{"id":273,"date":"2013-09-15T10:50:58","date_gmt":"2013-09-15T15:50:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/?p=273"},"modified":"2018-01-06T10:10:52","modified_gmt":"2018-01-06T16:10:52","slug":"traumatic-emplacement-housing-violence-in-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/traumatic-emplacement-housing-violence-in-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Traumatic Emplacement: Housing Violence in Poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emily Ronay Johnston, SRPR Managing Editor<\/h2>\n

Emily Johnston’s series “Traumatic Emplacement<\/a>” explores poetics of emplacement, and the simultaneity of dislocation and enmeshment in traumatic poetry.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My last post talked about emplacement and Rumi\u2019s call for us to house the guests and violence of emotions, let them sever and mend us. Allison Joseph, featured \u201cSRPR Illinois Poet\u201d in the current issue (38.1), echoes Rumi on this point and poses questions of how we keep violence in its place; how we house<\/i> without becoming<\/i> violence. It would be easy to answer, \u201cJust write!,\u201d as freewriting advocates might say. \u201cWriting down the bones,\u201d as Natalie Goldberg advises, puts us in touch with ourselves. But the trauma of violence erases memory; language fails. Joseph reminds us we need \u201csomething more than memory.\u201d That is, we need witnesses. Bones aren\u2019t enough. Indeed, poetry must \u201cRemember <\/i>to lie. The truth works for \/ traffic court, but not for literature.\u201d Poetry is not \u201cwhat happened.\u201d It isn\u2019t fact; it erodes, forecloses, and makes again. On the page, we do what we cannot with life: we make it into something worth remembering. The reader is here and now, ready to witness— \u201cnot sentences that ramble across the page, \/ lost, listless, unaware of how they should turn,\u201d but what we carve those sentences into. \u201cBecause they must<\/i> turn\u2026 reversals–forward \/ momentum, then a reversal back\u2026 until we end up \/ where we never thought we could–couples, \/\/ tercets, quatrains–moving boxes of poetry, \/ miniature rooms where you arrange the chairs\/and sofa, dioramas of your own dramas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2245<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Emily is from Boston, San Francisco, Fairbanks, Alaska, and Central Illinois. Holding a Ph.D. in English Studies and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing\/Poetry, her work emerges at the intersections of writing studies, social justice pedagogy, trauma theory, film theory, and narrativity. In particular, she researches and publishes on students\u2019 literacy learning in relation to issues of sexualized trauma. She has taught courses in academic writing, public writing, creative writing, gender studies, literature and film, and English as a Second Language. Emily is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Writing Pedagogy at The University of Delaware, and Managing Editor of\u00a0Spoon River Poetry Review<\/em>\u00a0(SRPR).<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emily Ronay Johnston, SRPR Managing Editor Emily Johnston’s series “Traumatic Emplacement” explores poetics of emplacement, and the simultaneity of dislocation and enmeshment in traumatic poetry. My last post talked about emplacement and Rumi\u2019s call for us to house the guests … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[44,17,9,45,13,236],"class_list":["post-273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-traumatic-emplacement","tag-allison-joseph","tag-emily-johnston","tag-issue-38-1","tag-natalie-goldberg","tag-rumi","tag-traumatic-emplacement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":798,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273\/revisions\/798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.srpr.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}