'I resorted to the usual way of not feeling anything, of concentrating on every inch of skin, on the opening of every pore until I could feel nothing else and the sensation of me filled the entire universe. But I was not, I could feel nothing, and when I had come to this point of not being, I took the precaution of appropriately looking down' (Tambudzai in The Book of Not by Tsitsi Dangarembga, sequel to Nervous Conditions).
Explore how any text(s) by authors on the module address 'not being.'
Denise Riley
Dark Looks
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If, if only
I need not have a physical appearance! To be sheer air, and mousseline!
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Tries to separate herself as a poet/poem (?) from the existence of her readership, and fails??
So take me or leave me. No, wait, I didn’t mean leave
me, wait, just don’t – or don’t flick and skim to the foot of a page and then get up to go –
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Don Paterson
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The Poem: Lyric, Sign, Metre
Poetry [...] proceeds from a generous instinct, not a selfish one. Whatever private torments might have been assuaged in our writing, we want to give these damn things away in the end.
A poem which makes the reader work unnecessarily hard for nothing more mind-blowing than its literal sense will soon become deeply irritating.