by 2021 Prose Poetry contributor Claire Bateman
My writing tends to arise from several sources, all filtered and transformed through the chaotic creative process known as “combinatory play.”
First, there are my own obsessions. I’ve always been fascinated with the phenomenon of sleep, that altered state we enter collectively on a regular basis though each of us experiences it alone—how mystical, how paradoxical, how completely ordinary! And I’ve always loved gems and jewels; in an archetypal sense, they’re like dreams or dream—messages since they speak to us of the hidden world of caves, the underground, and the sea. Though such stones can be cut and shaped, bought and sold, there’s an irreducible otherness about them, an ineradicable feral quality I find compelling, so it made sense to me to link them with sleep.
Another writing source is direct input from daily life, like the news item I saw last year about eco-wear featuring fashion boots made from mushrooms instead of leather; I suspect that this story lodged in my brain where it underwent the transformation that sparked the idea of clothing created from geological materials. And would I have written this piece if we weren’t in a pandemic, seeking a treatment/cure? I’m not sure. Certainly, though, from our own unfolding ecological disaster comes the subtly ominous undertone as the narrative touches on the ethically ambiguous extraction process that makes the insomnia treatment possible.
Though I granted my suffering characters relief, something in me didn’t want to let them off too easily, so their previously innocent, unreflective relationship with sleep has been transformed into something new and indeterminate: “Nor do they talk about their sleep, commenting on its quality or recounting dreams; a new diffidence prevails, like the shyness of lovers reunited after an epic absence, as the one who stayed behind, noticing subtle changes in the other, wonders if this is indeed the longed-for union, or perhaps something else entirely.” While I did mean the narrative to stand on its own as a speculative piece, I may also have been referencing the fact that we’re being changed by the pandemic in ways we can’t yet even identify. I think it’s good to guess but not be too certain about all the layers of thought in the work of writing.
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Claire Bateman is the author of nine poetry/prose poetry collections. She is also a visual artist. Learn more about her here.
