Dimitra Xidous

~Still buzzing off all the verde {que te quiero verde} I brought back with me, in photos, from the north of Spain~

A few years ago, I wrote a logical poem about a horse (the most logical poem about a horse I could have ever written). Since then, I have returned, again and again, to this idea of horse, and to one horse, in particular - the horse in Guernica. For me, the horse lives through the attack on its body. I have never been able to stand there, in front of Guernica and not feel as though the horse lives through it. For this reason I consider it, the horse, a feminist body - a feminist body, and a resilient body; a body that lives through (the horse, at the heart of the mural is like a cockroach, and as for the heart - well, the heart is a cockroach too).

I am in the middle of a series of essays, which, among other things, provide me with an opportunity to re-visit Guernica. Last year, I flew in (and out) of Madrid in the same day, all to sit in on a lecture about Picasso, and Feminism, and The Body. The lecture was part of a series of lectures commemorating 80 years since the bombing of Guernica, and 80 years since the unveiling of Picasso's Guernica at the Spanish Pavillion (part of the 1937 Paris Exhibition). I wrote about it for gorse - and while the horse isn't the focus of this particular piece, it is always there, in the back of my mind, always living through, again and again, always living through the attack on its body. I thought, given that this week marks 81 years since Guernica was first displayed in Paris, that I would share the essay - This is (0) is When: 

http://gorse.ie/…/this-is-0-is-when%E2%80%A8-by-dimitra-xi…/

..."O you, you drawn into O. O, the orange O, and you, offering up, offering up, offering up, and O you, you surrounded by O, the red and yellow of my (my O my) O, rounding round the hard neck of a living thing, and O yellow, and O red, and O is red and yellow, red and yellow, red and yellow: O is red and yellow fucking, pleasure turning into, grief turning back, turning and re-turning, all at the same time, and you offering up wood.  O wherever, wherever and whenever your mother is, O your mother, your mother she needs to know O she needs to know O she needs to know: she needs to know her son is at the mercy, at the mercy of O! O (a clench!), a clenching of (O), O! a clenching O: (0) – the hard neck of your yields to a clench, a clenching of O, the O, clenched (0), and a clenching of, O of my O, turns back, back into orange segments, and orange segments, the orange segments turn, in turn, the orange segments turn and re-turn until they become a return of my grandmother’s fingers, my grandmother’s fingers, her fingers in a clench: a clenching of fingers, fingers in a clench, around the hard neck of a living thing, and in a clench, a hard neck is not hard anymore; my grandmother’s fingers, her fingers letting go, and the hard neck of a once living thing, not hard, not living anymore, sits limp, limply and limp-necked, it sits limply and limp-necked, in a pot of boiling water in the yard we used to play in when we were children.  In the yard where we used to play when we were children, a dead cock sits, it sits limp, sits limply and limp-necked, like the body, the body of a son, it sits, it sits limp, limply and limp-necked like the son, the son of God, dead cock, dead cock, dead cock like the limp-necked body of the son of God pulled from a cross."

To read the full piece click on Making Them Mo(u)rning Sounds

You can also watch a live performance of the piece, from Dimitra’s appearance at ‘The Real Story: In the Half-light’ on 17/05/18, as part of the Not Quite Light Weekend 2018: 

Almost 7 years ago now, I moved to Ireland, to Dublin, to spend a year writing. That year came and it went, as did 6 others, and here I am now, almost 7 years later, still writing, still in Dublin, still very much happy here. I knew no one when I first moved here. I’d spend my days, sitting at my kitchen table, writing (and I was happy doing that). Most days, I would go and sit by the canal, across from these two hearts - I know they are gone now, painted over, but they were there, then, for over a year, and they were a wonderful reminder of why I had come here, of what I hoped to accomplish. I came to Dublin to say Yes to myself – to writing, to letting myself feel that, and live that, and come to understand what it was, to pursue a creative endeavour, to devote my energies and ambitions to it. It is the closest to being in my skin I have ever been, and this Yes, oh, this Yes has carried me through – it has carried me through being homesick for my family, yes, it has carried me through; this YES has carried me through falling in love (to knowing and feeling it as Leonard Cohen once described it – ‘the heart is always opening and closing, always softening and hardening…there is no jackpot in this enterprise’), and yes, it has carried me through to knowing my heart, the absolute resilience of it; this Yes has carried me through friendships, and moving from one house, to another, to another, from the southside of Dublin to the north; this yes keeps me here, yes, because it is the closest to being in my skin I have ever been, could ever hope to be. There are days that make me glow, and all because of this yes, of Dublin being a city of yes for me (where Madrid is red, and a woman to me, Dublin is yellow, an absolute yellow, full of YES). I remember sitting across from these hearts,7 years ago now, and for me, they made that sound, the sound of the word YES. Over and over – and even though they are painted over, I can still hear that sound, yes-yes-yyyeeesss - every time I pass by there.

This city, this country has yes in its blood; it brings it to the surface in others. This yes keeps me here. This yes will be the thing, I think, that should it come to pass that I should make a family, that I will want no other place for my family to be, than here, in this place, this place that feels and tastes and is of yes, only of yes, to me. I am holding my breath today – and as the results come in, I will let it out slowly; slowly, making the sound of yes: yes for care, yes for compassion, yes for choice, yes, Yes, YES. Yes, because YES is the most perfect word I know.

Massive thank yous to all involved in pulling off such a fantastic event on Saturday evening at Proper Order. All together, we raised 360 euros to support the #TogetherforYes campaign. Thank you: Susan Tomaselli, Joanne Hayden, Christodoulos Makris, Mongoose, BeRn, Dragana Jurisic, Oana Sanziana Marian, June Caldwell, The Poet Geoff, Adrian Crowley, Kimberly Campanello, Charlotte and Shane (Sceal Bakery) and Niall Wynn (Proper Order). 

It did my heart some good to pull this together, and to have you all there, All Together for a Proper Repeal! More photos to follow. But for now, thank you, thank you, thank you!

On May 25th, vote yes, yes for women, yes for compassion, yes for care, and yes, yes, yes, REPEAL THE 8TH, YES. 

My friend and artist Dragana Jurisic’s instagram acccount was deleted earlier this week, with no explanation after posting this picture.  This photo of a woman sitting in a chair, is one of 100 photos of 100 women who sat in a chair (the same chair) for the 100 Muses, a chapter in Dragana’s evocative and evolving ‘My Own Unknown’.  

Dragana had this to say about it on her Facebook page:  “So Instagram went and deleted my account with no warning. It’s troubling - because I used it as a diary and would often refer to it when making work and writing. What’s more troubling is that they can just wipe your presence at any point without explanation. Some friends wrote and said it might be the last image I posted that was in violation of their terms - but if that’s true - the censorship of is beyond believable. The UPDATE is that they removed it permanently and I can’t retrieve any stuff at all.”

I met Dragana in 2016 and soon after that, on a cloudy Saturday in her studio in Dublin, I too, sat in and on this chair, put my weight on it; I think about that afternoon, and the movements of my body across the two hours in that chair, the time we spent together, all the things she and I spoke about.  I carry that afternoon with me, in my body; it was joyful and intimate, and the record of that experience, her photograph of me, my body on the day, is perfect.  Her work is engaging, and poetic, sensual and cerebral. I am at a loss to understand the decision reached by Instagram to delete her account.   

I wrote about my experience, of being in that chair, of putting my weight on it, for an essay about the body in gorse 8.  I am sharing an excerpt from that essay here, because I don’t believe in censoring the body; I’m Helene Cixous on this: ‘Censor the body and you sensor breath and speech at the same time. Write yourself,’ she says.  ‘Your body,’ she says, ‘your body must be heard.’  Here is mine, making some noise, in solidarity with my friend and artist Dragana Jurisic.  If you read this and feel the same, please lend your voice and let’s #bringdraganaback #reactivatedragana.

…I am a woman sitting, sitting in a chair, and the photographer, she pours herself into then, the great stream of action, capturing me in a moment, tick, tick, tick, (insert, by me, of Barthes:  ‘cameras were (insert by me: were then, and are now) clocks for seeing’) and then, there is a movement of inch, followed by another, and then, another, until the room is filled with the sound of a thousand inches moving, all at once:  the sounds of the trigger, click, click, click, of her finger on the trigger, and then the sounds of the chair under the weight of my body, the sound of the chair yielding, giving in under the weight of my body, and my body, my body moving and changing position in the chair, the shifting of my body and the sounds, the black sounds of the movement of an inch, over and over, the sounds of the movement of a thousand inches all at once, crack, crack, crack, and I recall the body, resurrect it, bring it back from a place my body cannot go back to, and I remember, I re-member, I remember.  I remember the taste of those olives, I remember it there, in the smell of sex in the sweet curve of his armpit; I bury my nose there, in the weight of what my body remembers and go back, go back in time to Madrid, remember Madrid and how my body opened, opened everywhere.  Back in the chair, I turn my body, a soft angle towards the floor; a tiny shift, the sound of a movement of an inch tick/click/crack and I remember, I re-member, I remember sitting, I remember being a woman sitting, sitting at a kitchen table and writing my body, writing two birds cupped in your hands/bring back the taste of peach to your mouth.  The heart is always opening and closing, and I tilt my body another inch tick/click/crack until the soft curves of my breasts yield to the sharp angle and harden against him, for a moment, just a moment, and I imagine the body then, titled by the movement of an inch, until the o and η align, and the pink look, the pink look of a Spartan breastplate splays itself across my chest, a chest in place in a place, and then, with another movement of an inch, the sound of the chair yielding under my weight tick/click/crack and the heart, the heart softening again, softening against him, and what the body remembers:  I recall the body, in place in a place, and she captures me then, captures the equilibrium of my body, the equilibrium of a woman, a woman sitting in a chair: in this new equilibrium, the body gives and takes inches, it does not hold back.  I am a woman sitting…

Keeping Bees is 4 YEARS OLD TODAY!  

 A book about love and bodies, and bodies in and out of love - and full of dogs + bees, birds + fishes! 

If you’d like to purchase a copy, please visit Doire Press:

https://www.doirepress.com/writers/a_f/dimitra_xidous/ 

No doubt, they would be delighted to lick a few stamps, send a few birthday copies out into the world. 

Here’s a small taster, an amuse bouche, from the 2015 Caves, Bears & Pages event: 

Horse Logic: https://youtu.be/AHUr_deHdvc 

Ovum: https://youtu.be/cIp1k3Ppp2I 

The New Woman: https://youtu.be/A3tAov8uiA0

Here is a Box - collaboration with Fiona Brennan (Film-maker), Ria Czerniak-Lebov (artist, performer), and Dimitra Xidous (writer, performer) ​ I believe in celebrating the body, because the body endures and is enduring, it yields (and yields, in equal measure), and it has (so much) power. The body is public, and the body is private, and the body is political.  Last year, I was invited by Choicebox to create an artistic piece which touched on themes of choice and bodily autonomy. Along with artist Ria Czerniak and film-maker Fiona Brennan, we collaborated on film based on my poem ‘Here is a Box (Vive La Petite Mort!). The poem was first published in Room Magazine (in their Duality Issue - 2012), and later in my first collection 'Keeping Bees'. Here is a Box is a strong and celebratory poem about the body, a poem that is aware and celebrates the nature of boxes: we come (raging) out of one box, and then, as with all things, we end up in another, the kind of box to go down, deep, and off in. There is play going on here, a playing of, and in, and with these words; they are sexy and sensual, and that is the intention. The link between the little (and big) death is important too: sensual, joyful living, and then, the (slow) dying; ‘decay does not rage in the same way’. Here is a Box is about the body, the body living and the body dying between the two boxes. Alongside joy, and pleasure, there is sadness, and pain, and the body enduring, and the body yielding, and a woman’s body most of all, and all because woman is not a machine for suffering; women’s rights are human rights, and autonomy and choice belong to each and every one of us. I was born in a country that affords me choice, and autonomy; however, I currently live in one that does not. I am very thankful for Choicebox’s invitation to create this work, and I was equally thankful to work with both Ria and Fiona on the film. ​ We had fun, and we played, and we danced…

'Zero. Zero is. Zero is another word for beginning. From zero the beginning is a seat. No. The beginning is the body; the beginning is the body in a seat. The beginning is the body, my body; the beginning is my body, from zero, sitting in a seat (an aside, a reminder: seat is another word for chair). From zero, zero in.....'

My essay 'This is ( 0 ) is When' is now on-line on gorse's website: 

http://gorse.ie/portfolio/this-is-0-is-when%E2%80%A8-by-dimitra-xidous/

Feel free to take a minute, or two. It was 80 years ago this month, around this time, that Picasso completed work on Guernica, a mural shown for the first time at the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 Paris International World's Fair. To help me zero in, I went to Madrid, for a day, to sit in on the first lecture in a series of lectures that have been organized in conjunction with the exhibition 'Pity and Terror: Picasso's Path to Guernica'. The exhibition runs until September 5th, 2017, with the series of lectures - Becoming Guernica: Readings on War, Exile and Iconoclasm' running until December 2017.

From gorse 8 essay - ‘We Cannot Be Trusted With Chairs’ - The Pink Look: Memory is a tool and sometimes, there is no distortion in it, just a movement of an inch, enough for light to rush in and blow the world open. I have a body, and it is good. What the body remembers is what the body re-members and my body remembers.  It re-members his body, his body on a day full of light, walking towards me on an afternoon in May, his body yielding to the perpetual and meticulous adjustments of weight, and I re-member and I see the slight curve emerging, the new woman, his body, his body walking towards me, his body unfurling, and the pink look of my eye registers the tiny shift, the movement of an inch, and he is captured then, surrounded by the pink of it, the pink look of it, my eye captures it, the pink look of him, of him in a moment, a moment when he is as I saw him that day with the bacon....’