An Interview with The Typing Explosion's
Sierra K. Nelson
I N T R O D U C T I O N
Typing Explosion Union Local 898, comprised of the poet-typists Sarah Paul Ocampo, Rachel
LaRue Kessler, and Sierra K. Nelson, was conceived in Seattle, Washington in 1998 and
performed countless times up and down the U.S. west coast, as well as in Chicago, New
York City, and Venice, Italy during the 2003 Biennale. Part performance art and part poetry
assembly line, The Typing Explosion’s “type-ins” defy simple categorization. Producing
nearly 7,000 on-demand poems to date, the typists have also used their collaboratively
written work to create books (T.Y.P.O.: A Touch Typing Method for Typewriters, 13 Love Poems
& One Ugly One), multi-media theater pieces (Dear Diane; Merry Christmas, Anyway; This Is A
Test), interactive audio-visual installations (Salon), and musical cabarets (Love, Exciting Love).
On hiatus since 2004, the Typing Explosion reunited in the summer of 2006 as part of the
Wave Books Poetry Bus Tour.
DEAN GORMAN: I was wondering if you could tell me more about The Typing
Explosion. How did it start? What was the process? What were the rules? Looking
back, can you discuss how it succeeded as a project/public performance?
SIERRA K. NELSON: The Typing Explosion began in August 1998 when my friend
Sarah Paul Ocampo was asked to do some kind of performance for an art opening
in Seattle. She knew she wanted to do something involving poetry, but didn't want
it to be just a reading; she wanted it to be a kind of spectacle that allowed for
audience interaction, but that could be pleasing even if you didn't choose to
engage directly. She asked me and another friend, Rachel Kessler, (because we
were both writers) if we were interested in collaborating with her in creating this,
and we said yes. We all had an affinity for typewriters already, and we built our
visual style around that era (50's-60's secretarial dress, vintage office equipment).
And even though it was veering into the "performance art" category, we wanted it
to be something that invited audiences rather than inundating or alienating them –
audiences could come and go freely. And it seemed exciting to be coming up with
another avenue of expression (and creation) for poetry outside of the stereotypes
of solitary poet writing in a garret, ponderous poetry reading, or the competitive
flashiness of slam.
So the three of us met in Sarah's apartment with our 3 typewriters and a collection
of bells, horns, whistles, and ringers. We worked out our system – audience
member chose a title (either his/her own or one of the 500 ones we had invented
and placed on index cards in a card catalog), handed it to first typist (me), first
typist typed the title on the page and began the poem, the page was passed
between all three typists to complete the poem through a series of communication
signals using the bells and horns (we never spoke), any typist could decide a
poem was finished, at which point a secret signal was sounded, the typists honked
in unison, the poem was passed to typist #3 (Sarah Paul), the person who gave us
the title received the poem, and we kept a carbon copy. We usually had 3 poems
going at once, and people would line up for their turn. On an overhead projector
were a series of bureaucratic rules explaining the procedure and RULES, taken in
part from pool rules (NO SPITTING, NO RUNNING, NO HORSEPLAY), and also
including DO NOT TALK TO TYPISTS and DO NOT TOUCH TYPISTS to allow us
space to concentrate.
That first night, we had no idea how many people would want to get poems (we
weren't expecting the long lines) – and we thought it would be a one-time
performance. But we were asked to do one event after another, and the thing grew
from there – usually writing around 50 poems per performance. Sometimes we
would post our night's carbon copies as we went to create an installation where
other people could read what we were writing, but most often we just left the
individual poem-receivers up to their own devices – some chose to read the poem
out loud to others, or pass it around – others quietly pocketed the poem like the
most secret note and slipped away from the crowd. We liked this aspect of the
procedure – the poems themselves were artifacts, and valued as well as the
writing. We liked that people could choose how private or public they wished to
be with their received poem. We still had the carbon copies and later did
additional projects drawing from those texts (sound and visual installations, larger
scale multi-media theater pieces) – but only one Original existed of that poem,
belonging to the person who physically chose that title, stayed with the poem as it
was created, and stood there in person to sign for and receive it. I think that was a
big part of the success of the project – the audience got to participate in the making
and the moment of the poem, so it was easier to be invested in it. Since we often
typed outside of more typical poetry venues, I think we reached audiences who
might have otherwise felt intimidated by poetry. The set-up was so versatile we
could perform in bookstores, libraries, galleries, rock shows, bars, schools,
universities, office lobbies, country fairs, on the street. The poems existed in a
context where an individual’s reading and meaning-assignment to the poem were
valued – we could help people side step the common misconception that there is
some hidden “right” answer to poetry or that some overlying academic
expectation has to be involved. We tried to emphasize the enjoyment part of
poetry, and the surprise of it.
As far as the writing itself – we were really lucky that our three writing styles
complemented each other so well – different enough to keep it interesting, but
with enough of a commonality to make it possible for the poems to cohere. Not
every poem came together perfectly, but it was remarkable how much and how
often
they did. After each performance we would go somewhere to read over our carbon
copies – and often we wouldn't remember what we had personally written. When
typing, it often felt like we were going into a trance – the total concentration of the
writing, moving through so many poems on so many topics, riffing off what each
person had written, going as quickly as possible. That process of collaborative
writing was one of the best things about it for me – trusting that our collective
efforts were going to take us somewhere unexpected and good/funny/beautiful –
that it wasn’t just up to me – that my part was just to let the ideas and images out
as fast as they came to me, and to pass on the poem whenever I got stuck. The live
audience also was a part of the process – maybe another chance element and
boosting the energy (although we did type just the three of us too). The electric
typewriters also lent a considerable rev – the typewriters were another key part of
the collaboration. It seems very natural to me now to write collaboratively with
my fellow typists, communicating with bells, in that flow. There was also a kind of
persona involved – as secretaries, we were all named Diane, with different
character personalities that came from elements of our own personalities but which
also developed in their own directions over the years. There’s a lot I miss – I miss
the collaborative typing the most, and also in some ways that Diane that I was.
(The Typing Explosion retired officially in Dec. 2004 – Rachel and I still collaborate
but as a new group – the Vis-à-Vis Society – and we do type collaborative pieces
together in private as part of our creation process, but it is not part of our live
performances.) But it didn’t necessarily feel like my Diane was the one authoring
my part of the writing – she was just the one showing up to work and enjoying an
odd sip from the flask on coffee breaks – it was more about showing up and letting
the poetry flow through all of us – inhabiting the hive mind. Though as we
worked together, there were definitely certain tones and images we seemed to all
be drawn to and which would resurface throughout our work.
DG: Should we, as readers, apply the same demands and standards to a
collaborative work as we do an autonomously authored work? In other words,
how do we read a collaborative poem?
SN: For our poems that "worked" – that felt like they hung together as a whole –
people often said they couldn't tell where one voice/typist stopped and another
started. Although different and unexpected things might happen over the course
of the poem stylistically or linguistically, it was no more fragmentary than a lot of
contemporary poetry written by one person. There's an added thrill in knowing
the back-story of the creation process, thinking, "wow, this poem was typed on the
spot by three different people!" – but if the poem is good and working, I think it
should be able to work before/without knowing that it's collaborative as well. Just
as a poem in some highly complicated form should hit you first as a poem – and
once you're hooked, upon closer examination you might start to uncover what it is
that makes it do that.
Our poems probably affected readers in different ways depending on how they
were encountering it. In a live performance, we probably took the right-poem
right-place right-time factor of reading poetry one step further – the audiences
were made more physically aware of their interaction with the process and the
moment of reading a poem because they were already more implicated in its
creation – so if the poem a person walked away with pleased or touched him/her,
it was probably from a combination of the writing itself and the frame of mind that
that person was in to receive it. (Though we certainly wrote to our own pleasures
and not necessarily the audience's expectations – not everyone who wrote a title
like "Just Married and Buying a House!" would be pleased with images of
vomiting in the shrubbery and such.) I think our poems that have been published
and that live outside of the generating performances have a different interaction
with a
reader – a clearer relationship to the more usual "standards and demands" of a
poetry reader – though the unusual movement across the page, the slight variation
of type-set, the typos and X's out, might make someone curious about the creation
process. Re-typed in more standard format, some of our poems might lose some
of their textural and spatial charm – but I think others could stand up and be
proudly counted amongst their autonomously authored brethren.
DG: What, in your mind, are the attitudes and stigma attached to collaborative
writing?
SN: It varies widely. I've run into a number of people who feel that if a poem is
collaborative it is somehow more "random" or "arbitrary" in its structure, and
therefore unable to be considered a complete poem unto itself as other non-
collaborative poems would be. They are less willing to trust what’s actually there
on the page; they’ve already dismissed its integrity before engaging with it. One
authorial mind somehow seems more authoritative. Because of our particular
process, we also ran into people who seemed very threatened by the spontaneous
and rapid-fire quality of our collaboration. (One of our iciest receptions was at the
Seattle Poetry Festival, where people seemed to have much more of an investment
in what Poetry and Being a Poet might mean – there seemed to be a lot of distrust
there of the poems received.) On the other hand, because of the collaborative and
spontaneous qualities of our work, some people (in our general audience) have
seemed more willing to suspending their previous expectations of what a poem
should be,
and so were more open to our poems than they might have been to an
experimental, multi-voiced poem written by one person.
We’ve also found that many grants which support writers and writing projects are
either explicitly not open to collaborative writing or are geared in such a way as to
make it very difficult to apply as a collaborative team. This is starting to change,
but still has a long way to go. We usually have to apply to grants that are open to
many different art forms, not just literary, under Multi-Disciplinary/Other.
DG: In what ways does the process of collaborative work differ from the process
involved in your own work?
SN: In my individual writing I revise heavily – I write one draft and it usually
undergoes many transformations before I feel satisfied. So it was very freeing to
have the Typing Explosion process where nothing could be erased – you just had
to crank out the writing as fast you could – and rely on the communal effort to
build those pieces into the whole. I think the T.E. process helped me to allow
more room for that first part of my own process – the free generating – before
letting the editor side tear everything down. It also opened me up to writing in
more styles and voices in my own work than I might have otherwise allowed
myself. In a T.E. poem, I didn’t have to worry about the poem sounding like “me,”
I just had to write what I thought would best serve that poem – which I think is a
valuable lesson for any writer. Collaborating with the T.E. also helped me to value
the power of surprise in a poem – it was often a stray and unexpected line or
section of a collaborative piece that could bring it to life, give it a satisfying
complexity, or allow for an interesting range in tone – and since then I think I have
valued those stranger moments in my own poems.
DG: Looking at the finished – or unfinished – end product of a collaborative
poem, how does that experience compare to reading one of your own poems?
SN: I feel differently towards the T.E. poems and my own poems. I feel more
unabashed pride in my favorite T.E. poems than I do my own work – maybe
because the T.E. poems somehow feel more separate from me. I feel I was an
integral part in their creation, but I don’t feel the same author-nervousness about
them that I often do with my individual work. It is definitely communal
ownership – I can feel excited about the T.E. poems almost as if they were written
by a good friend.
DG: What does the poet lose, if anything, when lending his or her voices and ideas
over to another poet? Conversely, what is gained?
SN: I touched on this earlier, but I’ll add a few more things. When writing
collaboratively, you have to lose some of your attachment to ownership – feeling
like: that’s my
image, that’s my idea. Instead, it’s more about the common good of the writing
itself. But once you let go of the attachment, it is a wonderful experience. It’s
important to trust your fellow collaborators, though – if it feels like everyone
contributing is an equal in the creativity they have to give, then the benefits can
only be exponential for what can happen in the poem. Sometimes it can be
difficult if one of your collaborators takes a part you’ve written and runs with it in
a direction you didn’t want it to go – and sometimes you might want your one
piece to just stand as that piece, or to have full directing rights on what becomes of
it. For me, it helps to do both my own writing where I have full control and
another form of writing where I trust the collaborative process and let go of control
– they are equally valuable processes, and both strengthen and renew the other.
DG: Do you think collaborative poetry can compete, as a commodity, with single-
author poetry?
SN: As a “commodity” perhaps it is even more viable – being more of a novelty –
something unusual and dynamic that sets it a bit apart from other kinds of
writing. But if you mean in terms of big publishing contracts or publishing in
more traditional avenues – maybe not. Maybe the novel quality of collaborative
writing is something that might intrigue a certain market audience at first, but
keep the writing from getting more than one-time interest or being considered
more than some kind of gimmick. I don’t agree with that perspective, but that
might be how it’s more often perceived in the publishing world. As far as our own
publishing history, we’ve mostly just published our work ourselves in handmade
chapbooks and art books, with some individual poems published here and there
in literary journals.
DG: Do you think there is a prevailing spirit or climate in American letters right
now that sees collaboration as a more legitimate and exciting medium as it had
been seen in the past?
SN: There does seem to be an increasing openness to collaborative writing.
DG: When did you first decide to write collectively? What were your models at the
time?
SN: First, Dadaist games and interest in surreal bureaucracy inspired us and
informed our process. In the persona of 1960’s secretaries, we also took
inspiration from the social-communal environment of the Typing Pool – a group of
women typing together, supposedly what had been “dictated” to them by some
unseen boss, but this time subversively conspiring to create their own texts
together. The Modernists’ use of fragments and found texts also forms a poetic
precursor to allowing other voices in, and in our most trance-like states, perhaps
“The Changing Light at Sandover."
* See some examples of Typing Explosion poems HERE!
* More information on The Typing Explosion can be found at: www.typingexplosion.com
and www.typingexplosionvenice2003.com. All the Typing Explosion poems in Pilot were
created live during the Wave Books Poetry Bus Tour in the fall of 2006. www.poetrybus.com
P O S T S C R I P T
Since their work with the Typing Explosion, Sierra K. Nelson and Rachel LaRue Kessler have
been collaborating in Seattle as the Vis-à-Vis Society – a group of poet-scientists dedicated to
the poetic analysis of the everyday. Their work has included the interactive installation
Office for Seattle’s Bumbershoot Art Festival, the multi-media show I Want to Live! at NY’s
Galapagos Art Space, a book of research and poem-surveys with 7-inch record called Who
Are We?, and a Statistical Musical We Are You which debuted at the Northwest Film Forum
this spring. (More information on the Vis-à-Vis Society can be found at: www.myspace.
com/visavissociety.)
Sarah Paul Ocampo currently lives in Los Angeles, where she writes music as Advanced
Beginner and collaborates with Jarid del Deo in music and ephemera as The Qualitarians.
(More information can be found at: www.myspace.com/advancedbeginner and www.
myspace.com/thequalitarians)
* Participate in a brand new Vis-à-Vis Society Survey HERE!
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