05/06/2019 Making and unmaking subjects | Axon: Creative Explorations https://www.axonjournal.com.au/issue-vol-9-no-1-may-2019/making-and-unmaking-subjects 1/14 MAKING AND UNMAKING SUBJECTS Self-referentiality in the verse autobiographies of Alec Choate and George Elliott Clarke Abstract This paper explores self-referentiality in verse autobiography: lifewriting-in-poetry which thematises the poetry- writing-life. It begins with the contention that poiesis (production, making) is redoubled in verse autobiography – producing autobiography and poem, autobiographical-subject and poet-subject. A close reading examines how self- referential comments inhabit language and inscribe the making – and even the unmaking – of subjects in two autobiographies in verse: Alec Choate’s My days were fauve and George Elliott Clarke’s Traverse. Lejeune’s metaphor of poetic autobiography as a ‘Rosetta stone’ helps to foreground the potential of self-referential verse autobiographies – on account of their redoubled poiesis – to yield clues for understanding the tension between referentiality and aesthetic creation. This enables discussion of the interplay between – and affordances of the irony, trope, and intertextual allusions – evident in these texts combining an autobiographical- and a lyrical-‘I’. Keywords: Autobiography in verse – poetic autobiography – poetic life writing – poeisis – self-referentiality – metapoetic comments – Lejeune – writing Introduction Verse autobiography can be considered a redoubled act of poiesis, of bringing forth or production, whereby the creation of autobiography brings forth or produces an autobiographical-subject, and the creation of a poem brings forth or produces a poet-subject. A verse autobiography about a poetry-writing-life can be said to be self-referential. A self-referential verse autobiography may thematise – that is, take as its topic or theme – the act of redoubled poiesis, the process of bringing forth, of ‘making’. It may thematise poetic prowess, or the form which poiesis takes – its versified, rhythmic or otherwise deliberately bound form; its poetic constituents or elements. It may also thematise the status and significance of the autobiographical- or poet-subject. According to Andreas Jäger this awareness of status can manifest at the textual level as stylistic self-consciousness or irony (1996: 8). A self-referential verse autobiography may even comment on life writing about the poetry-writing-life. Self-referentiality in the verse autobiography may, conversely, thematise the impeding of writing, the decline of life-writing or poetic impetus, even the loss of life-writer-relevance or poet-status; such ‘unmaking’ that troubles the act of poiesis. These contentions form the rationale for a close reading of how self-referentiality inhabits language in two verse autobiographies and shapes their acts of inscription. I combine a textual reading of the formal and semantic structures with a secondary contextual reading – to demonstrate both the poetic and non- 1 2