin. Her poetry andprose is published widely and hasreceived many awards including aKatherine Kavanagh Fellowshipand a Hennessy Literary Award forEmerging Fiction. A chapbook Spitand Clay won The Green BookFestival Poetry Category in 2010.Her collections include DrinkingThe Colour Blue, (New Island) andFrom Bone to Blossom (AltEntsPublishing, Rua Red, Tallaght). Shecompleted an M.Phil (CreativeWriting) at The Oscar Wilde Centre,Trinity College Dublin. Snow Shoes,a collection of short stories is dueout from Arlen House.