Nightmares in Creative Writing

A radical gesture by today's standards: bringing Atwood into class.

Some of us have heard of Margaret Atwood?

The tide is out on the four-beat groan. Today, everything happens quickly. The eye-roll, the eyelash flutter. Blink and you will miss them.

Scholar, poet, novelist?

A junior faculty had referred to her a few years back as "That white bitch," and I keep checking to see if they're still on Twitter, if they've been promoted.

Her book of poems, Power Politics (1971)? In particular, her poem "They Are Hostile Nations"?

Rather than be asked why the poet and her book are relevant, I attempt an introduction.

A book about a heterosexual couple --

White people, a white person says to their phone. 

-- at the end their relationship rope --

Rope is a triggering metaphor!

Good point, remember that -- you might use it on the test.

There's no tests in Creative Writing.

There's no Creative Writing. I have asked the university to rename it Received Data.

Then we'll ask for our money back.

[applause]

Your parent's money, yes.

You can't talk to us that way! It's micro-aggressive!

There's nothing micro about it. We are hostile nations.

[a car backfires]

I've just emailed you the poem. Read it in light of what we talked about last week -- the poems of Danica Markovic in the context of the fall of Yugoslavia, when nationality replaced ideology, and today, with identity threatening to do the same for nationality.

Read the poem as much for what is there as what isn't, for each of you. There are insights in the Irigaray text, the belle hooks text, Butler and Spivak's "critical regionalism" text.

Ask yourself, if Atwood were to write "They Are Hostile Nations" today, would it look like this?

After that, read a little of your current favourite, and maybe with their voices, tell us what it is that makes your way ours to share. For in the words of Margaret Atwood:

We need each other's
breathing, warmth, survival
is the only war
we can afford