The Process & Bios

Notes on "Memory Revises Us"
by Daniela Elza & Arlene Ang

We met in the collaborative issue of qarrtsiluni, "Mutating the Signature", and became enthusiastic about writing together. Arlene set us up with a virtual room at  etherpad.com where we would be free to experiment. Later we moved to another virtual space called PiratePad which is what we are currently using.

We take turns beginning poems and we pass the poem back and forth adding a line or two each time. Once we have decided that is it for the length we go back and forth working with the whole piece smoothing edges, straightening out kinks, moving things around.

It probably takes a few months to work on a poem — a real relationship — until we are both satisfied. The only constraint is time, since we tend to both get busy in spurts. But the poem patiently waits for us. We are now working our fifth poem together.

Previous collaborations include: what fills our footsteps

Our other collaboration: "there is no like like this" is coming out this spring in Other Voices which is a print journal.

For more on our individual and collaborate work, visit our author talk in the blueprint Daily blog: "author talk: Daniela Elza + Arlene Ang on poetry, collaboration, plus the birds, the beasts and the teeth that fall in between".

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a note on the title + the image

title:
The phrase “memory revises us” is borrowed from a poem by Li-Young Lee

image:
Ang Kiukok, Crucifixion (1969)
In his lifetime, Ang Kiukok painted more than two hundred depictions of the Crucifixion, each one different and separate from the others. (more about Ang Kiukok)

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Bios

Daniela Elza just completed her doctoral dissertation in Philosophy of Education at SFU (defence date in April). Her inte.rests lie in the gaps, rubs, and b.ridges between poetry, language, and philosophy. For close to two years now she has collaborated with other poets. Daniela's work has appears in over 50 literary and peer-reviewed publications. Her ebook The Book of It: meditations will be available this Spring. Daniela's poetry book The Weight of Dew is forthcoming with Mother Tongue Publishing (Spring, 2012). 

Arlene Ang is the author of The Desecration of Doves (2005), Secret Love Poems (Rubicon Press, 2007), and a collaborative book with Valerie Fox, Bundles of Letters Including A, V and Epsilon (Texture Press, 2008). Her third full-length collection, Seeing Birds in Church is a Kind of Adieu was published by Cinnamon Press in 2010. Her poems have appeared in Ambit, Caketrain, Diagram, Poetry Ireland, Poet Lore, Rattle, Salt Hill as well as the Best of the Web anthologies 2008 and 2009 (Dzanc Books). She lives in Spinea, Italy where she serves as staff editor for The Pedestal Magazine and Press 1 .

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