tongue-stitch ... mongrel-ly poetics full of provocative hybrids

what to expect here and other stuff

welcome to my little hole in the wall, where I share my work and thoughts around language’s ‘other oraculars’. This is my launch post - bit late I know - but now … here I am.

“Reason must know the heart's reasons and every other reason”
― Leonora Carrington

What and why tongue-stitch?

Tongue-stitch is the name I coined to hold things spoken of as 'other oraculars'. This sometimes includes the monstrous and nonsense. Its also, by some, called poetry. Its not strait, it shifts genres its maybe more a cross between a free-verse-ballard- limerick, sort of thingy,- a bit ode-ish, but heavy on the monologue, often self reflective, sometime a bit nasty, always with a nod to feminist poetics.

I have a passion for an 'other' and undefined space, the authenticity behind or within the unknotted, the unsaid, of the language ... and by this I include the tongue, and the stitching within it. I am interested in having the 'other oracular' of the tongue write its own biography in whatever form it finds necessary. be it on the page or stitched. I have no linear direction; it is more a thickness that I follow. One that tongue ties me repeatedly (dyslexic), but that too (also) ok as well, and I suspect a way through. This interest has grown out of my herstory with crafting, and my current and past research into women's voices and silence. I follow the women surrealists, feminist avant-garde poetics, outsider art, French feminist theory and poetry at the edge or at least the margins. I like undoing or rewinding the threads of women's lives as they are depicted in fairytales, Greek and other 'early' myths, and reimagining and reanimating their earlier forms and sources. To sum me up, I'm interested in the lost, the unsaid, the unutterable, the refused, the denied the voices in the margins.

I am interested in roots, in first principles and in unravelling knots. I am interested in women speaking up and making change. I am passionately interested in reclaiming re-articulating lost and silenced voices. I am interested in working with and from the precious imaginal.

Here you can see my creative output where I write, stitch, art/craft make and attempt to undo the knots in my own head around language.

My artist/writers web is here.

In previous incarnations I have been a councillor and lay midwife, a nurse and massage therapist and farmer, I have worked extensively with those birthing and with the dying. I have also spent considerable time as an art teacher and mentor.

My real love is research and I have done deep diving research, PhD style, on women poets and writers, Gertrude Stein and the voice or sound in woman speech. I have also done masters research on Medieval Mystics and their ecstatic language. This all fits under a skirt of an interest in perception and unheard voices in objects as well … and to that end I have written biographies of light and subtle light and on art making and art motives and materials, which I will link to her as time goes on.

At present I am reading extensively on Old Europe matrilineal cultures, Greek and Sumerian Myths and rewritings of Greek goddess archetypes and their roots. I am also working on writing a biography of a sertain missing sound in language that I call soundage. I travel as much as I can to local sites where goddess images have been found. …, but right now my circle of ears is the hills and trees and clouds and the wind. So I look forward to meeting and greeting you all and being part of this ever expanding circle.

9 fascinating tiny-tales about me

• I’m always listening for the sound of things. I think it resides at the edge of what we think of as the known

• The best thing I ever did was give birth to my daughter

• I write odd stories in odd sound shaped words and phrases

• My muses are from the deep past

• Gertrude Stein is my rock, as are the Black mountains where I live

• In my dreams I make bone needles

• I think-make to help me find the answers to the questions I am asking

• Following where I am lead leads me where it will

• Unknotting the knots. I believe there is lots to undo … and lots to make again

I have completed an MPhil on Gertrude Stein and mysticism, and an PhD on the love sounds in Gertrude Stein’s writing, sound and generative language. I have had work published in Shampoo, Gargoyle 50, How2, Delirious Hem, Cloe Outskirts Journal and Enoagh Journal. I have started a substack to post work in progress of my current novel, the detector, the dummy and the daughter which can be found here.

My PhD thesis tilted Soundage: a Practice-Led Approach to Gertrude Stein, Sound and Generative Language … is available here for a read or download

I will publish often, keep subscriptions free, and make welcome subscribers …