"If the body remembers everything, she happened." From the Editor, Giveaway, & the Launch of Marie Conlan's Say Mother Say Hand
The launch of Half Mystic Press’ latest release Say Mother Say Hand bloomed in soil that could have so easily remained barren. Truth: our world is undoing by the moment, all its golden parts splintering into dust. So much is not okay. & who has time for respite? Who has time for music or for poetry?
As it turns out, you do. To the nearly 80 people who came to support Half Mystic at yesterday’s first-ever fully virtual gathering—so many of you who have been readers of our work since the very start—you grew something gorgeous & good out of all this darkness. What a space we made for ourselves last night—& when I say space I hope you hear salvation. Each time we see you, dear songbirds, you stun us with how loud & constant & joyful you are. You’re the best love we know. Thank you for celebrating this book as beautifully as we ever could have imagined.
In order of appearance in the photographs above, the folks who made the launch last night: me, Topaz Winters, hosting; the author of Say Mother Say Hand, Marie Conlan; Gabrielle Joy Lessans, founder of @collective.off & the Nocturne School of Lucid Writing; Shawnie Hamer, author of the stove is off at home (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018); & Sammie Downing, author of The Family That Carried Their House on Their Backs (Half Mystic Press, 2019). Thank you to the brilliant, song-soaked guests who joined us in creating this love letter, this smile in the night. We couldn’t have done it without you.
Finally, as you will know if you attended last night’s launch, we’re continuing the celebration of Say Mother Say Hand with a little giveaway! Win one of three paperback copies of the book by posting anywhere on your public social media your answer to this question:
HOW DO YOU COLLABORATE WITH YOUR GRIEF?
Please answer the question (in as many or as little words as you’d like) using the hashtag #saymothersayhand & tagging us @wearehalfmystic. You can enter on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Tumblr. The contest is open worldwide & ends next Sunday, April 26, 2020. You must be over 18 or have parental permission to enter. The best three entries, selected by author Marie Conlan, will receive a paperback copy of Say Mother Say Hand shipped anywhere in the world. May this collection help you find a way of shining the loneliness into gift.
We’re endlessly grateful to each journalist, blogger, & editor who shared a review of Say Mother Say Hand on the blog tour. A few of our favourite quotes from reviews, interviews, & essays over the past two weeks…
“The world often exists as both a stumbling block to be encountered and avoided, but Conlan manages to leap across it and through a void. She unpacks her personal emotions and experiences, while also shifting through the chaotic lives of her mother and grandmother. Both women are foreign creatures, despite the intimate connection she shares with each. Grief is an inheritance that Conlan unwinds, seeking out her own independence and connections. … What creates a family? Medical records, a dull form of a nuclear family? Or is it a series of women shaping life through their wombs and hands? Conlan is timeless, and so are each of the bodies that come before. The stumble out of body bags and old photo albums, ready to appear without a solution nor shred of evidence. Instead, their bones simply linger, lost in the aftermath of this testament.” A review by Rachel Elizabeth Small for R.
“Renata, a friend asked, how will you celebrate the birth of your book? I have been hesitant. How to celebrate a grieving? & now, spinning in the center of pandemic, what is celebration in an era of loss? Of isolation? She said resilience. I heard re-silence.” An essay by Marie Conlan for the Half Mystic blog
“Conlan’s anti-memoir is a read made of quick, short breaths. You hear it in the inimitable, unpredictable form. And you hear it against your ribs. It is an overwhelming debut, choosing to be tactile with the intangible. ... Conlan essentially makes art of dwindling memory. Set in repetition that cannot be called repetition, Conlan’s work is a tribute to knowing that the lives of your mothers bleed into your own. I am particularly impressed by the curtness of Conlan’s form. Conlan insists on completion and incompletion on her own terms over formal coherence. What does one do with a burst, an eruption like that? The emotion that streams across the work does not lend itself to bottling and naming. It is frequently interrupted by alarm. … What I find most striking in this book is Conlan’s turn to her own breathlessness, her own visceral instinct over documentation held and written and mediated by a history outside of herself.” A review by Amogha Lakshmi Halepuram Sridhar for Much Amo About Nothing
“Raw and visceral, Say Mother Say Hand defies all normalcy, yet manages to write a letter out to the reader like a message in a bottle washed up by the waves. I was so awed by the writing style itself—it bleeds unapologetically, it shows the battle scars left behind proudly. ... I think this is the beauty of Conlan’s debut work, that she transformed all the hurt and bruises, crafting it like a skilled potter, putting power and voice back into herself. Grotesque and imaginative, her poetry was unflinchingly honest. … Say Mother Say Hand is an unforgettable experience that will leave a handprint on your heart and mind.” A review by Grace Lee for Grace L. Writes
“In this debut of an entire history, stills are laid out on a table and carefully brought to life by the only hand that dares to hold them. The urgency of this telling is marked by a lack of punctuation and indents split sentences in half like remembering, or like the author isn’t sure she should tell the story to the end but does anyway, because someone needs to. … This is a story told in “whole palmfuls,” like scooping coins up from a fountain and knowing you hold wishes, but wanting to know who they belonged to more than if they came true. We, reader and author combined, fall like hopeful and shiny things, landing upon difficult truths—which times death was a suicide and which times death felt so close you could almost imagine yourself in the flowered grave, with three little girls perched on the stone above you, impatient and wanting you to wake up. … Congratulations to Marie Conlan on making dreaming out of grieving, on the courage it takes to be the storyteller for an entire lineage.” A review by River Adams for Oh Shadows
“Just because this book is not in chronological order, it doesn’t mean each page doesn’t come full circle. We have an ongoing motif of caterpillars—whether they’re biting their way through, their carcasses are left behind for the next woman’s suffering, or they are still present in the present day when “there are / still caterpillars on the window sill of the hospital room”—and jaggedness that may primarily come across as jarring only flows as the timeline progresses, particularly in the yearning and pleading energy in phrases such as ‘IpromiseIpromise.’ The main part of this anti-memoir that stood out to me is where Conlan’s grandmother’s ghost visits Conlan angrily for not trying hard to look for her lines of Jewish heritage. Instead of apologizing, Conlan points at her own collarbone, and repeats after the ghost about not trying hard enough to look for her, calming the ghost down. What’s remarkable about this part of the story is that we as readers are reminded that Conlan didn’t have to look that hard because her grandmother, her mother, and all parts of their history can be found in Conlan herself. She doesn’t need Google or historical documents to tell her that.” A review by Maya Williams for Flighty
“This book might best be defined visually as a series of diary entries by a writer whose memory is so forceful and ballistic that it shatters the traditional road of memory and flings the shards out into a suspended gel of equilibrious trauma. … Conlan doesn’t hesitate to dazzle with a clearly powerful foundation of raw poetic material. It’s surreal, hazy, stylized, and glimmering with a sheen of barely surfaced recollection. … Just as we must inherit the trauma of our ancestors, we must also inherit their dreams. In writing this book, Conlan asks the reader to carry this burden as an honor, and to dream on for the eternal narrator of this anti-memoir.” A review by Sarah Feng and Sophie Allen for Counterclock Lit
“The book stretches into the realms of dream & surreality, hinging on histories I don’t have full access to. I needed the freedom that the genre of ‘anti-memoir’ allowed in order to limn this history open, to dip into dreamscape and into the surreal as a way to offer my lineage the gift of being witnessed to the capacity it could be, to hold a new space for its trauma to be validated and moved through.” An interview with Marie Conlan for the Half Mystic blog
“Say Mother Say Hand is filled with an overwhelming sense of raw emotions. A history of generations shared in the form of poetry and metaphors. The author projected her grief and sentiment skilfully through this book. Her experiences of loss, depression and suffering were genuinely felt while reading. Just as I thought I was getting lost, she threaded me back with strong determination through her beautifully constructed words.” A review by RJ for Books Blues
“This book reads like free-verse poetry with an overwhelming sense of sadness as the author delves into the past of the women in her family, as she tries to help but comes up short each time. It almost begs to be heard aloud because much of the beauty of the story is in the lines; however, to solely hear this instead of reading it would also lose the visual impact of the lines on the pages as they tell the story as well, often written close together, or spaced out, or with accompanying shapes.” A review by Nicole Sexton for Nik’s Nook
Say Mother Say Hand is available for purchase now in paperback ($15) & PDF ($7) editions. This book is a room made of knives & the things that come after, an act of purity rising through the murk of grief. Thank you for preordering & for attending the launch & for holding this with gentle hands. If you’d like to try your luck in the giveaway, don’t forget to answer the question “how do you collaborate with your grief?” on your public social media from now until April 26, using the hashtag #saymothersayhand & tagging us @wearehalfmystic. We’re so excited to read your entries.