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literature

literature

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mistake

oops. while experimenting with the posting setting on supload I've posted the below poem twice. oh well.

assumption

Download Mike Cannell - assumption

relpay

assumption

after weeeks of trying to find a way to post audio, here is a text-sound composition!

assumption

when she catches

rrc

Leaves.

Leaves lie wet and ichor-green on the edges of the sky-black pavement. Dark: a mirror for the sky. Marble smooth and flecked with wisps of cloud that line the heavens like the hair of an old man. I’m not currently concerned with that though. My attention is still taken with the leaves. They run in rough lines like a rotting carpet, flattened by the constant stamp, stamp, stamp of feet and car tyres. That’s not to mention bicycles or dogs, cats, children or university students. The road curves: narrowly missing a small forest filled with stinging nettles, an army of yellowed tree soldiers that are waiting for a war that will never come and a pall of darkness that never goes away, unlike the night which never stays. It rushes like someone late for an appointment, always in a hurry to darken another doorstep or dally round tall buildings, shading shadows around rooftops and window sills.

It makes me think of death.

sp`linter

sledslope

Wrecked ring sling, flick.

Pour page lord graze.

Apple blossom skin twist- open fog garter ape
Gape plunder, project open.

Knowledge unseen over rover dog belt

Zip zap zoff apple gruff octogenarian.
Mufti toffee Rastafarian eagle
Egalitarian.

shape worm, warm rather wet
Whatever, however, cottontail

Collage college papal rape travelogue
chocolate log.

Phizmiz list dog ball forgotten.
Eye bell beg gog magog.

And end, rope pill.

Poker fog gopher stole strop trope
Mccaffery McKinley McEnoch Powell

Many happy returns to Geof

Reading dbqp today (as I do everyday) I see it's Geof Huth's Birthday. I've e-mailed him a visual poem made of bits of text from his blog, as a present. Happy Birthday Geof.

th t

slurface

the price is site

sound on blogger

I'm really not sure why exactly the people who designed blogger didn't see it as necessary to make it possible to post audio tracks. You can post pictures. You can even post videos if you are so inclined. But audio? No. Apparently I have to join another site and host my sound poetry on that and then post it as an embedded player. Now, I'm not having a go at blogger. It's a good service. I love my blog. I've been very satisfied with it and I plan to run this blog for quite a few years. But I am a sound poet as well as a visual and textual one. I'm very prolific in this field. But can I show the people who subscribed to my RSS feed or anyone who happens to see this blog? Not right now.

So as you can imagine I'm rather annoyed. frustrated too. I subscribed to streampad, as this is the only site on the blogger help pages entry about posting sound that was even remotely relevant to me. The bit where I add my music is in beta testing stage so I can't use it! I've e-mailed them to request they add me onto the list but there is seemingly no instructions on using it and frankly it seems pretty useless right now.

visual poem for jas h duke

audio

At the moment I'm trying to find a good free site that I can use to host my text sound compositions and recordings of my sound poems on so that I can post them on this blog in the form of embedded players ( the only way I know of to post audio on here). If anyone has any suggestions please leave suggestions in the comments for this post.

morals

Because we're made of influences

M i c h a e l A n t h o n y C a n n e l l

c'lot'ht

dissec'ts

skin poem

Stone wrecked

Leaf

Leapt.

Open ochre-gold god

Dipped dripped cold spawn

Vampire vocation

Ocular echo. German bite.

Sky kissed birch whistle mine.

Amphetamine goldmine go get her.

Soot

Flute

Forgotten.

Crumpled, rolled, excreted.

Into open eyes.

Dragged razor ripped cropped rope bleed.

Open peon pill-popper pit (top).

Vellum

Epsilon.

Top

Op

Hidden knowledge.

rrrss

H(y)outH

tree

Tree-
Caressed by
The wind, dances.

flustrated

subverting the linguistic norm

Staticeyes

I had to go outside to cool off. Blood was running down my arms. This happened every so often so I didn’t mind. It was the heat I didn’t like. The heat of eyes. Staring and crackling like TV static. It made my hair stand up and my feet stick to the floor. So, with every little hair prickling and prodding against the insides of my clothes, I went outside. The sky was not worth paying attention to and, to be quite honest, neither was the ground. The grass was usual and so was the sky. The clouds ambled along at their usual pace. So I did what anyone would do. I lied down on the ant-strewn until dinnertime and then went to bed.

Word For/Word

I have e-mailed a submission to Word For/Word. We'll have to see whether they accept my work. I hope they do

Idiotms

I'll be damned
, a law unto
fair dinkum.

* * * *

Set up shop,
be no bed of roses and
make way for
gory details

* * * *

Go full throttle,
give a second thoughtwhistle-stop
letter of the law.

* * * *

As a rule

* * * *

spring to mind

* * * * *

Put over the top
blue

* * * * *

in the face
get a fix on
wrong side of the tracks.

* * * * *

On pins and needles
whole kaboodle

* * * * *

See true colours

* * * *

Do a power of good
dig out
screw up
tough it out
live off the backs of

* * * *

Full swing

* * * *

No call
have the foggiest

* * * *

Move/Shift arse

* * * *

Tuned in
make an ass of
be at daggers drawn
roving eye
not believe eyes

* * * *

Grunt work
burn fingers
get real.

idendit e

word for/word

I've been reading the current issue of word for/word That came out recently. I was glad to see two of my favourite vispoets included : Gustave morin and Andrew Topel.

Gustave Morin's poems were done with his usual verbo-visual finesse.
The first poem "Curdle" is made of a number of images that seem to have different meanings as you look at them. lines of gravity defying glasses pour liquid into each other, But I at first took them to be a line of theatrical spotlights. The actual glasses themselves call to mind the glasses of milk on the Cadbury logo (I don't know if that is on Canadian chocolate bars). The title curdle also brings to mind the idea of milk.

The second poem "une douzaine de livres de brouillons scribblisme " calls to mind asemic writing, though due to the semiotic qualities of the images of books there is semantic content. The use of the term "scribblism" and the french language reminds me of early 20Th century modernism.

"Blob" and "Slash Drip up" both play with notions of legibility and are masterful and up to his usual excellent standards. I can personally recommend his book penny dreadful and I would like to at some point but some more of his books. He really is one of those visual poets whose work just blows me away again and again every time I see it.

Andrew Topel also does well on the examples show in this e-zine. His sequence called "scores" are a beautiful floating dance of letters and symbols that really make good use of the page as a space.

When I read word for/ word I don't read it in all one go, rather I savour it and read it over a few days. this is why it took me a while to mention it here. I recommend it.

Al the other vispoets are excellent . As is the code poetry feature.

The textual poetry sections is up to its usual standards . Good to see some prose poems there.
Adrian Lurssen is a good example. His poems are finely crafted Chinese puzzles that are very much stimulating.

nature poem

h((((((o))))))))le

gemini

Popeye’s pictures

Its funny how, in those old Popeye cartoons pictures always appeared on his muscles (cartoonish curves flowing around and under distended forearms). Almost as though he had televisions underneath his skin, epidermis stretched tight over knobs and panels. Wires are plugged into nerves. Nerves run around his body as he chases olive oil, chattering and hacking like a demented computer (screens screaming with images of machine pumps and hammers smashing stone blocks). I never understood why he wanted such an ugly lanky creature like her, but each to their own, I suppose. Huge chinned and twisted, he still goes after her. Intent on performing nefarious acts on her pole thin frame, somehow involving spinach no doubt.

shebang

sable

nooseflesh

acid jazz ninjitsu

Geof Huth

I was happy to see that Geof Huth mentioned my blog on his blog today. I regularly visit his blog and have a lot of respect for it. I would say to anyone interested in vispo, go to visualising poetics first, then go out from there to learn about vispo. I am glad he likes my stuff because He is someone who has influenced me a great deal. As soon as I figure out how to add a list of links onto my blog, his blog will definatly be on it.

vispo in education

Now, we all know visual poetry will never be fully be mainstream. Maybe this is a good thing, because to find really good contemporary poetry you often have to go beyond the so called "mainstream". But what dictates the mainstream and what is it? well, I suppose it's stuff that is seen more widely and is perhaps more conventional. Well perhaps not conventional, because as good as he is Ron silliman could never be regarded as conventional.

Brion Gysin said that writing was 50 years behind painting and he was very right. And still is. your average man(or indeed woman) on the street probably doesn't know much about vispo. Is anything being done?

well, a growing amount of websites and blogs about it are appearing (including mine), I only just started my blog I have no idea if people are actually looking at this blog yet. If anyone is reading this I would appreciate a few comments, just so I know I'm not talking to myself. This subject of the appeal of vispo will be something I may get back to. I am studying Creative and professional writing and English at Wolverhampton university in the UK at the moment and I noticed that there seem to be absolutely no courses dedicated to how to write and publish poetry.

The creative writing course certainly is interesting , but it focuses on novel writing and short story writing. I am essentially a poet. It's kind of how my brain works. though there is a module dedicated to poetry, they only mentioned prose poems once (I gather its not exactly popular historically with British poets) and the lecturer seemed very ignorant of visual poetry when she talked about it. She only knew of pattern poetry, and while I know that is a historically important stage in visual poetry's development, its a bit terrible to maintain this is the only kind there is. I introduced a few students to contemporary vispoets like Gustave Morin and recommended Geoff Huth's blog .
They were seemingly amazed and had never seen poetry like this. I think I did well there.

wahtch

Msia

plul

School scissors scratch.

Metal blades scratch along wood blackened by lacquer. Scissor points pricking layers of black and brown, coated with chalk dust long since fallen from a blackboard mottled with faded text. White specks like stars in a black void with wooden ground below. The blades pick out letters in the smooth tortoise shell. Phrases (largely illegible) dance and skip in yellow scratches. Sun glinting off a pair of silver moons, both stretched and sitting on ebony handles. Curled like sleeping cats, they engulf schoolboy didgets. Tattooing brittle skin with profanity. It just goes on and on.

Thought poem

a single pwoermd to start a blog

If a journey of a thousand miles can be said to start with a single step, then perhaps this poetry blog should start with the pwoermd you see in the previous post. A pwoermd (for those who don't know) is a poem consisting of one word and no title except for what the word provides. The term itself was coined by the poet and archivist Geoff Huth, though Aram saroyam is most well known for using the form in his famous poem Lighght. The combination of the words poetry and prose in my pwoermd both describe my fondness for writing prose poems and the inclusion of "rosary" gives a religious bent to it. I can't promise to make this blog as good as Geof Huth's but I will at least (as long as nothing goes wrong) try to make it interesting and stimulating. I create visual poems,asemic writing, prose poems, sound poems (and text sound compositions) and hay (na) ku along with other various types. Not everyone will regard some of my work poetry, but I assure you it all is(including the most visual
things that include little or no text)
I hope people like my poems. I have never been published on paper but I would count this as publising and I have had my work printed on a website before. This blog will also contain my musings on poetry and my theories and comments on poetry. I will use this site to promote visual and so called"experimental"(for want of a better word) poetry.

p'rosery