The Archive, Illuminated
Flight Without Machinery
It’s been a minute and a lot of things have happened, and this Substack couldn’t possibly touch on all of them. For the sake of brevity, I’ll stick with the one that’s simultaneously the easiest and also hardest of them to talk about.
We talk a lot in the spaces I inhabit, particularly
’s Undercurrent workshop, about what we choose to share in our writing. What are we willing to risk? What convictions do we have that lead us to share what is vulnerable and tender? When do we decide not to share? Where is our line?I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot lately.
Forthcoming in December, my second collection of poetry, Flight Without Machinery, will be published by Serotonin Press. The name of the press probably gives you an idea what the book’s focus might be.
There’s that Sean Thomas Dougherty poem that sums up how I feel about this.
“Why Bother”
Because right now there is someone
Out there with
a wound in the exact shape
of your words.
There are a lot of things I choose to be open about, but the thing I have been talking about the longest (and have touched on often in this newsletter!) is probably my bipolar disorder, as well as the comorbidities that go along with it.
While I’ve always been transparent when it comes to describing my experience of mental illness, this book is a deep dive into it in a way I’m not sure I’m exactly ready for. I’m risking new and different things in this book. In addition to bipolar disorder, I talk about complex trauma, something long buried and treated as secretive in my family of origin. I wrote a lot about suicidal ideation and the experience of my suicide attempt. And so on.
As I’ve mentioned before, in April of 2024, I began going through every journal I’ve ever written in (thanks to
’s Tristan!). I have them all conveniently located in a cedar chest in my art studio/writing room/home office/whatever this place I write in is. I could do myself a favor and organize them chronologically, but I probably never will. I’ve always loved having my journals be a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. We have two with blue and orange paper, a composition book with my junior high nicknames written on the front, moleskins galore, and so much more.When I pull them out of the cedar chest, I can almost hear them. Me, that is. I can almost hear them begging to be seen.
During Unfold of this year, Tristan decided that the workshop on “the archive” was essentially a workshop for me. Although I was not able to attend said workshop, it’s certainly true that I’m obsessed with my own history. I made a collage recently that said, “Offer witness and you plant a start in your own rearview mirror.”
It seems selfish, sometimes, or at least self-absorbed. Still, I can’t get rid of this habit of looking back on myself if I wanted to.
As I look back and witness myself and all that they went through, I feel like it transforms the loneliness and the suffering into something that I can both articulate and heal from. In fact, it is in the articulation of it that the healing takes place.
Honestly, I think the poet’s job is to shine a light. Which sounds nice, but let’s not forget that light does not discriminate between what you want to show and what you don’t. It simply shows it all. This collection is that light to me. It has poems from 2008 in it. It has poems from six months ago in it. While most of the poems were written in the last 3-5 years, it has pieces of history in it that are more than half my life ago.
It was not at all the collection I pictured going into the world at this time in my life, and yet, given all the work I’ve done on my inner teen in the last year or two, nothing could be more fitting.
I don’t happen to believe that we always need to do things for the sake of others, but I do know that part of my healing from mental illness and trauma, while those things will never leave me, is the experience of giving voice to others’ experiences too.
Desireé often asks the question, “Who does your silence benefit?” and the answer to that question is never yourself. And it’s never people who have faced experiences of harm or suffering.
Silence is the same as darkness, just as speaking is the same as light.
Silence and darkness hide it all, while speaking and light illuminate it all.
It’s frightening to have it all lit up for everyone to see, but I know without the poets and writers who came before me whose legacy I have inherited, I would never have been brave enough to send in this manuscript. I would never have allowed it to see the, ahem, light of day.
You can pre-order Flight Without Machinery here. I want to thank
at Serotonin Press for giving this manuscript a home, for seeing that person who, over the decades, needed to be witnessed. In some ways, I hope you don’t see yourself in the pages of the book, but if you do, know that I see you, too.xoxo,
d
Congratulations, Danielle! Looking forward to your book! <3