Automatic Writing
Colquhoun made personal experiments with automatic writing throughout her life and took part in the surrealist group games in which collective poetic invention took the place of individual inspiration. According to Buck (1) Colquhoun engaged in automatic writing and drawing with Edith Rimmington and Emmy Bridgewater. Some of these joint texts were published in 1944 in Fulcrum, a single-issue surrealist periodical. The disquieting, and often humorous, effect of these surrealist word games lies partly in the contrast between the strict formal structure of the exchange and its apparently arbitrary content. In a subversion of language, form and content pull in different directions. It also resides in the fact that the apparent random content is more likely selected for its anticipated effect upon one’s playing partner or upon one’s imagined future reader.
Some chain poems were published in TRANSFORMAcTION in 1973 (2) although it is not certain when these were written and the identity of her collaborators is not known. The chain poem is one in which one participant writes a line, folds the paper to conceal it from view and passes it to a second player who does the same before passing it to a third. A broad structure such as ‘question and answer’ or ‘if and then’ may be agreed beforehand. Based on the familiar party game, it is another surrealist game for exploring the unconscious. The results are often banal, sometimes humorous, frequently lascivious and can reveal tensions between the players.
Notes
1. Buck L. The Surrealist Spirit in Britain. Whitford and Hughes, London,1988. Unpaginated.
2. Colquhoun, I. The Chain Poem. TRANSFORMAcTION (5) 1973, pp. 22-23.
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