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‘Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries.’
– Sylvia Plath, ‘Blackberrying’.
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Virgo II is about late summer slipping into autumn. Melancholy and heavy ripeness. Delicious fruits that mark the end of the harvest.
It is fantasy and terror.
It is something sour and sharp. Deliciously tart.
A blackberry on the edge of ripeness, a season turning from summer to autumn.
Appetites sharpened by urgency.
Fruit clotted like blood and rich as wine.
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‘Terrestrial sweetness, so thick. The damp ground was consecrated’
– Yusef Komunyakaa
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Audio Potion:
Plant: Blackberry Planet: Saturn + Venus Dates: 4 September - 13 September Tarot: 9 of Pentacles
Key themes: ripeness and rot, thresholds, brambles, boundaries.
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Virgo II syllabus
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This syllabus includes three poems – two about blackberry season, and one retelling of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ – and one novel about the moment summer turns into autumn, which is inspired by an earlier short story.
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‘Blackberries’ by Yusef Komunyakaa
Interview excerpt – Yusef Komunyakaa
‘Blackberrying’ by Sylvia Plath
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Blackberry and Thresholds
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‘To me, blackberry’s sourness and astringency has no accompanying soothing, enlivening qualities that other rose family members offer. When I attune to blackberry, I feel tightening, constricting, binding sensations. The first time we sat together, I felt fear. I noticed there was protection too, as if something malicious was being absorbed on my behalf. Words like fortifying and clearing. Images of gates, boundaries, and thresholds came up a lot. I don’t get “comfort” with blackberry; I get clarity. I feel the structures of my body solidifying and within their borders, what is unnecessary is removed. ‘
‘Saturn’s Berry’ by Maeg Keane
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Ritual Notes
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Rewilding:
If you are working on an existing project, take a scene that has been causing you trouble, or that you have felt compelled to write, or that you have been avoiding. Be guided by your intuition and instinct in choosing the section that you want to work on.
With blackberry as your guide, consider what would happen to the scene if you introduced unruly appetites and urgency sharpened by passing time, melancholy, mortality or an opportunity that might be lost.
Give one or more of your characters an urgent appetite for something that they have to wrestle with or give into. It can be benign or destructive. They can give in or they can be disciplined. What happens to the scene if you introduce urgent appetites?
Generating:
If you want to write something completely fresh, consider the missing time of ‘The Swimmer’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty’. Write a piece where one or more characters find themselves with missing time. Perhaps they wake up in a strange place with no memory of arriving. Perhaps they come home and find nothing is as they left it. It can be realist or speculative, mundane or fantastic. You can write from their perspective, or from the perspective of a character who is trying to work out what has happened in the missing time.
Optional extra:
Unearthing and Blackberrying. If you are working on a longer project, and thinking about structure and shape, you might find this story constellation note helpful