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Allison Wall

Tag: poetry
  • 2024 in Review: Publications

    Here we are, back again at the close of another year. Another revolution around the sun. Another strange period to be a human in society. Another whirlwind of hours that felt like weeks and weeks that felt like seconds.

    This year, my publishing journey has been both slow and fast, more of the same and very unexpected.

    No luck on novel-length work yet, though I did receive several highly complimentary rejections (“fan letters”) from fantastic indie presses I really admire. This was simultaneously amazing and soul crushing. Drama within indie and trad publishing continues to daunt. And, of course, the state of the arts in a post-capitalist content-consumer society is bleak, as always, with the added horrors of generative AI. I can only imagine what Our Lady Ursula K. LeGuin would have to say if she was still with us.

    I did have luck with short (and less short) fiction! Several stories I was struggling to place last year were accepted, and late in the year, I got an acceptance on my first novelette, Unbound, which is my longest publication to date. (Check out this blog post to learn more about Unbound, what a novelette is, what it’s about, etc.) This feels like an important milestone, and (fingers’ crossed) a harbinger of longer work to come. My laptop knows there’s more where that came from.

    The unexpected: I started submitting poetry for the first time, which opened a whole new world of journal titles, submission requirements, and possibilities. I burned myself out on submitting, actually, and moving into poetry probably contributed to that. I did have to take some breaks, and I slowed down a lot after the middle of the year.

    BUT, I have *seven* sparkly published poems to show for it! No one is more shocked by my foray into poetry than me, but I’m really loving it.

    And, honestly, I’m shocked at how much work I managed to write, submit, and place, given how little time I felt like I devoted to writing. A good reminder, maybe, that our perceptions of productivity, time, value, etc., are not to be trusted–or at least, being tainted by capitalism and shame, are highly suspect.

    Here is a list of the work I published in 2024. I may update this list if/as things drop and I can link to them. I update the Publications page of this website regularly, but a tidy blog with all of the links for this year in one place is nice.

    Poetry

    Novelette

    Unbound, Last Syllable, Issue III

    Short Fiction

    The Sky Here is Different, Exposed Bone, *COMING SOON*

    After She Makes a Pact with the Dark Goddess, All Existing, *COMING SOON*

    Grotesque, Tales of Sley House 2024

    These Small Apocalypses, Overtly Lit, Issue 4

    How Now, Ophelia? A Coup of Owls

    Baba Yaga Goes North, Crow & Cross Keys

    Crow & Cross Keys Baba Yaga Goes North Allison Wall
    I said goodbye to the people around me, the ones who thought they knew me, who were shocked. They didn't understand what I was doing. They tried to talk me out of it, told me I was confused, that no one was Baba Yaga, that she's just an old fairy tale. --Allison Wall, "Baba Yaga Goes North"
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  • Artist Update: I’m a Poet?

    In a plot twist I didn’t see coming, I have two poems scheduled for publication in June and July 2024.

    “Step 1: Sand, Clay, Fire” will appear in ONE ART.

    “The Body of God” will appear in Thimble Literary Magazine.

    …and there’s more where that came from!

    Doing everything in my power not to utter the cliche, but it would not be false to say, “I was a poet and was not previously aware of my status as such.”

    These two poems belong to a chapbook/collection in development that I hope to publish someday.

    Why this shift into poetry? Where did all these poems come from?

    These are great questions. I have some answers, but probably not all. The creative process is a spiritual, mysterious experience.

    There were things I needed, desperately, to process through writing. I thought maybe I’d write a memoir or a set of personal essays. I even thought it could be a series of blog posts for this platform. But every time I tried, it was like the ouroboros (the snake eating its own tail). I couldn’t find a starting point. The material wouldn’t let me in. It was like trying to jump onto a merry-go-round already in motion. All of it felt connected in a way that didn’t lend it self to the linearity of voice or prose.

    Then, without even meaning to, I put one little piece into a poem. That poem was quickly joined by two, three, five, ten more. It felt like the Muse saw someone was accepting poetry, and She poured them out to me. Writing poetry feels like channeling something (an idea, a strong emotion), and the goal is to present it in its most sublime form.

    The collage of a poetry collection also offered the scope I needed while giving me permission to abandon that linear sense of plot or storytelling that would be expected in memoir.

    After sharing these poems with some trusted friends and writers, and after a bit of tidying up, I started sending them out. Why not? I had a good rhythm established for submitting fiction. I did have a bit of a learning curve, researching places to send poems, but it wasn’t too difficult.

    I started submitting poems January 23, 2024, and had my first acceptance February 10, 2024. The second came on April 1, 2024 (no fooling!), and I have other poems out on submission as we speak.

    Receiving positive feedback on poetry felt especially poignant. In fiction, there are shields between the words and the writer: point of view, character, voice, plot, etc. In poetry, no such shield exists. At least, not in the poetry I am writing.

    And this is what I’ve been dancing around, if you couldn’t tell: the subject matter I needed to express. These poems hold parts of who I am and my experience that I have not addressed openly, directly. The prospective collection’s title is The Cup and Other Abominations: Queer Deconstruction Poems. In it, there are poems about menstruation and communion, the struggle for belonging, and the liberating power of sexual desire (see also: Poor Things). There are poems that give voice to Biblical women whose words were never recorded. There are poems that reclaim my own strength and goodness from a dogma that taught me helplessness and worthlessness. These are poems about finding life and divinity in my own right-now experience, not offloading it onto some other being or future time.

    These poems explore the transformational process of deconstructing from evangelical fundamental Christianity and the queer awakening that was only possible after. Deconstruction, sexuality, and the feminine divine: the most unholy trinity.

    Specifically, “Step 1: Clay, Sand, Fire” describes deconstruction as I experienced it in a tactile, sensory way. “The Body of God” yearns to reclaim the female body as Divine, and traces some of the damage, some of the things lost, since the rise of patriarchy over the last millennia.

    I am ready to share the parts of myself contained in these poems. I hope they are met with goodwill and celebration.

    But as anyone knows who has deconstructed or explored their gender and sexuality and come to non-heteronormative conclusions, there are people who will not be happy for me about this. There are people who remember old versions of me, versions that were so heavily masked they didn’t know themselves. This may not sit well with them.

    That’s fine.

    I don’t exist to fit in or to placate. The Autistic wiring of my brain and nervous system have made that very clear to me. I exist to experience authentically. I exist to liberate myself from the cobwebs, ropes, and chains of Expectation, and to live, without restriction, as myself.

    So this is me, taking up space, as a deconstructed, queer, Autistic person.

    There will be two poems this summer, and hopefully more in the future. I hope you read them, and I hope whatever I channeled into them, consciously or un-, reaches you.

    And if you’re thinking about writing poetry, watch out! I already have a second collection brewing about reclaiming my Autistic self through the spiritual experience of being in the natural world and feeling the thrill of perfect connection.

    Once the poems know where you live, they just keep coming…

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  • You Think You’re ‘Finished’?

    A friend recently informed me that I have “finished so many things,” referring to the short stories and novels I’ve written. I argued fiercely that I have never finished anything in my life. And, in fact, I petition that we throw out the concept of “finishing” altogether.

    In my day job, I work with post-graduate writers in academia. The concept of perfection plagues some of these students. They could edit their work forever. Yet, they need to turn it in, in order to pass their courses and receive their degrees. So how do they know when their work is “finished”?

    I tell them: Well, that’s what deadlines are for.

    This advice is less useful for those of us outside of academia’s structure. We don’t have professors giving due dates. We might have a submission deadline we’re writing toward, but that won’t be a constant.

    I propose we take a more Zappa-esque stance. Art isn’t something you finish. It’s something you work on, or that you stop working on, or that you start working on again, as you see fit.

    This is tricky, though, because when do we know a piece is ready to submit for publication? How do we know when to present the art we’ve made?

    I don’t look at older pieces I’ve placed, because I know I’ll find thirty-odd things I wish I could change. Those pieces, to me, are definitely not “finished.” I just stopped working on them, and editors and readers thought they were good enough to share.

    I think working with the goal of finishing something implies a level of finality, a type of perfection, that we just aren’t going to attain. Our work on the page is not something to be perfected. It is an artifact from a version of ourselves.

    I think the goal should rather be one of alignment.

    In the present moment, this version of myself is satisfied with this version of the work. They line up. It’s a feeling of synchronicity, of, yes, this is what I meant to do. It’s a sign to stop.

    We don’t finish; we just stop, and the piece becomes an artifact. It’s not a definitive, sublime form of anything. It’s just something we were satisfied with at some point–satisfied enough that we decided to stop working on it.

    We could work on a single piece for our whole lives. It would evolve alongside us, because as we change, the art would also change, so that our satisfaction with it is maintained. Not everybody decides to stop. There’s nothing wrong with this! It’s down to the artist’s choice. Creating is a series of choices, whether those choices result in one thing or myriad. Marcel Proust worked on a single, massive novel, and I’ve never read a more beautiful opening chapter than that of In Search of Lost Time.

    It’s up to us to decide what we want to work on.

    I have a lot of ideas. There’s so much I want to do, so many things I want to try, and I am changing and deepening as a person at what feels like an exponentially increasing rate. I want to get to those other ideas. I want to leave a trail of artifacts behind, as many as I can. That means I have to stop working on projects at some point. I’m not finishing; I’m getting to that moment of alignment, where I’m satisfied with what’s on the page in the present, and I’m stopping. I’m not going to be satisfied with it in a month, in a year, in ten years, whatever. But right now, I am satisfied, so I’m going to stop. That moment of alignment tells me when to set something down and reach for the next.

    I’ve been working on a short story this week that I had set aside a year ago. I sent it out, and nobody wanted it. So I started working on it again. I revamped and rewrote the ending. It now feels more complete, more correct. I’m excited to start sending it out again.

    So, when we set something down, it doesn’t have to be forever. Because it’s not finished, we can always pick it up again. Sometimes the work needs to be set down in order to develop further at a later time. I wouldn’t have gotten to this better ending if I thought of the piece as “finished.”

    The concept of “finished” cuts both ways–it can keep us from moving on to new work, and it can keep us from picking up old work.

    “Finishing” something is an artificial concept, cold and dead, without roots in the natural world. It smells like factories and oil, like cardboard boxes and garbage dumps. It denies the inherent interconnectedness of existence. It denies the spiral of creation, and substitutes that ridiculously straight line.

    Nothing is a straight line. Nothing is ever finished.

    Happy creating.

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  • Finding Inspiration in the Artist’s Statement: Matsuo Bashō

    I love a good artist’s statement. Hearing from others about why they pursue their craft is inspirational and thought-provoking. It also helps me clarify and understand my own motivation. I feel a connection with the artist in question, and usually hit the keyboard with a great deal more energy.

    I’m currently reading The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches, which is a collection of Japanese haiku master Matsuo Bashō’s travel journals. In them, Bashō writes in haibun style, which means prose reflections and poetry stand side by side. At the beginning of “The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel,” Bashō includes what seems to be his own artist’s statement.

    In this mortal frame of mine which is made of a hundred bones and nine orifices there is something, and this something is called a wind-swept spirit for lack of a better name, for it is much like a thin drapery that is torn and swept away at the slightest stir of the wind. This something in me took to writing poetry years ago, merely to amuse itself at first, but finally making it its lifelong business. It must be admitted, however, that there were times when it sank into such dejection that it was almost ready to drop its pursuit, or again times when it was so puffed up with pride that it exulted in vain victories over the others. Indeed, ever since it began to write poetry, it has never found peace with itself, always wavering between doubts of one kind and another. At one time it wanted to gain security by entering the service of a court, and at another it wished to measure the depth of its ignorance by trying to be a scholar, but it was prevented from either because of its unquenchable love of poetry. The fact is, it knows no other art than the art of writing poetry, and therefore, it hangs on to it more or less blindly.

    Matsuo Bashō, from The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchel (translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa)

    I love Bashō’s romantic, and perhaps somewhat humorous, description of his own soul, and his view of it as something with its own agency. In another poem, he writes:

    On to a bridge
    Suspended over a precipice
    Clings an ivy vine,
    Body and soul together.

    Matsuo Bashō, from A Visit to Sarashina Village (translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa)

    His description of his own journey as an artist dedicating himself to his craft is very valuable. The fact that one of Japan’s most accomplished haiku poets struggled with the same push and pull I and many other artists describe is encouraging: there is nothing wrong with me/us; we simply need to forge ahead.

    These words of Matsuo Bashō are fascinating in themselves, but also totally fascinating is the fact that they were written down in 1687, almost four hundred years ago. Yet the connection I feel when reading Bashō is immediate. There is no time lag, no misunderstanding. Words written down and preserved are extremely powerful.

    Bashō’s soul clings to the letters of a language he never spoke, never heard, and now, to this screen, to this technology he would never have imagined, like ivy to a bridge.

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  • Write Like a Child

    Recently, I taught haiku to a group of elementary students. I started the lesson on the defensive, expecting groans, complaints, poetry bashing, and a general unwillingness to participate. I tried to counter some of that up front by telling the students I loved haiku  and that I expected them to be respectful of that.

    I gave a brief history of the form. We read three poems by Matsuo Basho and discussed the basic rules for classic haiku. I gave them some concrete steps to begin (choosing a season of the year, then an image in nature particular to that season, as well as some kind of simile/metaphor or observation they could make about that image).

    And then? They started writing.

    Never written a poem before? No problem.

    Never heard of haiku before? No problem.

    They just went for it. Pencils scribbling, erasers squeaking. The most common question I got was, “Is this good?”

    Not only did they jump in without second thoughts, they offered their newborn poems up to me for assessment. They were not afraid of being critiqued.

    There’s an amazing 2006 TEDTalk by Sir Ken Robinson (watch it here if you haven’t seen it) about how we lose this ability to create with abandon as we grow up. He points to the format of our educational systems, the vulnerabilities we inherit as we struggle to find identity, and the social constructs in place around us. The end result: we lose that part of us that’s willing to take creative risks that might not pay off or will open us up to criticism.

    We outgrow some fears, monsters in the closet, for example, only to grow into new ones. Fears of rejection, inadequacy, worthlessness, or inconsequentiality.

    I used to stare at my closet doors, at the cracks that showed the deep inner darkness where, I could imagine vividly, monsters and murderers hid. The more I pictured this, the more afraid I’d become. I eventually found a fix. I’d hook a hanger across the handles. It might stop whatever was inside from getting out, and if nothing else, the sound of it jangling around would alert me and give me enough time to get away.

    The more we think about the things that scare us, the more power they gain over us. The best way to get the monsters out of the closet is to ignore the thoughts of monsters.

    It’s not that we should stop caring what other people think of our work. It’s that we shouldn’t fear feedback, or attach our self-worth to others’ opinions. We need that outside critique to guide us to successful completion.

    We can’t endlessly fear that we don’t know what we’re doing. We need to start. We need to work. We have to take notes, draw pictures, meditate, problem solve, and write. We will learn by doing.

    The fears I’m talking about are all very real. It’s not just our imaginations playing games with us. It’s not that they aren’t worth being afraid of, or that if you do fear them you’re a coward. It’s that we shouldn’t allow our fear to take over, limit us, dictate what we can and cannot do. 

    By the way, the haiku my students wrote? 100% inspired awesomeness. I was totally blown away.

    At one time, we all knew how to create fearlessly. We can do it again.

    How to Write Fearlessly, Like a Child:

    Consider what you would write if you weren’t afraid.

    Stop thinking about your fear.

    Write it.

    ♥

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