‘Talk Recovery’ is a memoir in progress that details my recovery from alcoholism in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), using a literary form I have developed in order to mimic the AA ‘share’. AA shares occur when AA members speak in an improvised and uninterrupted way about their experiences with alcoholism recovery during an AA meeting. There are no literary works featuring AA recovery that use the AA share as their means of narration over the course of a book-length work. Given the central importance of the share in AA, this is a significant gap in the literature. Filling it is the key innovation of ‘Talk Recovery’, which enables me to unlock new ways of representing and understanding AA recovery in a literary work. To present my memoir as an AA share, I have adapted the ‘talk poem’ form invented by the US performance poet David Antin (1932–2016). There are no existing adaptations of the Antin talk poem to express themes such as alcoholism recovery, and very few adaptations of his form for any purpose. Like the AA share, Antin’s talk poems were also improvised and mostly uninterrupted oral performances that involved informal preparation. To write ‘Talk Recovery’, I repurpose and modify elements of Antin’s improvised oral composition practice as well as the distinctive typographical style expressed in his written talk poems. My AA share narration adapted from Antin enables me to communicate aspects of AA recovery and features of the AA program on the level of form – a characteristic not found in other literary works about AA recovery.
THE ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS (AA) ‘SHARE’ AS LITERARY FORM
‘Talk Recovery’ and David Antin’s talk poetry
