‘In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari talk about a child walking through darkness who ‘comforts himself by singing under his breath’: ‘Lost, he takes shelter, or orients himself with his little song’. The song ‘is like a rough sketch of a calming and stabilising, calm and stable, centre in the heart of chaos’. Despite this centring effect, ‘the song itself is already a skip’: something on the brink of ‘breaking apart’. I take this to mean something akin to what you say about ‘the way poems know things’ through ‘co-ordinates of sound’. Like their navigational function. So often, reading poetry, I have felt like that child in the dark.’
Thanks to editor Tom Bailey at And Other Poems for inviting this conversation to happen! Always a delight to talk with Oli Hazzard about all things poetry, telepathy & dreams.
mariaology 