Becoming, by C.W. Bryan

Prose, poetry, chapbook, 36 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

This chapbook is, perhaps unsurprisingly, an attempt at Becoming. When I was twelve years old I was diagnosed with epilepsy. Up until that point, I had been what might be referred to as a happy, healthy kid, without a care in the world. I could not understand what had happened. I could not understand why it should happen to me. A diagnosis—out of nowhere.

Seventeen years later and I still struggle to understand it. How much of myself is wrapped up in this diagnosis? How much have I changed since it appeared? They are hard questions to answer internally. And so I have tried to answer them by writing. Writing with no clear end in mind; writing as an act of investigation, an act of becoming.

This chapbook is a book length blackout poem. On the left side of each page are the semi-narrative, semi-tangential prose poems of this exploration. On the right side is a blackout poem of these same thoughts. The blackout poem form reflects the uncovering of what epilepsy means to me. They are poems within poems, just as my diagnosis is a self within my self. I hoped that through this excavation of my words I could also excavate my own relationship with my brain.

Now that this project is completed, I recognize that there may be no clear answer. I understand that this life is fleeting, temperamental, and dynamic. I understand that life is ever- changing, and we must change alongside it.

C.W. Bryan is the author of two collections of poetry. His debut chapbook Celine: An Elegy was published with Bottlecap Press in 2023. His first full-length collection, No Bird Lives in my Heart is forthcoming with In Case of Emergency Press in 2025. He is currently writing with Sam Kilkenny at poetryispretentious.com.