I don't need to waste a paragraph to explain importance of David Lynch's TV series "Twin Peaks". It was a perfect blend of television melodrama plot conventions, classic murder mystery, detective procedural, surreal comedy and Hieronimus Bosch character menagerie. Somehow it managed to strike a particular note that made it stick in popular culture way beyond reason. People loved the world it presented. They wanted more.
Years after the series was seemingly concluded - fans still speculated over and over about it. There were theories that tied all loose ends, there were loads of fan fiction to end it all, there were attempts at ripping it off (uh-hmm, Deadly Premonition, Alan Wake) - as a fan i saw it all. And then there was this.
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"Twin Peaks Poetry" was a conceptual writing project by Canadian writer extraordinaire \ tarot reader Liz Worth. Its main purpose was to uncover poetry "hidden" inside Twin Peaks scripts. The story of its inception is curious. Up until 2014 Liz Worth managed to avoid watching Twin Peaks series (y`know) and when she finally watched it she found herself extremely inspired by it. As she said: "It was dark and weird, and had a lot of occult references and surreal moments, which is what made me love it so much. Especially because some of its weirder elements aren’t justified at all – the viewer just has to accept that it happened, even if it doesn’t make any sense." And so she surrendered to inspiration and started the project in November 2014.
At first "Twin Peaks Poetry" was based on wordpress platform but later in November the project was moved to Blogspot platform where it stayed. It lasted from November 2014 to December 2015. But it was never officially "closed". It was either neglected in the shuffle or simply abandoned after the concept "got old". Sometimes it happens that way.
What is funny about it is that nobody really cared about it. Seriously - no one ever wrote a word about it. Even when Twin Peaks the series came back - no one ever mentioned it. As if it never happened. That was weird. Before "Twin Peaks Poetry" Liz Worth also rewrote Andy Warhol's "A, a novel" into a poetry collection. It is very similar in technique but very uses different approach - it was taking out the juiciest parts but remained close to the source material. I guess the Warhol book is one of the reasons why Twin Peaks Poetry never went forward. The method was exhausted. Warhol book was released in 2015 and you should check it out. It is really interesting.
I stumbled upon "Twin Peaks Poetry" in December 2014 and religiously followed it up until it stopped in late 2015. It endlessly fascinated me. At that time I was well past my "David Lynch frenzy" (very well-documented) - but i was still very into the project as a literary piece. It was my kind of thing. I was deeply fascinated by the ways it subverted and defamiliarized the material. I didn't cared about Twin Peaks (yes, it's true) - i appreciated the craft. This fascination culminated in a form of an interview i did with Liz back in the day for Zouch Magazine. There are lots of interesting things said in it - from a technical standpoint foremost. I'm proud of it.
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"Twin Peaks Poetry" modus operandi is fairly simple. Liz Worth constrained herself within "the boundaries" of "written word" of Twin Peaks. She took available Twin Peaks scripts and slightly rearranged them into pieces of poetry. After all - scripts of Twin Peaks are actually well-written (read rock tossing deduction scene, it's a gas), ready for perspicacity and flexible enough for various permutations. But it wasn't about Twin Peaks - it just used it as a source material. Liz used it as a jumping point to the unknown. She wanted to make it "weirder".
Here is a breakdown of the working process: every scene is taken apart to essential elements, then tickled to unconsciousness (symbolically) and torn apart. Then goods are collected and unnecessary bits are thrown away. Only the juicy parts are left to sizzle into a pieces of entirely different mosaic.
Found poetry is "separated" from the "noise" of the original text. Scripts were reworked bit by bit in linear manner - there is no jumping around in order to find the right spot, no substitutions or additional words - poems merely contort itself into the plausible form. Every poem uses words and phrases taken from the scripts - dialogues, action descriptions, moods, settings, etc. Unnecessary fluff erased here and there.
Primary "weapon of offense" is line break insertion. It reconstructs the narrative and build new imagery out of existing pieces. Technical nature of descriptions and context-specific dialogue make a good fodder for surreal imagery. They add "anything goes" dynamics accentuated by contorted hard-edged shapes of the text. Contrasts are sharp and stark - it hits you every time. Style is constantly jumping around - it is disorienting. The resulting poems don't really look like they were made out of Twin Peaks scripts but they definitely keep its signature "strange brew". They go way beyond simple remixing. They manage to avoid bare-bones minimalism of found poetry and move in into accidental narrative territory.
Primary "weapon of offense" is line break insertion. It reconstructs the narrative and build new imagery out of existing pieces. Technical nature of descriptions and context-specific dialogue make a good fodder for surreal imagery. They add "anything goes" dynamics accentuated by contorted hard-edged shapes of the text. Contrasts are sharp and stark - it hits you every time. Style is constantly jumping around - it is disorienting. The resulting poems don't really look like they were made out of Twin Peaks scripts but they definitely keep its signature "strange brew". They go way beyond simple remixing. They manage to avoid bare-bones minimalism of found poetry and move in into accidental narrative territory.
Because of constraints there is this weird stilted rhythm in them. Language of the poems and the images it produces are at conflict with one another. They are dissonant. Poems feel unnatural and it constantly draws attention to its hard-edged forms. They hang together as if they were parts of something else that faded or obliterated over time. Not every bit of it is comprehensible but it is still cohesive. Sometimes frenetic, unintelligible at times, probably confessional, always raw and distorted. They manage to tell stories of their own - distressed and disjointed.
Original intention was to make as many poems out of scripts as possible. However, soon there was an unexpected turn. It turned out that the scripts were extremely rich for found poetry - there was too much to play with. Texts were very dense with "useful" or "tasty" words and expressions. It took a while to finish even the pilot episode (probably that was another reason for abandoning the project). Those bits were coming together on their own. It happens sometimes.
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"Twin Peaks Poetry" is a nice showcase of really creative use of constraints. It was one of the more inspiring things happened in Twin Peaks \ David Lynch fandom over the years before the revival of the series was announced. For once - it wasn't halfwit raving and drooling. It was a real deal. It was a successful attempt to recontextualize familiar material and show its hidden qualities. By taking out existing words - Liz Worth managed to create something of her own. And it was beautiful.
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