luminous work -- laylage courie

I make things from words. Poetry, sound, theater, collage.

Brooklyn, NY USA

i make things from words.  things that intend towards light.  here is that round box from the attic.  inside, letters, photographs, unlabeled cassette tapes.  some embossed invitations to my imaginative parties, which are select and increasingly irregular.  like you, i grow old.  i keep my hands busy and my mind occupied.  if it would be better to hold something in your hands other than a machine send me a message and i will send you something real.

three demi-gods in brooklyn

July 02, 2019  /  laylage

Exposition Review put out a call for short (flash) pieces on magic & myth. I pulled together some writing on Ariadne, Medea, and Circe, assembled a script-song-poem and won first place!

I invite you to read “three demi-gods in brooklyn,” as well as the work of the other winners here at the Exposition Review!

Judge, and co-editor, Jessica June Rowe says this about my piece:

“This piece hit the nail on the head for “Magic & Myth,” giving a modern stage to three women maligned by idolized heroes of Ancient Greece. There’s so much to unpack in this experimental script that’s part play, part poem and song. I love how it blends beautiful, poetic language and spikes of dry, contemporary humor to deliver incisive and clever commentary on relationships, the patriarachy, and the cult of the hero. Some lines jump out at you (“The next man that dares my door I’m turning into a fish”? Amazing. “REMEMBER: You are a needle the hero’s thread passes through. In his narrative, you are an event”? Absolute magic), but each monologue has it’s own unique style and thought-provoking message. And, given that it is technically a script, this is a piece I’d absolutely love to see performed. I can already imagine the myriad ways it could be interpreted, and the fact that it can work on both levels, page and stage, speaks to its strength.”

My demi-gods were feminine “events” in the big Greek hero stories that mythologize the psychological emergence of the Western individual: Odysseus, Jason and the Argonauts (the oldest myth of the three), and Theseus. I have a perpetual interest in the women in these heroic tales-- Western Civilization births the "individual" that drives our culture today by negotiating or subduing so many feminine forces. The Odyssey, The Argonautica, and Theseus and the Minotaur are stories of the male ego individuating. I, like so many women, struggle with interpreting? reconstructing? alternatively inhabiting? these huge tales.

This small piece lets the women lament their gross mistreatment (all are abandoned by the '“heroes” whose lives they save, quests redeem), but ends with a voice that imagines a path that is not the heroes’ journey. I stuck with an image, as usual: Circe’s garden.

I’m so grateful to Rowe and Exposition Review for hearing this small work! And I sure needed the influx of cash.

You can hear an early draft of some of this text in cosmic dream radio episode 8.

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categories / publication
tags / greek myth, new work, writing, i won, poetry, publication

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