An online journal for experimental writing and visuals, Word For/Word has emerged with snazzy new site design for its Winter 2020 issue, number 34. Big contributor’s list with many familiar names from across the international avant garde (see above). You can view the issue here.
It’s great to be part of this one with four visual poems I created by “sampling” newspapers with cellophane tape. My favorite of that whole batch is the one in the image above. My contributions can be viewed here.
X-Peri is an online blogozine for “high experimentalism,” which seems to mean really deep space language play judging by previous installments. I’m pleased to be part of it with the journal’s last post of the year, published yesterday, Dec 23. There are four poems written in “gonch” language, which means words composed from the letters of the phrase “all gonch”: “Chac Ghanagan Colhaggach Angacalla,” “Ocanongna,” “Anga Hagna Cagacna,” and “Nallanach Choc Hanol.” Plus one image from the Gonchlog made from letters drawn from some old issue of Rhapsody magazine. You can check it all out here.
Very excited to see the new issue of Utsanga released today–this one their 22nd issue. Lots of asemic and visual poetry here from across the international avant garde, including John Bennet, Texas Fontanella, Volodymyr Bilyk, Mark Young, and many more I should be more familiar with. I’m pleased to be included with five pieces of asemic vispo from a new series of work that seems very much like a journal from a far future human colony world on another planet. You can check it out here.
Online literary magazine The Pedestal just released its Issue 85 today, marking the journal’s 19th anniversary. This one features a selection of poetry and book reviews. My poem “Contesting the Homeland” is included, part of my series dealing with lost civilizations, along with a sound file of my reading of the piece. You can check it out here.
An online journal for experimental arts, Avant Appal(achia) just released Is(sue) #8 yesterday. It includes a video, poems, visual poetry, art and stories. I’m pleased to be included with two short text pieces from my series inspired by AI language invention, “Let’s Do This” and “Das Processor,” and five visual poems with asemic elements. You can check it all out on this page–until the next issue when everything will be replaced and a few pieces will be archived: https://www.avantappalachia.com/
The Winter 2019 issue of Rat’s Ass Review was released today. Lots of great stuff in this issue. I’m pleased to be part of it with one poem called “Hot Dogs Can’t Sing.” Excerpt below. Check out the full issue here.
Just released, Otoliths #55, the Southern Autumn 2019 issue, is jam packed as usual with fine text, vispo and hybrid experiments from across the international literary avant garde. I’m pleased to be represented with two new texts, “Gravy Pills” and “Phantom Gold,” plus five new visual poems with asemic writing. You can view them here.
The texts continue experiments with AI language poems, this time using vocabulary drawn from the magical thinking of the average American. The vispo are a small selection from a kind of diary of a extraplanetary colony world.
An online literary magazine for experimental poetry, Streetcake just released its 64th issue today–the largest I’ve seen to date. This one includes my poem “Corporeal Economics.”
You can view the entire issue here.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear from Midnight Lane Boutique editor Johnny Longfellow yesterday, telling me he had nominated my poem “Ouija Leans In” for the Best of the Net Anthology 2019. He announced his nominations, which included pieces by Kimo Armitage and Joan Colby, on the journal’s website here.
Even more flattering was the thoughtful analysis he wrote of my work:
Despite its seemingly supernatural underpinnings, this poem speaks directly to the difficulties of not simply communicating with others, but of sometimes even finding the words to express a complete thought. Not simply a fine example of contemporary absurdism, this poem also illustrates the utility of using the so-called “pathetic fallacy” that many less daring writers would not even think to attempt. And, it does so with both sly humor and rich imagery.
Aside from making the piece sound smarter than it actually is, this note helped me understand how other people might read and understand one of my poems. It’s been over 30 years since I read nineteenth century art critic John Ruskin in grad school, so I had to google his term “pathetic fallacy” to find out it refers to the rather lazy poetic tendency to anthropomorphize inanimate objects, particularly in the work of Wordsworth, Keats and other Romantics. The sentimentality of a “chuckling brook” or a “jolly breeze” really rubbed Ruskin the wrong way. I wonder what he would have thought about using a Ouija board as a character in a poem?
Anyway, Johnny Longfellow published “Ouija Leans In,” along with two other poems featuring Ouija, in Midnight Lane Boutique on August 3, 2018. You can read them here.
Utsanga just released it’s third quarterly issue for the year, jammed with great cutting edge poetry and discussions of poetic possibility from across the international avant garde. I’m pleased to be represented with some new work–five vispo images with asemic writing. This is part of a much larger series that I completed this summer.
Check it out here.
