different dimensions depending on how it is read spatially. The following
is a very good realisation of this exercise:
Example 3.8
90s market
she said he said
give me the world to live
in that unseemly impoverished
style of yours is ugly
i want beauty
compensation remains
at issue all aloof
is the truth not daring
close enough to give
is not its insecurity
good enough to trust
but then
he said she said
trust me to live
a good life it’s nothing
it’s better to die
angry young
men are famous
everywhere it’s something
don’t you want to make a name
to be different just be yourself‘90s market’ (Lyons 1996)Notice how alternative scenarios and versions arise from reading down or
across the columns. This creates different perspectives not only on the
relationship between the two people, but their views on materialism/anti-
materialism, and the importance/dangers of individualism. The personal
and social interweave but in a way which is fluid and multivalent. In fact,
there are more than three versions: as we read down and across, there seem
to be almost an infinite number of narrative and poetic possibilities.
Multilayering
A structure in which different kinds of textual material alternate and recur
is what I call a multilayered structure (Exercise 1e).
56 The Writing Experiment