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I am interested in language because it wounds or seduces me. —Roland Barthes
Writing is like giving birth:
words are pushed out of your body,
small, vulnerable, and crying out
with the visceral agony of creation.
The words will fly untethered
if allowed, swirling around,
causing chaos—from chaos
to creation: creation through editing.
Editing is the butterfly net
used to capture the winged creatures:
it holds the delicate beings
without crushing them.
Language is an elusive goddess that cannot be possessed,
but only borrowed for a fleeting moment.
She is the scapegoat when we fail to express ourselves,
and the heroine when we find the right words.
She torments our souls when she evades us,
and delights us when she graces us with her presence;
pushing us to the brink of despair,
then pulling us back again with a gasp of fresh air.
Language must be a woman body and structures
widely debated, scrutinized.
At once mutable and muted.
Features contested, body contained.
Men try to control her, master her,
conquer her foreign land—but her language, her body, are not for the taking:
Language—and Lady—can no more be controlled
than a whirling goddess of the winds.
For it is no more possible to control the wind,
than it is possible to control language,
or to possess a woman.
She is transient and ephemeral,
not unstable—moveable.
She changes and evolves and morphs:
She is always there, but rarely seen,
felt like a warm breeze in the heavens.
Writing is agony and ecstasy.
Editing is the salve and the pill.
If we write to express ourselves,
we edit to contain ourselves.
We contain ourselves to the page,
to grammar, to styles, to social norms.
In containment, writers find
community and communion; a faith in words.
Yet faith, like words, can fail us, leaving us
flailing to find the correct diction,
structure, syntax, phrase. Embrace the struggle,
for the joy is found in the friction.
SOPHIE CORBIERE is a third-year student at York University in the English and Professional Writing program. From 2011-2013, Sophie was a member of the Toronto Street Writers, and her poetry was published in their bi-annual publication in 2012.