December 5, 2010
August 19, 2010
Musings on the Current State of NOTACHOREOGRAM by Travis Wyche
The following is a selection of recent writing/concrete poetry/rantings from Travis Wyche. More can be found at his site: www.traviswyche.com
March 21, 2010
Nina Katchadourian
Sorted Books project
The Sorted Books project began in 1993 years ago and is ongoing. The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections. The process is the same in every case: culling through a collection of books, pulling particular titles, and eventually grouping the books into clusters so that the titles can be read in sequence, from top to bottom. The final results are shown either as photographs of the book clusters or as the actual stacks themselves, shown on the shelves of the library they were drawn from. Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library’s focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies — a cross-section of that library’s holdings. At present, the Sorted Books project comprises more than 130 book clusters.
February 28, 2010
Dom Sylvester Houedard
dom silvester houédard (1924-1992), or dsh, as he is correctly known, was a Benedictine monk of Prinknash Abbey, Gloucestershire who made significant contributions in many fields, including theology and poetry.
dsh was born in Guernsey in 1924, and educated at Jesus College, Oxford, from 1942-1944 and 1947-1949, and at St Anselmo, Rome, 1951-1955. Between 1944-1947 he served in British Army intelligence. In 1949, he became a monk at Prinknash Abbey, Gloucestershire, and he entered the priesthood in 1959. He made major contributions to theology and, inspired by the Second Vatican Council, became a luminary in the ecumenical movement. dsh was particularly respected for his work with the Ibn ‘Arabi Society and with Buddhist scholars. He was also renowned as a translator of religious texts, in 1962 he published his translation of the Office of Our Lady and he played a leading role in the Jerusalem Bible translation of 1961 in the capacity of literary editor for the New Testament and sub-editor for the Old Testament.
However dsh was best-known as as an outstanding exponent of ‘concrete poetry’ (visual poetry). He invented the ‘typestract’, a form of poem that took up the pattern making possibilities of the typewriter. His visual poetries were frequently exhibited both at home and abroad. His most famous celebrated poem was “Frog-pond-plop”, a translation from the Japanese haiku of Matsuo Basho (1644-94), which he presented in the form of an opening poem following an origami unfolding principle. Although considered avant-garde , dsh considered he was also continuing long-standing poetic traditions of the Benedictine order. dsh corresponded widely with leading poets, artists, theologians and philosophers; his address book was said to have contained 3,000 names.
Simon Cutts & Coracle Press
Simon Cutts, writer, artist, designer and founder of Coracle Press and Gallery, offers a generous helping of recent writing in this collection of poems, 1988-1998. Within the pages one finds “addendum erratum,” a bookmark with a poem (loose within), as well as “an ode for the recovery of an olympia 66 typewriter” and “The Rubber Stamp Mini Printer Series 1.” Mr. Cutts’s approach to the tradition of printing, a subject and field that this book shows has played a significant part in his life, is both serious and personal while maintaining a playful attitude. His language is spare and vivid, often illuminating small details within a simple line and quickly presenting an idea or moment. The poems within these pages offer a glimpse into a life that admires a printing press as much as the natural world and a page with words as much as the personal world.
“Every once in awhile Simon Cutts makes a pure and simple poem (nothing is pure and nothing is ever simple, so what?)
February 22, 2010
January 30, 2010
Concrete poetry – Defined
Concrete poetry or shape poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on.
It is sometimes referred to as visual poetry; a term that has evolved to have distinct meaning of its own, because the words themselves form a picture. This can be called imagery because you use your senses to figure out what the words mean.
November 1, 2009
RECOMMENDED READING: Visible Language
Visible Language is concerned with research and ideas that help define the unique role and properties of written language. A basic premise of the journal is that writing/reading form an autonomous system of language expression which must be defined and developed on its own terms. To this must be added research and ideas that help define the presentation of information within the digital arena. The shift from page to screen is comparable in its significance to the shift from manuscript to print. Developing the knowledge base and conventions for this new media will take time and challenge our ability to move beyond the book and into more fluid and relational systems of presentation.
RECOMMEND READING MATERIAL: The Great Bear Pamphlets
U B U W E B :: The Great Bear Pamphlets.
Published by Dick Higgins, Something Else Press books contain offbeat and avant-garde material in a neat and tidy, yet quirky form. In 1962 Fluxus founder George Maciunas proposed to publish Higgins’s first major collection–a cross-section of his writing for a year following April 13, 1962, the date Higgins had composed one of his favorite works from the “Danger Music” series and, coincidently, the birthday of Thomas Jefferson. Maciunas’s notion of publishing revolved around the hand-assembled small-edition art multiple that proved an impossible format for Higgins’s four hundred-page manuscript. Maciunas informed Dick that he couldn’t have the book ready until “a year from next spring” at which point he retrieved the scripts, had a few drinks–and, in Higgins’s own words “went reeling home to Alison Knowles, with whom I was living at the time. I said we’d founded a press and she said, ‘Really? What’s it called?’ ‘Shirtsleeves Press.’ ‘That’s no good. Why don’t you call it something else?’” And so he did. Higgins’s editorial idea was innovative, pragmatic and utopian all at once–the plan was to compose a series of “Variations on a Theme of Book.” He described this project as the opportunity “to publish source materials in a format which could encourage their distribution through traditional channels, however untraditional their contents or implications&to introduce European materials and always to have a balance between European/American, famous, infamous and unfamous, past and present.” He wanted to present the work in a trade book format rather than in the small press style per se (often strange and beautiful rough-hewn miracles). This idea was picked up by a great many small press editors fifteen years later in an attempt to make the books look more like “real books” and therefore to function more efficiently within the real world.
