Re-Imagining Feminine Desire: A New Face for Myth and Fairytales

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Adrea Kore, Anthology Release, Desire, Erotic Fairytales, erotic poetry, Fairytale Re-Tellings, Female Sexuality, Feminine Rites of Passage, Greek Mythology, Lustily Ever After, Myth Re-tellings, Persephone, Published Poetry

Fairy tales and myths can still speak powerfully to readers, despite the distance between when they were written and where we are now, as a contemporary audience. According to writer Sanjida O’ Connell, recent research indicates that “fairy tales are ancient, at least one dates back to the Bronze Age, whilst others, such as Beauty and the Beast and Rumplestiltskin, are over 4,000 years old.”

Narrative is part of the human psyche, the way we explain the world to ourselves and each other.

How is it that a fairytale we loved as a child can still resonate strongly for us as an adult? One reason is that fairy tales and myths are dense with symbols and archetypes, elements which hold a multiplicity of meanings, depending on who is doing the looking, and from what angle. What engages us as a child and what engages us as an adult in the same tale, may be diferent elements. The tale grows with us, in a manner of speaking.

How a story is told depends on who is doing the telling.

A writer, intent on creating more relevant meanings for a contemporary female audience, may find the narrative and archetypal characters of many myths and fairy tales pliable to re-interpretation and re-attribution of meanings. We are not so far removed, it seems, from understanding Rapunzel’s isolation, or  Cinderella’s longing ffor love and social acceptance, but a modern writer might contextualize it differently, emphasise different elements. Sanjida O’Connell expresses this beautifully:

“Narrative is part of the human psyche, the way we explain the world to ourselves and each other.”

Or as surrealist Elizabeth Lenk described this sense of timelessness in myth and fairytale, “the walls between time periods are extremely close to one another.” I like this idea; that as women writers, we might put our ear to a metaphorical wall and hear the story of Bluebeard’s wife or Persephone as if it is going on in the next room, as if it is close to us. Hearing only fragments, we create different interpretations, that speak to contemporary readers.

Although I adored and devoured fairy tales as a child, it’s hard not to look at them now through feminist eyes. When I read myths and fairytales now, I feel as if I am searching for clues, traces of the older, oral versions between the lines. The versions that women told to each other, mother to daughter, around the hearth. Writer Cate Fricke reminds us that “as rife with violence as they are, fairy tales are in fact women’s stories, and always have been.”

As O’Connell asserts, though the tales “may begin in such a cosy way, make no mistake – fairy stories are dark tales of misogyny, social climbing, child abuse and infanticide.” Many traditional myths and fairy tales tend to ascribe very traditional, polarized roles to women. They are often either the “good” woman:

• wife
• mother
• virgin
• daughter

Or the bad, trouble-making woman:

•  outcast / beggar
•  nagging wife (harridan)
•  witch
• temptress.

Additionally, the play and power of female sexuality is often submerged or sidelined, hidden behind the desires and needs of male characters in patriarchal worlds. One of my favourite collections of re-imagined fairy tales is Angela Carter’s  The Bloody Chamber, in part because she found ways to make the themes of  female sexuality more explicit and central to the narrative than in the originals, and wrote them in a way that questioned the roles of women in patriarchal societies and the limited choices they had, often creating new paths of action and possiblility for her female characters.

Another significant difference in these modern re-tellings is they are often narrated in first-person – the central female character is not mute or passive; she has her own voice, tells her own story, rather than it being recounted by an impersonal, authoritative narrator.

From an introductory essay to a volume of science-fiction and fantasy stories written by women (She’s Fantastical, Sybylla Press 1995), writer Ursula Le Guin observes:

“In the last thirty years or so, as women have taken to writing as women, not as honorary or artificial men, it’s become clear that they see a rather different world, and describe it by rather different means. The most startling difference is that men aren’t at the centre of it …”

Fellow Author Brantwjin Serrah: On the Value of Poetry

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Adrea Kore, erotic language, erotic poetry, Inspiration, reviews, threshold, Writing Process

Fellow author Brantwjin Serrah is passionate about the value of deepening the understanding and appreciation of poetry: for itself, but also for how it informs prose-writing. Recently, she wrote an insightful article on this topic, featuring fragments of two of my poems, among others. In the article, she declares that:

 …learning to read poetry is equally as important to learning to write it.

Upon reading it, I felt it made such an intelligent argument for the value of poetry, that with her permission, I’m re-printing excerpts of it here. I’ve written poetry from a very early age, winning first prizes for poems when I was 11, then 12, as well as studying it intensively through drama and theatre training. Writing poetry is something I can’t seem to help, so I have felt it was important in the past to gain some study of the actual craft.

Personally,  I’m drawn to the form primarily because of these two elements: its many plays and permutations of rhythm, and its insistence on finding new, and evocative ways to express things felt and observed. You see, I’ve always loved dancing and disliked cliches.

After writing Talking Shop: Poetry as a Tool for Better Writing, Brantwjin also felt sufficiently interested in my erotic poem Threshold to feature an “unpacking” of the poem in her “Reading Diary”. This is the first time anyone has analysed one of my poems (that I’m aware of), so it was a slightly nerve-wracking experience, waiting to hear what she saw in my poem! However, reading the analysis was intriguing, and I’m relieved to see that much of what I wished to convey is apparent to the reader (this reader at least). I’m also delighted to hear that some elements are more open to interpretation than I had initially thought. (More than two players in the erotic encounter, really? Wonderful!) In this way, the poem can mean different things to different readers; they can insert themselves and their own narratives of desire into the poem. I believe this is one of the aims any well-crafted writing can hope to achieve.

So, please read on to hear more of Brantwjin’s keen observations on the craft of poetry, and the benefits of reading and writing it:

Best Enjoyed Hard – by Adrea Kore

Tags

adrea, best, Coming Together: In Verse, erotic, erotic poetry, kore, Publications, Published Poetry

As part of my vision for this blog, I’d always loved the idea of getting aural – having audio excerpts of my poetry and read excerpts of my fiction. Voice is intimate in a way that words on a screen can never be.

It’s taken me a while to upskill my techie knowledge to even know where to begin, and this is my first recording  of my playfully wicked erotic poem “Best Enjoyed Hard” as I get a little fruity about fellatio.

Best Enjoyed Hard

 

No special effects. Just me – whispering in your ear. (If you please …)

I hope you enjoy …

 

PS: If erotic verse is something you want a little more of, this poem and two others are published in Coming Together: In Verse. Edited by the fabulous Ashley Lister, this well-established for-charity anthology series has dived into the deep waters of erotic expression through a diversity of poetry and verse. From the sensual to the bawdy, it’s all here … and purchasing a copy will also support Hope for Paws, an organization assisting domestic animals in crisis.

Mending paws with poetry – well, what’s not to like?

With the elegant cover art, it really would make a perfect stocking-stuffer for the sensual this Christmas. Reading a little suggestive verse in your lover’s ear makes for great foreplay. I can recommend it.

I could keep on with the innuendos – or I could just give you the buy links.

Available in hard copy or e-book.

http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Together-Verse-Ashley-Lister/dp/1518833667

 

Reflections in a Pixelated Pool

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Adrea Kore, authenticity in writing, erotic fiction, erotic poetry, erotica, Greek Mythology, On Writing, Wet Satin Plaything

A few days ago, Kore Desires turned one.

Before I began this blog, I knew virtually (pardon the pun) nothing about blogging.  I rarely read blogs, had no clue about to set one up myself, or even how to create the avatar needed to allow you to comment on other’s blogs. I had only written two rather epic, rambling guest posts (under my real name), which I may well cringe at if I read them now.

Reaching the first anniversary of my blog caused me to reflect on the challenges of this year, and think about what I might have achieved and learned.

One year on, and I’ve met and connected with many other wonderful writers online, and have found in the sex and erotica blogging world what proved to be both expensive and elusive in the realm of my old-school tendencies ie – seeking knowledge and literary inspiration primarily through books. In this new-to-me realm, I discovered what I had long been hungering for – contemporary thinking and writing on sexuality – both fiction and non-fiction. Intelligent, provocative, diverse, creative and relevant – these writers are also in some way my contemporaries and peers – my stories sit beside theirs in published anthologies. This writing keeps me thinking, engaged, wrestling with ideas. The ongoing conversations between blogs and forums keeps me tuned like a cello, listening for my own chords, my own music. The exchange hurries me to the page at times, and has given me a sense of belonging in a like-minded, yet diverse, community.

Thirty-two posts on and counting, (plus a few guest posts), I’ve learnt quite a bit about this hybrid twenty-first century communication form, the blog.  It’s my observation that the form of a blog lies somewhere in the overlap between a journalistic article, an essay, a journal entry and a good conversation.  Depending on your voice, what you want to say, and who you want to appeal to, one borrows the shape of one or more of these four forms in differing intensities.

At times, blogging strikes me as a strange paradox. It’s like being in a private, quiet room, whispering thoughts to oneself – yet it’s also a room you share publicly, with readers you may know, but many who you don’t. Right now, I write within the illusion of solitude, yet at the back of my mind are the expectant rustlings and sighs of a would-be audience.  A blog is not a journal.  Anyone who claims they are the same has not kept a private journal. The mind’s focus is entirely different.

Sometimes, I feel decadent having a room all of my own here. A room, a kingdom… A domain. (I just bought mine – adreakore.com is coming soon!) I grapple with the narcissistic connotations of a blog, along with the subtle but present pressure to create and maintain a consumable, desirable image. I’m deconstructing this image right now by typing that last sentence, these words right now. But, you see, I will reveal, but only what I choose to. I will also conceal, and you the reader will not know what I conceal. Absences are enigmatic in that way…

The title of this blog came to me because I was thinking about the myth of Narcissus, the beautiful but vain youth who falls for his own reflection in a pond; about how seductive it is to remain gazing at one’s own (self-created) reflection, albeit a pixelated likeness in the greater online pond.

pixel

ˈpɪks(ə)l,-sɛl/

noun

ELECTRONICS

noun: pixel; plural noun: pixels

1. a minute area of illumination on a display screen, one of many from which an image is composed.

   “the camera scans photographs and encodes the image into pixels”

Origin

ENGLISH

1960s: abbreviation of picture element .

This might be a somewhat macabre metaphor for a blog, but I do think it’s apt in its reminder that we be wary not to fall for our own online reflection, lest we waste away and forget our real-life selves, like Narcissus.

“Narcissus” – by Caravaggio

As I’ve written elsewhere, the first two-thirds of this year had been arid creatively. Much of that has been due to the emotional impact of a relationship ending, the ensuing grief and confusion, and then the energy it’s taken to slowly reassemble the pieces of myself. I have been flung against the jagged edges of my own emotional limits. I experienced deep love, then the severing of that love, in what turned out to be an impossible situation.  It didn’t break my heart – it lacerated it, and also shattered parts of my identity. For several months, it was difficult to feel anything except despondency, failure and pain. I have learnt much about the conflicting impulses of my open, curious mind, and my more fragile emotional needs, and that for me, respecting my emotional well-being is paramount. Someday perhaps I’ll have the courage to write openly about it.

Although I couldn’t bare to write fiction, my critical faculties, suspended for a time in limbo with my emotions, flared back to life.  Some days, I think my intellect may have saved me from the seemingly endless spiralling of my darker emotions. I took hold of ideas and in responding to them intellectually, pulled myself out of that limbo. I discovered I still cared about what I thought about sexuality, and our culture’s responses to that. And for that stretch towards vitality again, I particularly want to acknowledge the inquiring minds and intellectual passion of Remittance Girl, Emmanuelle deMaupassant and Malin James. Thankyou. ❤

So, after several painful endings, and my time in a kind of torpor, some things are finally shifting.

Through this dark time, paradoxically I discovered something I love doing which allows me to assist and work with other writers – structural / developmental editing. After so many years interpreting play-texts as a theatre director, I believe I’ve developed a skill for sensing the spine of a story, for assisting the author to bring out its themes and nuances, and for hearing a writer’s voice, and seeing what might be getting in the way of the full expression of that voice. I have my first client for a significant project, a deeply imaginative writer, with whom I’m delighted to be working. I hope to attract more of this kind of work in the future.

And if you’ve read some of my recent posts, you’ll know I recently broke my drought of creative writing with a flood of story – my longest piece yet – Wet Satin Plaything.  I wrote it for a Submission call for House of Erotica, and I’m excited to announce that it’s been accepted. It will appear, along with stories from six other authors in an antholology called Licked – release date to be confirmed soon. (If you’d like a little preview, go to the end of this article).

I’ve also just found out I’ve had several of my erotic poems accepted into Coming Together, the well-known erotica-for-charity anthology. Erotic poetry antholologies are released far less frequently than story antholologies, so consider adding it to your collection. Edited by the prolific Ashley R Lister, proceeds for Coming Together: In Verse will go to domestic animal rescue organization Hope for Paws. I’m very happy that my poems can assist animals in need.

With at least some parts of myself reclaimed, I have newfound determination for several drafted future projects. And now, when I look at my reflection, maybe, just maybe, it’s becoming clearer …

So … wish me Happy Birthday … and many more to come…

Wanna slip into a little Wet Satin? Right this way, please …

For a sneak preview of one of the poems to be featured in Coming Together in Verse, come with me …

If anyone is interested in my services as a structural / developmental editor, drop me a line here.

And here’s where you can connect with the creative minds of Remittance Girl, Emmanuelle deMaupassant and Malin James. 

‘Best Enjoyed Hard’ – Ripe Ideas & Fruity Poetry

Tags

Adrea Kore, Creative Process, Desire, erotic poetry, Little Raven, On Writing, sexuality

It’s not that I’m not enjoying
the soft fruit of your kiss
the luscious suck of lower lip
It’s just that I hunger for harder

I hope you’ve enjoyed my series of Posts this week focusing on erotic poetry. Perhaps something has inspired you to try penning your own, or you’ve discovered new authors through some of the erotic poetry I’ve featured, such as Adrienne Rich and Sappho. I’d love to hear from you with what you liked, or how any of my posts this week inspired you.

A poem can start with the smallest of ideas: an image in your mind on the edge of sleep, watching a petal drop from a flower, or a phrase mid-conversation.

This one started in a conversation with my partner, as we were assessing whether our bananas were ripe enough to add to breakfast. It got me thinking that yes, although most fruit is better when soft and ripe, with some fruit the opposite is the case.

Perhaps by then, I wasn’t really thinking about bananas.

So, diligent writer that I am, as soon as I had a moment I hastily sketched an image of a pear in my notebook, and wrote the words: “Some varieties of fruit are better consumed hard.” Like many of my ideas, I had no idea what would become of it at the time. Perhaps a female character would suggestively say it to her male lover at the right heated moment in a short story. Perhaps it would just stay in my notebook and rot.

And then, I let time mature, and (pardon the pun), ripen the idea, until a few months later, after meeting up with a few other erotica writers for drinks, the poem emerged later that night at home. It seemed to be a fusion of my first idea and the conversation that night around fruit as sexual metaphors. And – other things.

Creative process, like fruit, sometimes needs time to reach that point where a more complete idea is ripe for the plucking.

So once again, I’m delighted to be a Featured Writer with erotica publishers Little Raven, with my poem Best Enjoyed Hard. For your delectation …

Please Pick the Pear

Best Enjoyed Hard

Thanks for reading – would love to hear your thoughts. How did it make you feel? Did it remind you of a time when … ? Did you love or hate the imagery? Did it make you want to go and eat … fruit? Or write an erotic poem to your amour? Whisper in my virtual ear …

“Sucking each Seed for its Secret” -Eroticism, Soul-Themes & Writing from There

Tags

Adrea Kore, Creative Process, erotic poetry, Greek Mythology, On Writing, Persephone, Take Pen in Hand

I am obsesssed with the Greek Goddess Persephone. I first read a version of the myth when I was about five years old. Over the decades, she keeps dropping by for cups of tea,  reflecting different symbolic offerings, insights and questions to me; reflecting back my own shifts, my own deepenings. I’m obsessed with all things to do with her myth. Pomegranates. The concept of the Underworld and its symbolic meanings. Dark, melancholic, mysterious men like Hades. The question of the true nature of her abduction. What it felt like for her. And how her time in the Underworld … changed her. The transformation from virgin, Goddess of Spring to wife and Queen of the Underworld.

For where there is transformation, there is always a story.

And then there’s my erotic novella-in-progress about Persephone. i have stalled horribly, but the ideas keep at me. So even though I am not writing the novella, I am still in dialogue with the idea; exploring her through poetry, and other snippets of writing.

My last name “Kore” is another Greek name for Persephone. I resonate with the idea that writing about sex and sexuality is akin to going down into the Underworld of our bodies, and of society; sometimes speaking the taboo; sometimes bringing things up and out into the light so they can be seen more clearly. So for me, Persephone rises up from my subconscious and bursts out onto the bright white page, spilling over with insights and stories, over and over again. She is the one who learns from her time in darkness, and emerges into her light cycle the wiser for it. She is the one who brings her light back down into the hungering darkness.

Here are a few of my “conversations” with Persephone via poetry. Some phrases and images are more insistent, re-asserting themselves in different places. I share them to show how themes and ideas can shift, evolve and keep showing up in different guises.

Persephone as Maiden

Persephone

She pries the pomegranate apart
full of fertile questions
and sucks each seed for its secret
Drowning in the viscous sweetness,
Scarlet juices spill waxen over lips
Sealing the contract of her subterranean affair

` © Adrea Kore 2005

(Not to be reproduced or reprinted,

 in part or in whole, without permission of the author)

“It seems to me” … ~ Sappho

Tags

erotic arts, erotic poetry, Female Sexuality, Sappho, women writing sex

All the way from 7th Century BC, meet Sappho, an ancient Greek lyric poetess, residing for much of her life on the island of Lesbos, which was a cultural centre at the time. The daughter of a wealthy aristocrat, Sappho led an eventful

http://www.diariodecultura.com.ar/cm/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/safo.jpg

life, which included both fame and infamy. She was exiled to Sicily for a time, probably for political activities, where she was treated as an honourable guest and had a statue erected in her name. She was later hailed by the Alexandrians, who listed her as one of nine significant lyric poets.  Although not the case with the poem featured here, the beloved subject of much of her poetry was women.

It seems to me (to borrow a phrase) that the Ancient Greeks knew a lot about the erotic life. They valued beauty in architecture, and the arts held a central place in Grecian cultural life, with tragic and comic theatre festivals held over several days. They were a sexually liberal culture too, with an acceptance of homo-eroticism and same-sex love. Then there was their love of wine and feasting! Two schools of thought that resolved around pleasure as a central focus had both philosophers and strong followings in Ancient Greece – Epicureanism and Hedonism. I could certainly entertain living in those times – at least if I was born into the wealthy classes!

Yield – by Adrea Kore

Tags

Adrea Kore, erotic poetry, Female Sexuality, sexuality, women writing sex, Writing Sex

Here again, and, for the first time,

This aeons-old meeting-place

You and I make cross-roads of our arms

and our wanting speaks within

This exquisite tension

between permission and resistance

Poised, in the flesh of your instinctive seeking

Gustav Klimt – “The Kiss”

and my seeming witholding…

 

 

I await the secret knock

the whispered invocation

Scored, taut, across

the skin of you

To be sensed, like Braille,

blind-seeing, beyond where I resist

The night, for a moment, pauses;

We hold night in our mouths

 

 

As the weight of you,

the waiting of you, falls

into the arms of my sex

I yield, whilst somehow, still,

you are held by me;

I pour away,

an endless avalanche

of release.

 

 

©  Adrea Kore 2012

(Not to be reproduced or reprinted,

 in part or in whole, without permission of the author

 

Enjoyed this Excerpt of free fiction? Leave a comment! It creates wonderful karma – and is good blogging etiquette . ❤

“In my Rose-wet Cave”… It’s Erotic Poetry Week

Tags

Adrienne Rich, erotic poetry, Female Sexuality, On Writing, Quote, the Muses, women writing sex

Adrienne Rich is one of my favourite female poets. And the line above in the title was one of the first evocative images I remember coming across to describe the female sex. “In my rose-wet cave.” Somehow combining the image of being underwater, and yet botanical. Fragrant and secret. Hidden away, deep-hued and moist. I was in my mid-twenties, studying feminism, theatre, and dating a poet. I was both intrigued and delighted. And I began to search for more of this kind of writing, that could re-invent the feminine body, the feminine experience of desire.

This week, for the next seven days and seven nights … welcome to my rose-wet cave. Metaphorically speaking. I shall offer something on the “erotic feminine” each day. Some days it will be women poets, from many different periods who have inspired me. Some days it will be my own pieces. Other days, I shall offer musings on creative poetry, and ways in to writing your own. On the seventh day, I am once again honoured to be a feature writer with Little Raven; last time it was a Flash Fiction piece called Feast, this time it’s a poem called Best Enjoyed Hard. (Hmm … I’m beginning to notice a food theme in my erotica).

Adrienne Rich was born in 1929, and her work spanned the rest of that century and into the first decade of the twenty-first century. Her first poems were published when she was a college student, in 1951. Imagine being a young female college student in that era, where so fewer women went to University. Imagine getting a book of poems published amongst a sea of male-influenced intellectualism. She was a champion of women’s rights, and civil rights, and won many awards. Her work was incisive, often political; her poetry deeply moving and revealing of the feminine perspective. Diving into the Wreck is a stunning collection of her poems. She died in 2012. Her work has influenced my creative work enormously, and given me courage to continue to articluate the feminine experience – both in its dark and its light. In an essay which set a particular course for me in terms of finding the courage to speak (and perform) the taboo, she states:

“When a woman tells the truth, she creates the possibility for more truth around her.”

And so we do. And so women have, from Sappho in Ancient Greek times to Aphra Behn in the seventeenth century to … you and me, and so many other women writing now. And the world is a richer place for it. Ms Rich would agree, I’m sure.

So, why write erotic poetry? To honour those who have fired our skin, and singed our hearts. To experience the delicious precision of sensations again, and to be able to re-visit that part of ourselves in years to come. To remember that we are desiring bodies. To develop our own erotic tongue, a language for sex, for desire. To see more clearly who we are when we are speaking and listening through our bodies.