Imitations
The Imitations are a series of poems which stylistically imitate five poets: Adam Warne, Denise Riley, CA Conrad, Flo Reynolds, and James Schuyler. The poets were chosen for personal reasons, some friends, some influences, some for their thematic parallels, or all of the above. I imagined The Imitations as a collaboration; I wanted to see what voice-thing occured when my own voice issued from a place which was both my own and not my own, when the single voice negotiates 'co-'. The result was five very different sequences, each of which enabled me to write about a very difficult time in my life: NZTOTSN, The Complaint, A Death Ritual, She Transmutates: variations on a theme, and Hymn to Life. Poems from the project have been variously published, see below for links and descriptions; the full project, a manuscript titled from Hell is yet to be published.
Work on this project was generously supported by the UK Society of Authors through their award of an Authors' Foundation Grant.
The cyborg incarnation is outside salvation history...the cyborg has no origin story in the Western sense....An origin story in the 'Western', humanist sense depends on the myth of original unity, fullness, bliss and terror, represented by the phallic mother from whom all humans must separate...The cyborg skips the step of original unity, of identification with nature in the Western sense.
The cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity. It is oppositional, Utopian, and completely without innocence...The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust.
Donna J Haraway