Karen Wilson Karen Wilson i(A16520 works by)
Also writes as: Karen Le Rossignol
Gender: Female
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Works By

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1 13 Ways of Looking at Lockdown Karen Le Rossignol , 2023 single work poetry
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue , no. 70 2023;
'The extremities of a state of pandemic lockdown intensify, through physical and
emotional constraints, an aesthetic of perceptual experience involving the senses, or
sense perception. Part of this pandemic perception requires living “with uncertainty,
[…] which involves living with the [cognitive] dissonance” (Aronson & Tavris, 2020).
So many artists found sensuous aesthetics to live with these dissonances (Sarasso et al.,2021), such as street performances while emptying the bins, or orchestra members
performing via Zoom (managing transition delays to suggest harmonies across
isolations). Wallace Stevens enlarges an aesthetic of the sensuous through a non-
mimetic form of practice, what he terms “the phenomena of perception”. The
phenomena which illustrate the pressures of imagination and reality infuse Stevens’s
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” the model and catalyst for this poetic suite
on lockdown. This suite is rhizomatic, exploring Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987)
“rhizome [which] has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things,
interbeing, intermezzo”(27). The intention is to map a mass of roots, avoiding a
structural tree system (beginning, middle and end) which suggests binaries or
dualities. This rhizomatic presentation of extreme moments of “being between”
presents an array of mappings or tracings, “migrations into new conceptual territories
resulting from unpredictable juxtapositions” (Berry & Siegal, n.d.).' 

(Introduction)

1 Domestic Noir : Fictionalising Trauma Survival Karen Le Rossignol , Julia Harris , 2022 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs , vol. 26 no. 2 2022;
'How can authors fictionalise trauma without cognitively suffering intense vicarious trauma in that writing process? This paper explores this question through the lens of fictionalised Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) representations in domestic noir narratives. Domestic noir operates within the constraints of a domestic space that is subverted from a sanctuary to a potential psychological space of tyranny or violence. This may include reiterative chronic traumas such as IPV or other forms of relationship violence. Viewed as a trauma fiction, domestic noir is peculiarly suited to interrogating the survivor narrative. The domestic noir models focused on IPV develop a complex combination of the victim, survivor and hero in their representations of traumatised protagonists. The effects of writing about IPV trauma may be transformed by this fictionalising into an emerging hero-as-survivor narrative. The Emerging Hero Process developed and elaborated within this paper indicates, through reiterative cycles of the protagonist’s emotional and behavioural response, their capacity to summon the heroic act that may enable a reframed and reconciled survivor outlook. The Emerging Hero Process has evolved into an IPV writing model of a survivor narrative that may also filter or reposition the vicarious trauma of the writing process.'(Publication abstract)
1 Disrupting Leaps of Experience: Digital Storyworlds, Transformative Poiesis/Praxis and Narrative Agency Karen Le Rossignol , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT Special Issue Website Series , October no. 57 2019;

'Entering the digital storyworld of Deakinopolis (a narrative-based world of interrelated settings, characters and situations) is about imaginatively entering an alternative fictional storyworld that largely presents as factual, an experience that mirrors tertiary learners’ realities. Malouf talks of experience of story as ‘… being taken out of ourselves into the skin of another; having adventures there that are both our own and not our own ... Release … into a dimension where reality is not limited’ (2008: 19).

'The digital storyworld of Deakinopolis contains alternative or imagined realities, where learners project their own experience in making this world coherent through their engagement with potentially unsettling perspectives. To encourage agency in active learner exploration, the storyworld is suspended out of time and sequence so that participants can imagine themselves through lapsed borders into that seemingly peripheral world. The learners activate their immersive engagement in this digital storyworld through praxical experience of unsettling perspectives, with potential for disrupting singular perspectives into transformative immersion of imagination as poiesis.' (Publication abstract) 

1 Disruption and Resonance in the Personal Essay Robin Freeman , Karen Le Rossignol , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: New Writing , vol. 12 no. 3 2015; (p. 384-397)
'The personal essay, as one of the most delightfully subjective manifestations of creative nonfiction, explores what is real and tangible, refined through the intimate perspective and curiosity of the writer. In her best works, the personal essayist has the capacity to disrupt her narratives in ways that will resonate with readers who are themselves adjusting to the disruption of their own personal narrative interactions by social media tools. This paper explores the process by which fragmentary episodes become segments of a linked narrative through the capacity of the personal essayist to leap associatively from personal into universal ‘truths’. Segments coalesce into cogent entities, drawn together as a resonant narrative by themes as echoes, or the deliberate juxtaposition of fragments of story. Such segments-as-narrative are based on perceptions of the essay as a disruptive text, which by the nature of its structure reverberates metaphorically beyond the known and the familiar.' (Publication abstract)
1 Karen Le Rossignol Launches ‘The Vine Bleeds’ by J M Yates Karen Le Rossignol , 2015 single work review
— Appears in: Rochford Street Review , October - December no. 16 2015;

— Review of The Vine Bleeds : The Impact of Domestic Violence : A Woman's Journey of Spirit and Strength J M Yates , 2015 single work novel
1 Writer-as-Narrator : Engaging the Debate around the (Un)reliable Narrator in Memoir and the Personal Essay Robin Freeman , Karen Le Rossignol , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: TEXT : Journal of Writing and Writing Courses , April vol. 19 no. 1 2015;

'Subjective and personal forms of nonfiction writing are enjoying exponential popularity in English language publishing currently, as an interested public engages with ‘true’ stories of society and culture. Yet a paradox exists at the centre of this form of writing. As readers, we want to know who the writer is and what she has to tell us. Yet as writers we use a persona, a constructed character, a narrator who is only partially the writer, to deliver the narrative. How is a writer able to convey ‘true’ stories that are inherently reliant on memory, within a constructed narrative persona?

'We find a ‘gap’ between the writer and the narrator/protagonist on the page, an empowered creative space in which composition occurs, facilitating a balance between the facts and lived experiences from which ‘true’ stories are crafted, and the acknowledged fallibility of human memory. While the gap between writer and writer-as-narrator provides an enabling space for creative composition, it also creates space for the perception of unreliability. The width of this gap, we argue, is crucial. Only if the gap is small, if writer and writer-as-narrator share a set of passionately held values, can the writer-as-narrator become a believable entity, satisfying the reader with the ‘truth’ of their story.' (Publication summary)

1 y separately published work icon Voice Lines : poems 1987-1997 Karen Le Rossignol , Ashburton : CP Publishing , 1998 Z1239568 1998 selected work poetry
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