By Isabella Simoes
Jos Charles, author of the poetry collections a Year & other poems and feeld, a Pulitzer-finalist and winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series, visited Clark University for a reading as part of Clark’s Poets and Writers Reading Series, sponsored by the Provost’s Office and the English Department. Currently, she is visiting faculty for UC Riverside’s Creative Writing Department and teaches as a part of Randolph College’s low-residency MFA program.
“Hopefully that’s beautiful and okay”
In feeld, Jos Charles twists language, playing with phonetics and spelling, to exhibit the trans experience in medieval language. Mixing current phrases with old forms of writing, she asks readers to hold multiple truths, composing “a new narrative of what it means to live inside a marked body.”
“I saw what I saw”
Charles read from a new project she is working on, called “Vida Nova,” where she reflects on her life as an example. She described it as a sort of confessional, made up of prose and poems in a layered relationship, moving together through time. Mostly written about and in times of crisis, she addresses it to a “you” that keeps on changing. The first work she read blended together an ode to an ex-love that had passed away and an episode of psychosis, both of which turned into a “dream vision,” where the events swirled together.
“I saw the world for the dream”
What I loved most about Charles’ reading was the tone in which she read all of her pieces. It was decadent, bleeding over in sonnets and prose. I found a very real, palpable sensory quality to it, like an elaborate quilt you can run your fingers along the stitching of. I think this manner of reading comes from how time functions in her work, becoming one. Time is body-stacking: every part of the body is its own object, but cannot be removed from the systems it is part of without failing. In her work, the events do not happen chronologically but are entirely linear, being their own organs in a giant system that keeps the piece breathing. They moved as one, sharing their beauty and grief.
“I do not open, I do not close. I love you”
It was almost impossible to miss how Charles became part of the poem as she read. When she got into a particularly long section of prose or poetry, her body became part of the work, holding the back of her head with her elbows in the air, twirling her fingers. When asked about research for her work, she replied that there was always a text that she was in dialogue with, and it seemed like her entire self was part of that dialogue as well. I was really struck by this overwhelming sense of togetherness she had with time, dreams, reality, and herself. I found a sense of healing within it, despite the variety of hardships she experienced. From her readings, I found that the bridges between realities really are not so thin, you just have to feel for them.
“I love what you have hidden in me because I am not hiding, I am myself”
From the Q&A on the Reading of “Vida Nova” and feeld:
Because of how feeld is written, how do you work through the difference between reading it to yourself versus out loud?
Charles explains that reading, for her, exists on a 2D surface, while the “outside world” exists in 3D. When she does a reading, she is making both forms talk to each other. She suggests relating to a page and then performing it.
Do you conduct research as part of your writing process?
When it comes to her writing, she said that it was completely circumstantial, but the beauty of creative writing is that there is an incredible amount of freedom when it comes to what you can research. She does, however, emphasize that there is always a text she is in dialogue with.
How do you relate to your writing while in process with it?
Charles explained that writing is like decorating a room; the reader is allowed to be wherever they like or appreciate any of her decorations, but she is the one who sets the parameters and picks out the décor. She considers what is useful for her and what is useful for others as she edits, and hopes that others encounter the work differently than she does.
How did you choose the order of feeld? The events are out of order, but also linear.
She described this ordering phase of the writing process as “play,” with lots of drafts and different eyes on the work. She ultimately found the shape that made the best work, instead of what resonated most with her.
What is the feeling of creating tangible work from non-tangible experiences (dreams, psychosis, etc.)?
The student who asked this question inquired if it felt like catharsis to Charles, to which she replied that it did in addition to a conversation, but that was not the aim. For her, writing about the non-tangible broke down how she felt these things in a different form. She described the feeling as getting stuck in your head, breaking it down, and making a shape from it. Ultimately, she was making this final shape into something that, in her words, “feels beautiful.”
In my opinion, there is no better way to describe Charles’ work than that.