Creative Process
My creative work does not begin with words, but with a theme that lives in me for a long time. An inner pressure that eventually needs to be expressed. I start by unfolding the theme: writing down thoughts, fragments, impressions, memories. I need to grasp the material first. At this stage form is unimportant. The goal is to bring the content to the surface. After some time the form begins to appear on its own. Sometimes it arrives all at once, sometimes gradually, but it always grows out of lived experience. My poetry is not created at a desk - it is embodied in me. I think while walking, in rhythm, during repetitive work in salmon factory for example. The body carries the tension and release that later - shape the words. When the theme is exhausted on the level of content and the form has ripened.
The work moves into shaping. A part of my writing comes from the subconscious. It reveals itself through dreams. It can happen in a state of lucid dreaming or in various combinations of sleep and lucidity. There are different levels of how lucid a person can be while asleep. In the morning, or at night when I wake up. I can recall it visually and emotionally with deap precision. The whole engram is there. That’s when I reluctantly grab my laptop and start writing. It is sometimes a battle with myself. On one hand I feel that I need to write it down. That it is important; on the other hand I want to sleep and just ignore it. I struggle with this resistance for quite a while.
Then I finally reach for the laptop and begin to write. I don’t focus on form at all. I just write. And it always surprises me how easily it flows in those moments. I start by describing what I dreamed. Meanings begin to surface at the same time. I don’t analyze them, just write. In the next phase I treat it as valuable material. Gradually shape it into a form that feels coherent and meaningful.
In the final phase I treat the material like a sculptor. From this raw mass, or rather from these layers of information. I carve and shape the final form. I work with the text in my native language as well as in English. I like playing with the differences between the two. Finally the whole piece feels complete and true to itself.
For me, the creative process is a way of learning and understanding.