Viva Notes

Use this section describe exactly what my motivations were. What I hoped to discover

Ideas about the changing nature of domestic space began to gather for me during the writing of my

first collection ‘Bendigo’. At the time I was a stay at home parent to a two-year-old. For the first time

in adult life the site of the domestic was where I was spending most of my time. With my first child I

had gone back to work after six months, so never experienced an extended period at home. To my

surprise I found myself fascinated by this period of relative domestic incarceration. I didn't feel lonely

or disconnected and I examined the reasons why this might be the case. I began to look at the space

around me in a different way. Being at home with the baby is obviously restrictive in practical terms.

But I found a new space was opening up before me, I genuinely think I hadn’t looked around me

before the arbitrary temporal space of maternity left me exposed me to interior landscapes I haven't

thought about since childhood. I had the time on the space to reappraise my surroundings in several

different ways and a new temporality opened up. The day with a baby is divided differently and I

found I was making new routines, setting a new pace and finding time to think and reflect in a way I

hadn’t for a long time. At this time politics was beginning to change in interesting ways, there was a

perceptible shift, a moving up of gears somehow. The Scottish independence referendum marked the

end point of Bendigo, but I was connecting with Scottish relatives listening to the radio intently and

using Twitter extend stream of consciousness not to Bernadette Mayer I felt that beginning to write

the henwife contains some of these ideas but develop them I now wanted to know exactly what was

happening to this space why it was changing who had written it before how might I write it now

revelations came via Harriet Tarlo’s collection ‘Field’

Introduction

Ideas about the changing nature of domestic space began to gather for me during the writing of my

first collection ‘Bendigo’. At the time I was a stay at home parent to a two-year-old. For the first time

in adult life the site of the domestic was where most of my time was spent. I had gone back to work

after six months with my first child.

I found that I was

Detail on creative – what’s happening? Talk about form.

Chapter 1

What is the central argument and what would I do differently or add here? I wanted to think about

how other people has thought about the domestic: philosophers, architects, artists. What was the

purpose and possibility of this space? How had its shape changed and how had it been appraised over

time? Culturally - where did we stand now? I started to weave in considerations concerning the

internet, global networks of all sorts and how this had started to impact domestic space. There was

also a sense that we had reached the end of one period of living and existing in the world and that

there were changes on the horizon in the Anthropocene.

Notes

Chapter 2

This chapter – I wish I had had more space to discuss these writers further, but they are the most key

poets for me when reflecting upon the domestic. The two American writers particularly

The idea of poetry as

Chapter 3

Notes
Chapter 4

Notes

Chapter 5

Notes