If We Could Just Gaga Our Grammar

As a teaching artist, my relationship to play is informed by my previous experiences as a participant in Gaga movement workshops. My understanding of the Gaga philosophy, as developed by choreographer Ohad Naharin, is that it is about reconnecting to sensation, rather than honing technique, so that one might learn how to move again without mirrors. The proprioceptive awareness cultivated via this dance practice temporarily unloosened a rigidness I did not know I was carrying with respect to my voice, which had become constricted and confused following decades of English-language indoctrination (the less staid poem-version of this narrative appears in Jacket2). When I learned to create more opportunities for play in my creative practice, I generally felt more sane, more me. As a teacher, I enjoyed layering some of the poetic elements of this experience, many of which are based in improvisation rather than mastery in style or form, into the virtual writing workshop PRACTICE / PLAY.

As I was reminded by my friend, writer and teacher Jess Arndt, play keeps us alert to the potential of recognizing ourselves as novice; this fledgling status is accompanied by an awareness that we may be lacking in something—for example, skills, refinement, knowledge, experience. The threat of awkwardness looms. So to invite play is to invite risk. It's helpful to keep in mind that there may be some bad memories or fears there, such as of abandonment, judgment, ridicule, failure. I am generally of the opinion that it is good for writers and artists to encounter the meta-feelings that surround this practice—play—which can only be activated and worked through by playing, alone or with others. So in this spirit, I offer a few games:

1. Poem Karaoke: Write words or lyrics to the instrumental version of a song you don’t know the words to. Play around with different styles, eras, rhythms, tempos.
2. Find two or three random paragraphs from two sources and copy and paste the paragraphs into a word scrambler. From this jumble of found text, draft a poem. This activity is inspired by Dodie Bellamy’s Cunt Ups.
3. Write a letter to someone that is 10–15 sentences. Then rearrange the sentences in alphabetical order by the first word of each line to transform your letter into a loose abecedarian prose poem. This activity is inspired by Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries.

As there are infinite ways to play, I am often excited to learn the games of others and the processes we call upon to help us feel more alive in writing. I also recognize that sometimes aliveness can take the form of surprise, glee, elation, anxiety, or the feeling that one is a fool. These emotions are all well and fine, so long as they don’t stop you from playing. And playing, as I like to remind other writers, can take so many forms, such as drawing, daydreaming, role- playing. In my practice, I personally enjoy playing with slant rhyme and other sound-based language games so as to explore the material aspects of words; this type of play can till the soil, allowing unpredictable associations and new neural networks to emerge. Oulipo and other constraint-based approaches, such as lipograms, can also stoke similar impulses.

To close: Imagine who your children would be if you did not encourage them to play, to be less than perfect. Could the same not be said of our poems? It is not to our benefit as makers or mothers, symbolically speaking, to impose such adversarial conditions upon the creative process.