Dissolving Realities: Creative Writing (Creative / In-Person)


Special Session
Creative Writing, Editing, and Publishing / Geographies of the Fantastic and the Quotidian

Patrick Gibbons (Indiana State University)
pgib@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

This creative session invites poetry and creative nonfiction submissions that explore “dissolving” or “blurring” realities as our perceived normal becomes alluring due to the attribution of fantastical elements. Our surroundings very often can define and shape us; however, it is also worth exploring ways in which our minds define and shape our surroundings, creating fictive environments populated by characters and concepts from our imaginations. Please submit a selection from the creative piece you'd like to read in the proposal spot.

How the regular and mundane assume new characteristics is essential to individual interaction with environments. This session invites poetry and creative nonfiction submissions that explore “dissolving” or “blurring” realities as our perceived normal becomes alluring due to the attribution of fantastical elements. Imagination as an agent of interest can modify the familiar, dissolving boundaries between reality and fantasy due to familiarity. External factors such as stress, financial concerns, pandemic isolation, and depression certainly contribute to such dissolving realities, but the formation of unreal connections can also evolve from routine and the realization that certain routes are always taken or certain physical objects are consistent throughout an individual’s existence. Recalling Gilman’s chair “that always seemed like a strong friend” or the “kindly wink” from the knob of her bureau, everyday objects advance their familiarity into something more, something fantastical. Individuals apply a Baudrillardian map onto the spaces they occupy, the mind applying a coat of hyperreality as a painter alters the appearance of a room with a brush and a fresh gallon of paint. Additionally, an examination of an individual’s casual use of anthropomorphism, personifications, and zoomorphism can offer insight into the ease in which individuals can dissolve or blur their realities. But what is at the heart or the core as to the reason humans engage in such plays of the mind? Poetry and creative nonfiction are uniquely situated forms of art that can access and potentially offer a degree of articulation.

Examples of the familiar that can become dissolved or blurred due to overfamiliarity include:

Objects and social media filters

Substances such as alcohol and drugs

Loneliness

Entertainment (the quantity and rate of consumption)

Shopping (apps and their various conventions such as the CART)

Time and sense of productivity

Grocery Store and other errands

Particular houses along well-known routes

Furniture

Pets