Provisional Project Idea

The idea I have been toying with centres around my frustration with the continual gendering of certain traits, whether in an overt or subtle way. I find that people tend to associate certain traits, qualities or tendencies with women, and others with men; and that even in feminist circles there is a temptation to assert the ability of women to ‘take on’, as it were, traits associated with men, rather than a more critical look at what exactly we consider to be ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’. I am also interested in the ways in which traits which have been considered traditionally feminine – caring, loving, self-sacrificial, etc. – have been used to exploit women, and therefore the complicated ground that women cover when trying to work out how to embody those traits in a positive way, whilst remaining resistant to exploitation, without rejecting their ability and desire to love and care.

To this end, I have envisioned a project in which different traits are discussed, with the overall theme being that women are capable of being ‘both’. Whether this will consist of discussing supposedly opposing traits together, or simply expanding on the complexities of traits by themselves, I don’t know. I would like to crowd-source this – though this would likely be limited to people I know or am in contact with – and have different people write something about different traits. I was originally thinking of asking women only to complete this, but I am unsure whether I should open it out to people of all genders.

I have been struggling with how to set this out, because I wanted to do something which would speak to the specificity of the project whilst being interesting. I did have the idea of making each of these traits singular pieces of card or paper which were then compiled into a folder (or could be stapled/sewn into a book??), with the possibility of having them be post-card style, so that they could be passed along/posted/otherwise disseminated in a natural way. I don’t know whether this would undermine my point about these traits coming together to create a complete, complex person though, as they would then be separated out.

There are lots of aspects of this still to work out, and I’m not definitely set on using it, but this is what I have so far.

An Unusual Book Object Review

This book object is described as a ‘little book of flippetry’ by its editor, suggesting a self-conscious awareness of its homegrown, small press aesthetic; it is spiral bound, like a notebook, and printed on simple, plain white paper. Evoking a notebook with its binding serves multiple purposes, however: it allows for easy manipulation of the poetry lines, and it also evokes a notebook, suggesting that the reader, as the editor describes, has the opportunity to ‘become a poet of these stories’. Interestingly, this note strikes two tones – the initial, humourous, self-conscious explanation, and then the more lyrical, idealistic explanation. The editor seems almost caught between believing in the possibilities of their idea and thinking it unimportant.

The cover of this object is also deliberately simplistic, not explaining the contents; it could be the cover of a notebook rather than a poetry project. This simplicity does still provoke curiosity, however, and the interactive nature of the poetry means that the book immediately engages the reader’s interest. The choice of a compass centred on the front cover is not immediately obvious – whilst the poems have a sense of place embedded within their lines, I would not have considered a compass particularly emblematic of the poetry book as a whole; perhaps the nature of allowing thousands of poems to be created means that the book struggles to contain a centralised message easily summarised by an emblem.

The inside of the book, as can be seen above, consists of lines of poetry, cut out separately so that they can be moved individually; this creates the possibility of thousands of poems which the reader can create themselves, from the resources and ideas provided by the editor. The editor also mentions that there are six poems already created, i.e. the ‘first’ piece of paper on each line, and then the second, etc.; interestingly, unless I had first read the editor’s note, it would not have occurred to me that there were six ready-made, as it were, poems; the individual pieces immediately invite movement, and so, in my experience, the reader’s creation and intention is immediately made part of this book. This seems to be what the editor is most passionate about; and so in that, in the very least, this ‘little book of flippetry’ has succeeded.

We are all just human – A Manifesto