WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.020 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.020 --> 00:00:02.970 align:middle line:90% Thank you, Laynie. 00:00:02.970 --> 00:00:06.030 align:middle line:84% Thank you to Laynie to Annie Guthrie 00:00:06.030 --> 00:00:09.570 align:middle line:84% for bringing me from the airport to Gail 00:00:09.570 --> 00:00:11.280 align:middle line:90% here at the Poetry Center. 00:00:11.280 --> 00:00:15.390 align:middle line:84% And to Judith and Laura and Renee 00:00:15.390 --> 00:00:20.550 align:middle line:84% for this strange and illuminated company today. 00:00:20.550 --> 00:00:25.230 align:middle line:84% I am simply going to read from Schizophrene of which-- 00:00:25.230 --> 00:00:27.030 align:middle line:84% is that correct English?-- of which 00:00:27.030 --> 00:00:33.180 align:middle line:84% a destructive, feral excerpt resides in the anthology. 00:00:33.180 --> 00:00:35.610 align:middle line:84% I'll drown this book by which I mean 00:00:35.610 --> 00:00:38.760 align:middle line:84% to say thinking in your piece, Renee, 00:00:38.760 --> 00:00:43.050 align:middle line:84% I think you said blood making stem cells? 00:00:43.050 --> 00:00:46.950 align:middle line:84% I tried in the anthology to combine sentences 00:00:46.950 --> 00:00:49.530 align:middle line:84% used in my research for Humanimal 00:00:49.530 --> 00:00:52.440 align:middle line:84% a work centering upon feral children. 00:00:52.440 --> 00:00:55.230 align:middle line:84% I tried to link those to concepts 00:00:55.230 --> 00:00:59.100 align:middle line:90% that appear in this book. 00:00:59.100 --> 00:01:00.930 align:middle line:84% But listening to everything I thought, no, 00:01:00.930 --> 00:01:04.290 align:middle line:84% that it's bad idea to read from the actual anthology. 00:01:04.290 --> 00:01:08.490 align:middle line:84% So, I've converted myself instantly 00:01:08.490 --> 00:01:11.760 align:middle line:84% into the person who might read this. 00:01:11.760 --> 00:01:13.750 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:13.750 --> 00:01:17.050 align:middle line:90% And, so, it's very short. 00:01:17.050 --> 00:01:19.980 align:middle line:84% It's not much on every page and it's like 29 pages. 00:01:19.980 --> 00:01:23.460 align:middle line:84% And we were invited to read between 15 and 20 minutes. 00:01:23.460 --> 00:01:26.910 align:middle line:84% So, that's not going to take very long is it? 00:01:26.910 --> 00:01:31.050 align:middle line:84% So, if I start talking about partial solar eclipses 00:01:31.050 --> 00:01:35.430 align:middle line:84% we'll know it's gone on too long. 00:01:35.430 --> 00:01:40.890 align:middle line:84% So, this, another dreadful book centering upon migration 00:01:40.890 --> 00:01:43.920 align:middle line:90% and mental illness. 00:01:43.920 --> 00:01:46.110 align:middle line:90% I'll just read from it. 00:01:46.110 --> 00:01:46.880 align:middle line:90% And so good luck. 00:01:46.880 --> 00:01:47.880 align:middle line:90% Good luck to all of you. 00:01:47.880 --> 00:01:52.620 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:52.620 --> 00:01:54.450 align:middle line:90% "Schizophrene." 00:01:54.450 --> 00:01:57.090 align:middle line:90% "One, schizophrene. 00:01:57.090 --> 00:02:00.840 align:middle line:84% I threw the book into the dark garden, the account 00:02:00.840 --> 00:02:03.870 align:middle line:90% begun mid-ocean in a storm. 00:02:03.870 --> 00:02:06.210 align:middle line:90% Immigrant, nothing happens. 00:02:06.210 --> 00:02:07.860 align:middle line:90% Immigrant. 00:02:07.860 --> 00:02:10.320 align:middle line:84% Below the aeroplane is the river. 00:02:10.320 --> 00:02:12.630 align:middle line:84% Someone who could weight me down, 00:02:12.630 --> 00:02:14.970 align:middle line:84% whether physically or with language, 00:02:14.970 --> 00:02:17.280 align:middle line:90% in all the ports of call. 00:02:17.280 --> 00:02:22.230 align:middle line:84% Athens in January, Munich in February, London in March, 00:02:22.230 --> 00:02:23.460 align:middle line:90% immigrant. 00:02:23.460 --> 00:02:27.930 align:middle line:84% There's nothing erotic about the 10 rupees in your pocket. 00:02:27.930 --> 00:02:31.920 align:middle line:84% The account begins mid-ocean where even your boarding pass 00:02:31.920 --> 00:02:35.610 align:middle line:84% is knotted in a handkerchief in your broken down suitcase 00:02:35.610 --> 00:02:37.290 align:middle line:90% in the hold. 00:02:37.290 --> 00:02:40.470 align:middle line:84% Dazzling you, I select your suitcase. 00:02:40.470 --> 00:02:44.460 align:middle line:84% You watch it float over the railing and into the air. 00:02:44.460 --> 00:02:48.240 align:middle line:84% Yellow lightning in the silver sky and the three sheets 00:02:48.240 --> 00:02:49.180 align:middle line:90% of rain. 00:02:49.180 --> 00:02:51.810 align:middle line:90% So bamboo, so cream. 00:02:51.810 --> 00:02:53.310 align:middle line:90% Stupid man. 00:02:53.310 --> 00:02:57.900 align:middle line:84% You watch your suitcase sink, burning up its requisite energy 00:02:57.900 --> 00:02:59.850 align:middle line:90% simply by breathing. 00:02:59.850 --> 00:03:02.340 align:middle line:90% Everything breathes, even you. 00:03:02.340 --> 00:03:03.660 align:middle line:90% Breathe, immigrant. 00:03:03.660 --> 00:03:05.040 align:middle line:90% Fly, immigrant. 00:03:05.040 --> 00:03:06.510 align:middle line:90% Sail, immigrant. 00:03:06.510 --> 00:03:08.940 align:middle line:90% Blue. 00:03:08.940 --> 00:03:11.700 align:middle line:84% When I opened the door, there was a weird blue light 00:03:11.700 --> 00:03:13.240 align:middle line:90% coming off the snow. 00:03:13.240 --> 00:03:15.750 align:middle line:90% I threw the book into the snow. 00:03:15.750 --> 00:03:20.070 align:middle line:84% The ship left Bombay at dawn, a pink smear, the sunlight 00:03:20.070 --> 00:03:23.370 align:middle line:90% both a position and an entity. 00:03:23.370 --> 00:03:24.810 align:middle line:90% The ship docked. 00:03:24.810 --> 00:03:28.140 align:middle line:84% The ferry left Calais at dawn, a green sky. 00:03:28.140 --> 00:03:33.240 align:middle line:84% I kept drawing the horizon, the static line somehow disk-like. 00:03:33.240 --> 00:03:38.280 align:middle line:84% Near seven, I saw an intense set of orange red and gold lines 00:03:38.280 --> 00:03:41.040 align:middle line:84% above the place where the sun would be. 00:03:41.040 --> 00:03:44.910 align:middle line:84% The ship docked, and I found my home in the grid system. 00:03:44.910 --> 00:03:48.150 align:middle line:84% The damp wouldn't stew in the bath, a slice of bread 00:03:48.150 --> 00:03:50.730 align:middle line:90% with cheese on it, and so on. 00:03:50.730 --> 00:03:53.040 align:middle line:84% All my life I've been trying to adhere 00:03:53.040 --> 00:03:57.090 align:middle line:84% to the surface of your city, your three gray rectangles 00:03:57.090 --> 00:03:59.160 align:middle line:90% split into four parts. 00:03:59.160 --> 00:04:05.610 align:middle line:84% A red dot, the axis rotated 76 degrees and so on. 00:04:05.610 --> 00:04:07.770 align:middle line:84% But then I threw the book into the grid. 00:04:07.770 --> 00:04:10.140 align:middle line:90% It was a wet grid. 00:04:10.140 --> 00:04:14.610 align:middle line:84% The snow wet the book then froze it like a passive sun. 00:04:14.610 --> 00:04:18.450 align:middle line:84% These notes are directed towards the region I wanted to perceive 00:04:18.450 --> 00:04:19.589 align:middle line:90% but could not. 00:04:19.589 --> 00:04:23.220 align:middle line:84% Notes for schizophrene night, a schizophrene day, 00:04:23.220 --> 00:04:25.470 align:middle line:90% a rapid sketch. 00:04:25.470 --> 00:04:28.560 align:middle line:84% The book before writing, arcing once more 00:04:28.560 --> 00:04:30.810 align:middle line:90% through the crisp dark air. 00:04:30.810 --> 00:04:33.570 align:middle line:84% And the line the book makes is an axis, 00:04:33.570 --> 00:04:36.720 align:middle line:84% a hunk of electromagnetic fur drawn 00:04:36.720 --> 00:04:39.240 align:middle line:84% from the side of something still living 00:04:39.240 --> 00:04:45.150 align:middle line:84% and thrown like a wire threaded a spark towards the grass. 00:04:45.150 --> 00:04:48.270 align:middle line:84% A line for someone on their first voyage, 00:04:48.270 --> 00:04:52.560 align:middle line:84% a non-contemporary subject, the woman or even the man. 00:04:52.560 --> 00:04:54.960 align:middle line:84% The person with an articulate gender, 00:04:54.960 --> 00:04:59.130 align:middle line:84% a flux where the body always is, who asks what's forbidden, 00:04:59.130 --> 00:05:03.320 align:middle line:84% what's expected, in the annular zone in the airport, 00:05:03.320 --> 00:05:05.310 align:middle line:90% on the Earth. 00:05:05.310 --> 00:05:08.900 align:middle line:90% A veil, a harness, a rope. 00:05:08.900 --> 00:05:13.130 align:middle line:84% Do psychiatrists register the complex and rich vibrations 00:05:13.130 --> 00:05:15.860 align:middle line:84% produced by their dreaming subjects? 00:05:15.860 --> 00:05:18.560 align:middle line:84% The indigo or emerald green crown 00:05:18.560 --> 00:05:20.240 align:middle line:84% that coats the hair and shoulders 00:05:20.240 --> 00:05:23.540 align:middle line:84% of an interviewee erasing distinctions 00:05:23.540 --> 00:05:27.590 align:middle line:84% between what is outside the sky and what's beneath it. 00:05:27.590 --> 00:05:30.740 align:middle line:90% What digs into the head. 00:05:30.740 --> 00:05:33.350 align:middle line:84% The emanating structures appear in the light 00:05:33.350 --> 00:05:35.120 align:middle line:90% that comes from the body. 00:05:35.120 --> 00:05:37.400 align:middle line:84% And it is these structures that perform 00:05:37.400 --> 00:05:41.870 align:middle line:84% a rudimentary narrative, a memory or two. 00:05:41.870 --> 00:05:45.110 align:middle line:84% But to write this narrative is not to split it, 00:05:45.110 --> 00:05:47.030 align:middle line:84% for which an antidote is commercially 00:05:47.030 --> 00:05:50.660 align:middle line:84% produced in quantities that exceed populations. 00:05:50.660 --> 00:05:55.190 align:middle line:84% A schizophrenic narrative cannot process the dynamic elements 00:05:55.190 --> 00:05:59.410 align:middle line:84% of an image, any image, whether pleasant, enriching, 00:05:59.410 --> 00:06:03.620 align:middle line:84% or already so bad it can't be tendered in the lexicon 00:06:03.620 --> 00:06:07.040 align:middle line:90% of poses available to it. 00:06:07.040 --> 00:06:09.620 align:middle line:90% I need a new pen. 00:06:09.620 --> 00:06:14.000 align:middle line:84% An idea for a novel before it's shattered there on the bench 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:16.430 align:middle line:84% next to the fountain which is frozen, 00:06:16.430 --> 00:06:19.850 align:middle line:90% deconstructed, in the air. 00:06:19.850 --> 00:06:23.450 align:middle line:84% I walk the long way to the Tate from the Pimlico Tube, 00:06:23.450 --> 00:06:27.110 align:middle line:84% a fact more intense each time I repeat it in my mind. 00:06:27.110 --> 00:06:30.020 align:middle line:84% And erotics, a mad progression that 00:06:30.020 --> 00:06:34.190 align:middle line:84% exceeds a central frame like seeing something then falling 00:06:34.190 --> 00:06:35.450 align:middle line:90% down. 00:06:35.450 --> 00:06:37.790 align:middle line:84% I break my walk at the fountain as I've 00:06:37.790 --> 00:06:40.820 align:middle line:84% done since childhood, which is chromatography. 00:06:40.820 --> 00:06:43.940 align:middle line:84% The white panels then the livid black. 00:06:43.940 --> 00:06:45.560 align:middle line:90% It's already late. 00:06:45.560 --> 00:06:50.540 align:middle line:84% A black world coming down from the heavens, black with stars. 00:06:50.540 --> 00:06:53.060 align:middle line:84% They're walking into that, the darkness pouring 00:06:53.060 --> 00:06:55.580 align:middle line:84% into their mouths when they reached the hills. 00:06:55.580 --> 00:06:59.840 align:middle line:84% Coming down over the two of them, a man of about 60 that 00:06:59.840 --> 00:07:02.060 align:middle line:90% read afternoon into evening. 00:07:02.060 --> 00:07:05.330 align:middle line:84% The dirt of that place, a kind of orange brown, 00:07:05.330 --> 00:07:09.020 align:middle line:84% and his granddaughter, eight years old that July. 00:07:09.020 --> 00:07:11.780 align:middle line:84% A Londoner, she's wearing a blue and yellow dress 00:07:11.780 --> 00:07:13.220 align:middle line:90% with a daisy print. 00:07:13.220 --> 00:07:16.380 align:middle line:84% As for the man, he's dressed in a white cotton 00:07:16.380 --> 00:07:20.990 align:middle line:84% dhoti and a kurta with an almond cake pale shawl embroidered 00:07:20.990 --> 00:07:24.980 align:middle line:84% along its narrow border with maroon and turquoise paisley 00:07:24.980 --> 00:07:26.810 align:middle line:90% swirls. 00:07:26.810 --> 00:07:30.920 align:middle line:84% The upwelling of philosophy attends to what we can't see, 00:07:30.920 --> 00:07:33.860 align:middle line:90% a light tent over the text. 00:07:33.860 --> 00:07:36.110 align:middle line:84% Nevertheless, reading these words, 00:07:36.110 --> 00:07:38.370 align:middle line:90% I can't have them in my house. 00:07:38.370 --> 00:07:40.610 align:middle line:84% And so I open the door, flinching 00:07:40.610 --> 00:07:44.390 align:middle line:84% from the blue fire of the individual blades of grass, 00:07:44.390 --> 00:07:47.210 align:middle line:84% the bonds of the plant material that release 00:07:47.210 --> 00:07:49.100 align:middle line:90% a color when they are crushed. 00:07:49.100 --> 00:07:54.020 align:middle line:84% When the book hits the ground, a sub red spike without a sauce. 00:07:54.020 --> 00:07:56.180 align:middle line:90% Can you play chess? 00:07:56.180 --> 00:07:58.400 align:middle line:90% Late August, Pakistan. 00:07:58.400 --> 00:08:03.740 align:middle line:84% The arms, the mud, dried now and flaking to the wrist. 00:08:03.740 --> 00:08:06.170 align:middle line:84% He collapsed, screaming insensate 00:08:06.170 --> 00:08:09.290 align:middle line:84% to the arrival of his wife a week later. 00:08:09.290 --> 00:08:12.530 align:middle line:84% Her sari caked with blood, straining then 00:08:12.530 --> 00:08:15.320 align:middle line:90% bucking in a makeshift cage. 00:08:15.320 --> 00:08:18.830 align:middle line:84% We kept him in the cellar for a year. 00:08:18.830 --> 00:08:23.270 align:middle line:84% A stem, wrapped in a thin blue and white checkered towel, 00:08:23.270 --> 00:08:27.260 align:middle line:84% the salt used to wrap the earthenware pot of unset yogurt 00:08:27.260 --> 00:08:29.120 align:middle line:90% again and again. 00:08:29.120 --> 00:08:32.909 align:middle line:84% Arriving the rose, like a color just ahead of them. 00:08:32.909 --> 00:08:34.970 align:middle line:84% The torch, she thinks, held there 00:08:34.970 --> 00:08:38.510 align:middle line:84% and upright in her grandfather's grasp. 00:08:38.510 --> 00:08:41.809 align:middle line:84% When they reached the jungle, the luminous stands of bamboo 00:08:41.809 --> 00:08:45.650 align:middle line:84% sway in the rain, creaking and popping at their touch, 00:08:45.650 --> 00:08:47.750 align:middle line:90% at the brush of their arms. 00:08:47.750 --> 00:08:51.620 align:middle line:84% Darkness has truly fallen now, obliterating the city 00:08:51.620 --> 00:08:54.830 align:middle line:90% below its population. 00:08:54.830 --> 00:08:57.470 align:middle line:84% A man comes to the gate where they stop. 00:08:57.470 --> 00:09:00.290 align:middle line:84% He walks into the fragrant gloom of the garden 00:09:00.290 --> 00:09:02.180 align:middle line:90% and snaps the stem. 00:09:02.180 --> 00:09:04.760 align:middle line:90% A green still visible at seven. 00:09:04.760 --> 00:09:06.980 align:middle line:90% And I reach out my hand. 00:09:06.980 --> 00:09:08.060 align:middle line:90% Tea? 00:09:08.060 --> 00:09:11.000 align:middle line:84% And when the chessboard appears, diamond shape from where 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:14.690 align:middle line:84% she's sitting and copper edged in the Russian fashion, 00:09:14.690 --> 00:09:16.280 align:middle line:90% the girl drifts. 00:09:16.280 --> 00:09:19.490 align:middle line:90% I don't see her, I feel her. 00:09:19.490 --> 00:09:22.460 align:middle line:84% Then as if he too can feel the mountains pulsing 00:09:22.460 --> 00:09:26.030 align:middle line:84% through the walls of the house, her grandfather gets up. 00:09:26.030 --> 00:09:27.470 align:middle line:90% She gets up. 00:09:27.470 --> 00:09:29.470 align:middle line:90% And they go."