The Secret

***Poetry Book Society Recommendation***

***Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize***

Zoe's most recent poetry collection is The Secret. This collection considers the parallels between cultural tensions in Europe and the Americas, written out of Zoe's upbringing in Wales, an overlooked region of Britain, and her travel in Central America in 2004 and 2005. The book was completed through a generous grant from Academi, the Welsh literature promotion agency, and it was published by Bloodaxe Books in the UK at the end of 2007. It went on to be a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and to be shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. It was also poems from an early draft of The Secret that won her Eric Gregory Award in 2003.

The book is made up of three sequences, 'The Lesser Secrets', 'The Greater Secrets' and 'The Curse of the Long-tailed Bird'.

Sequence 1: The Lesser Secrets

'The Lesser Secrets' is based on the cards in the Major Arcana of the Tarot Deck, which are as follows:

THE LESSER SECRETS: CODEX

0. The Fool   
I. The Magician               
II. The Priestess       
III. The Empress                
IV. The Emperor
V. The Hierophant
VI. The Lovers       
VII. The Chariot
VIII. Strength   
IX. The Hermit       
X. The Wheel       
XI. The Scales   
XII. The Hanged Man                   
XIII. Death       
XIV. Temperance   
XV. The Devil       
XVI. The Tower       
XVII. The Star       
XVIII. The Moon   
XIX. The Sun                   
XX. Judgement   
XXI. The World

'The Lesser Secrets' features a poem written out of the symbolism of each of these Tarot cards. The poems also make up what I think of as the 'European' half of the book, with the poems focussing on Wales, England and the Continent. These poems are written out of Western myth and philosophy, out of Bible stories and psychoanalysis, out of the surreal Western city and family stories. You can read some of these poems online. At Limelight, you can read 'Metropolis' (written for the Tarot sign of Judgement) and 'My Grandfather' (written for the Tarot sign of the Wheel).

Tarot Card Deck from crystalhealing.com 

Sequence 2: The Greater Secrets

The second sequence in the book is based on my travel in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. I undertook a number of trips in the period from 2004 to 2007, and 'The Greater Secrets' seeks to uncover the secrets of colonialism in Central America.

The sequence is structured using the symbolism of the Mayan (and Aztec) calendar. Each day in their 20 day cycle is characteried by a symbol, such as the lizard, the snake or eagle. 

Day 1:         Day of Cipactli, the Great Lizard
Day 2:         Day of Ehécatl, the Wind
Day 3:         Day of Calli, the House       
Day 4:         Day of Cuetzpallin, the Small Lizard               
Day 5:         Day of Coatl, the Snake
Day 6:         Day of Miquiztli, Death       
Day 7:         Day of Mázatl, the Deer   
Day 8:         Day of Tochtli, the Rabbit   
Day 9:         Day of Atl, Water           
Day 10:     Day of Izcuintli, the Dog
Day 11:     Day of Ozomatli, the Monkey       
Day 12:     Day of Malinalli, the Grass
Day 13:        Day of Acatl, the Reed
Day 14:     Day of Océlotl, the Jaguar
Day 15:     Day of Cuahtli, the Eagle
Day 16:     Day of Cozcacuahtli, the Buzzard
Day 17:     Day of Ollin, Movement
Day 18:        Day of Técpatl, the Knife   
Day 19:     Day of Quiahuitl,  the Rain
Day 20:     Day of Xóchitl, the Flower

The Mayan Calendar from www.mayanpredictions.net

Sequence 3: The Curse of the Long-Tailed Bird

This final sequence was written out of a project with the poet, Julie Boden. As Birmingham Symphony Hall poet laureate, she gathered a group of women writers together to write some poems in response to the themes of Béla Bartók's short opera, Blue Beard. In this version, there is not one door, but seven doors that Judith must open before she discovers Blue Beard’s secret: his murdered wives.

In my recycling of the Blue Beard story, the guilt confronted is not only that of Cortés and La Malinche, but the guilt of the West and developed countries. I draw on The Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano, which argues that there can never be stability in Latin America as long as there are resources to be exploited.

 Hernán Cortés and La Malinche in the City of Xaltelolco on www.manataka.org

 Extract from an Interview of Zoë Brigley by the poet Peter Carpenter

Peter Carpenter:  In The Secret there is a great deal to admire both in the craft and the design of the book. It is incredibly poised and accomplished. How long was it in the making?
Zoë Brigley: The book took five years to write. Until recently, I have felt quite annoyed with myself for not working more quickly, because if you join a Creative Writing degree, as I did at Warwick University, you produce so much work as a student, that the normal pace of writing outside an institution seems intolerably slow.

Peter Carpenter: Would you talk a little about the collection's tri-partite structure?
Zoë Brigley: The structure was really important. I like the feeling that each poem has its place and together, there is a kind of accumulation of meaning. The first section to emerge was 'The Lesser Secrets', which includes what I call my 'European' poems that focus particularly on Western culture. Later, 'The Greater Secrets' developed which includes many poems that I wrote when travelling around Mexico and Guatemala. These poems are thinking more about what the West did beyond its own borders and the terrible legacy that remains. The third sequence continues this line of thought, but it has probably been the most controversial. Its title, 'The Curse of the Long-tailed Bird', refers to the Aztec emperor, Montezuma, who according to the Mexicans had a premonition of the Spanish conquest when he was visited by a bird with a mirror in its crest. In the mirror, Montezuma saw troops marching towards Mexico. So there is this mythical story, but the bird came to represent the wealth and riches of Latin America. I was thinking of Eduardo Galeano's book, The Open Veins of Latin America, in which he outlines the pillaging of a continent and suggests that the exploitation of Latin America will only stop when the wealth of its natural resources are utterly depleted. The sequence itself melds the Western story of Bluebeard with the history of the Spanish conquest featuring Hernan Cortés as another bearded villain.

Peter Carpenter: You make full use of the 'myth kitty' at your disposal - a re-working of the story of Blodeuwedd from 'The Mabinogion' (from the cover and opening epigraph onwards) rubbing shoulders with Julia Kristeva and Michel Foucault, for example. This not only fuses the ancient and modern (along the lines of Eliot's mythic method), but also embroils archetypal tropes, figures and narratives with commentators upon cultures and cultural inheritances. Thus you demand a lot of your readers in such dramas of simultaneous considerations. Would you talk a little about your 'method' and also expand a little upon your statement in the notes to the collection that 'as a writer, you are interested in intertextuality'?
Zoë Brigley: It's true. Intertextuality is important for me. I definitely see the world through every story that I've ever read. Mythology, folklore and the fairy-tale are particularly important to me, though not necessarily because I want to rewrite the old stories with a new political slant as many writers have done very successfully. What I want to do is take the symbolism of a story and use it to apply to a situation where it is particularly relevant. In The Secret, the stories that were important were the Welsh myth of Blodeuwedd, a woman of flowers who plots to murder her husband, and the story of La Malinche, an indigenous Mexican woman who joined Hernan Cortés' ranks during the Spanish Conquest. There is a sense that the women in the book, who live in a contemporary world, are simply replaying these old stories of supposedly deceitful women who survive nevertheless.
        The theorists used are usually telling stories of one kind or another. In The Secret, I quote Foucault to complement a narrative about sacrifice and pleasure, while a quotation from Freud is used to frame a poem about sexuality. I also use other sources: Mexican folksongs, a variety of other poets, a medical dictionary, a book on Parkinson's Disease, the Bhagavad-Gita and the Bible. I have always been interested in bringing things together that at first glance seem to be unrelated. It reminds me of Magritte's painting, The Key to Dreams, which features what seems to be a child's reading primer, except that the word does not match the picture. An image of a bowler hat is brought together with the word, 'Snow'; a portrait of a candle is subtitled with the word, 'Ceiling'; and so on. I remember seeing that painting and others like it and wondering whether it might be possible to create a poem where disparate objects were brought together. The result was the poem, 'Lonesome City Dweller'.

Lonesome City Dweller
How poor are they that ha' not patience.
What wound did ever heal but by degrees?-William Shakespeare

She is the plain, the eclipse and ruined city
where we walk at dusk through these riverbank tunnels;
that rose in her buttonhole: a tomb for wrestlers.

On the skyline, the dome swells over flatter roofs,
tug-boats on the river and bright windows:
she is the moon and the pavement and stepping shoes.

The riverside cluttered with stalls selling books;
that puppet show features a wooden gentleman
with a bowler hat (from here darkness blooms).

She walks with me in the emptiness of crowds,
while I read that stranger's smile, this woman's frown:
I am the eye and the window and outstretched palm.

Earlier in the café we overheard talk
of her home country, more gossip of strife and death
and she stirred her long drink into a thunderstorm.

Under the bridge she is thinking of her mother:
that crossing in the ruins, that city pocked by gunshot.
She is the dark and desert and memory:
its walls invisible, its boundaries the sky.

[Note: this interview appeared in Agenda 44.2-3]. 

See the full interview  for Agenda magazine here.