dbqp: visualizing poetics: April 2009

From the Center of the Industrial Revolution

Marriott Victoria and Albert, Room 441, Manchester, England

(from the Castlefield Canal Basins of Manchester)

I will have no ability to give a proper rundown of today’s events, even though today is the day before the Text Festival—just as I will have no time to properly learn about Manchester, a vibrant city with a lively past and an active present. The claim here is that Manchester is the birthplace of the industrial revolution. The first commercial railway line started about a block from where I’m typing these words. A group of us ate dinner at Tony Trehy’s apartment, which is across the street from the first (and still standing) train station anywhere.

Apr

As it is, as it has become

John F Kennedy Airport, Terminal 7, Gate 3, Queens, New York

I am sitting in the airport waiting for my plane to board. I'm on my way to the Text Festival and have little time to post anything, so it was lucky that I glanced at this card from Angela Berendt before I left so that I could admire how she had transformed a fidgetglyph of my into a perfect piece of sewing, making text into textile, as it should be, once again, of a piece. With cloth we cover ourselves.

ecr. l'inf.

Apr

Text Festival Cast of Characters

To prepare myself and anyone reading about my accounts of the Text Festival, I have put together a rough and ready guide to some of the people I expect to meet over my four days at the Text Festival. Where I know the people relatively well, I’ve written the entire description of these people myself.

Apr

Looking Forward to the Text Festival

A couple of tiny thoughts tonight as I work myself forward towards the Text Festival in Bury, England. I’m not at all packed yet, but that should be easy enough once I focus on it. I keep working on other projects in the meantime.

First, enjoy the “poom” “LULL” by Jonathan Bonner above. Bonner’s pooms are essentially one-syllable visual poems, but what a wonder this one is, written in such a way that you might be lulled into thinking it was nothing but an interesting design.

Apr

Bluestone-Summer-First-Spring-Day

Actually, that title is simply the title of the poem I just finished writing, a poem about spring, which has arisen out of the cold of winter without warning. We had had a couple of weeks of cold much like winter, then suddenly we found ourselves in the middle of a burgeoning spring: birds everywhere, even woodpeckers on our maples, the world suddenly green, if leafless, merely budding, and then just as quickly we found ourselves in summertime.

Apr

What is Oral is Visual

Since life is guided by cliché to a degree we can hardly accept, I’ll point out that the oldest cliché in visual poetry circles is

“Every poem is visual”

And I don’t disagree. The poem, any poem, makes its visual presence known, exists on the page in a physically enticing way that prose does not.

Apr

Next Week: The Text Festival

Next week, Nancy and I travel to the Text Festival in Bury, which is outside of Manchester, England. I have a number of defined roles in the festival and there will be plenty of interesting events for a traveling visual poet, so I’m looking forward to this week away from work. Also, I’m hoping to meet a number of people I wouldn’t usually meet, including Ron Silliman, who will also be featured at the festival.

Apr

Homer Simpson Swallowed His Feet

I never forgot about this gift to me from Mike Cannell, but I don't think I pointed it out either, so here's Mikes SEENWEAVE, an interesting collection of micropoems that play with language as I like to see it played with and that even make references to my life.

Apr

A Poem and Somnia

Too tired to post anything real tonight, here is a simple poem I wrote tonight, through heady sleep, the powerful call of sleep.

Apr

I Like Fike

Last Saturday, Ficus strangulensis, one of the most active mailartists I know, and a man born under the name Forrest Richey, Jr., picked up Nancy and me at the Holiday Inn Charleston House in Charleston, West Virginia so that we could meet for the first time and talk for about five hours. Fike’s mailbox is the mailbox of a mailartist, big and ready for anything.

dbqp: visualizing poetics

visual poetry, the textual imagination, and personal experience