Being a Chair. Essays on Choreographic Poetry - Janne-Camilla Lyster

"Blindness II
I write with a kind of blindness. This is how I experience it: because I try to write a dance rather than describe one. I do not imagine a movement and try to describe it; I relate to something I haven't imagined before, something that hasn't been done before, something yet to arise. The work is to articulate a specific opportunity for the dance to arise through poetry - a flip side where the front is the dance. And the front must be invisible to me not to be anticipating the transformation from poetry to dance - not to reduce the dance to what language is capable of grasping. And vice versa."

Imagine words approaching a dance eyes closed or sleepwalking, words adrift beyond what can be envisioned beforehand, prompting writer and reader alike into a zone where time multiplies, where bodies grow footnotes and paper skin, savour the taste of language, attune their ears to the wavelength of blue. In a string of brief essays on her practice of writing choreographic poetry and scores, Janne-Camilla Lyster offers reflections on time, memory and the senses, on translation, punctuation and rhythm, on mistakes and crevasses, on the impossible and yet other things. What does it take to enter another form of existence, say, a chair?

Janne-Camilla Lyster is a writer, dancer and choreographer. She has published poetry, novels, essays and plays.

Varamo Press, 2023
English
Softcover, 56 pages
First edition, sewn perfect binding,
110mm x 165mm