Researching Briseis

I didn't do extensive research on Briseis before beginning to write my poem. I did some cursory research from the materials I could readily get online. It was fascinating to realize that not a whole lot of modern writers have taken her up. And of course, in Iliad she does not get more than a few lines. I have long wanted to write about sexual violence.

In 2005, I had written a fairly confessional poem on rape. The feelings in there were raw, and most of the times whenever I placed it in a workshop, it had the effect of total silence. I can understand the reasons. Sexual violence does have that silencing effect in general. But when it is explored in a poem, people don't necessarily want to deal with it because they are scared of treading on some terrible personal experience. I would be too. Then again, when personal experience gets written into the body of a poem (or a story or novel), critiquing that text is helpful, and I would say, even an imperative. Because in doing so, a workshop helps a writer to communicate the complexities of that personal experiences more effectively.

But by 2010, I am fairly ready to create some distance between my personal experiences and that poem. Briseis' name somehow leapt from the page. In lots of ways, I think, it's because I have been thinking about the kind of role an occupying army plays. Kashmir,Manipur,Jangalmahal,Iraq, Palestine...how does the occupation look from the perspective of a woman? I wrote the first draft of the poem, didn't do a whole lot of research. Because I didn't necessarily want the research to overwhelm me or the yet-unborn poem. Rather, I wanted to explore the basic premises of this character, before launching into an exhaustive research.

But what I found out was, I can't really explore the vicissitudes of Briseis' life until and unless I familiarize myself more with the realities of her life. The material details. The details can be tweaked to suit my purposes only when I begin to "know" about them. So, now I am trying to go back to the research work. Especially since I have the basic outline of the poem, and I know where I want to go with it, I also know where I want to go with my research. I have ordered a few books, couple of academic monographs, couple of translations of Greek plays, and I might just check out some more from the library.

And here is what I am using as my springboard:

http://www.stanford.edu/~plomio/briseis.html