The gymnast & other positions : stories, essays and interviews / Jacqueline Bishop.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bishop, Jacqueline, 1971- author.

Standardized Title:

Works. Selections

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--21st century.

American literature.

Physical Description:

201 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 23 cm

Other Title:

Gymnast and other positions

Place of Publication:

Leeds, England : Peepal Tree Press, 2015.

Summary:

Beginning with the promptings of the erotic title story, Jacqueline Bishop came to see the hybrid format of this book, with its mix of short stories, essays and interviews could begin to encompass her desire to see where she had arrived at in a creative career that encompassed being published as a novelist, poet, critic and exhibited as an artist. How did these sundry positions connect together? What aspects of both conscious intention and unconscious, interior motivations did they reveal? The stories, none more than a few pages long, can be read at several levels. The mentor who teaches the child gymnast a contortionist's erotic positions, the adoptive mother who shoots down ex-partner and adopted child when the former debauches the latter as the subject of pornographic photographs; the relationship between tattooist and the woman who offers her naked body for decoration are all sharply and persuasively realized as short fictions, but they also hint at a writer's interior dialogue and can be read as parables about the relationship between the free imagination and the controlling and even potentially betraying power of art. The essays explore more conscious areas of expression. They deal with the experiences of maternal separation, family histories and mythologies, the search for grounding in the life of a Jamaican grandmother, the relationship with a male writing mentor, travel to Morocco, the inspiration of the writing lives of Jamaicans Claude McKay and Roger Mais and how 9/11 showed her how deeply she had become a New Yorker. The interviews, which investigate sometimes her writing, sometimes her art, and occasionally both, provide context for the stories and the essays. They are at their most revealing when interviewers ask Jacqueline Bishop questions she hasn't asked herself. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part 1 Stories

The Gymnast 11

Tall Tale 14

Oleander 18

Terra Nova 22

A Giant Blue Swallowtail Butterfly 26

Soliloquy 32

Soldier 37

Zemi 40

Effigy 45

Flamboyant Tree 51

Part 2 Essays

The Stories We Tell Ourselves 57

Walker Family Stories 62

Stories of a Birth 71

Photographs on the Mantelpiece 75

Sailing with Wayne Brown 80

Love Songs to Morocco 85

"Covering" Female Sexual Desires 89

Surviving Whole: An Introduction to Roger Mais' Black Lightning 92

Claude McKay's Songs of Morocco 100

A Clear Blue Day 108

Part 3 Interviews

The Bookends Interview 115

Charting a Literary Journey 120

A World of Superimposed Maps 126

Art: A Synaesthetic Experience 136

Writing Across the Diaspora 151

The Haunted Self 158

Interview with John Hoppenthaler 165

"Inside I Always Knew I was a Writer" 170

"Reliving, Rewriting, Re-imagining" 174

From Nonsuch to Bordeaux: An Inter-Island Conversation on the Work of John Dunkley 188.

ISBN:

9781845233150

1845233158

OCLC:

941461721

Publisher Number:

99972579398