I am pleased to announce that Coach House Books has recommended the Vispo Bible for an Ontario Arts Council Recommender Grant for Writers. This is the first grant I've ever received for visual poetry. I am grateful to the Ontario Arts Council and to Coach House Books. I thank the Ontario provincial government for continuing its support of the arts.
I have a visual poem in “Determined Hearts, A
Frankenstein Anthology," which commemorates the 100th anniversary of
the book by Mary Shelley in 2018. thanks to editor, Jacqueline Dorsey for including my work.
This is the third chapbook of mine published by Puddles of Sky. The first was Of the Body and the second was Une Semaine dans la Vie de l'Alphabet inside Illiterature Three.
Puddles of Sky is a great press. Buy chapbooks and other great sundry small press delights.
I have just completed the third book of the Old Testament for my project, the Vispo Bible. I worked on it from November, 2016 to March, 2017. It contained 27 chapters. A few pieces will appear in an anthology made by Renegade Press, run by andrew topel.
I will continue to alternate between the Old and New Testaments.
Pieces from the Vispo Bible appear in h&, Illiterature (Puddles of Sky Press), Our Teeth, Dreamland, Brave New Word, Ustanga, as a leaflet published by No Press, & are forthcoming in untethered magazine. A few pieces were also displayed as part of a University of Ottawa exhibit and talk about contemporary visual poetry.
I've also posted a few pieces on this blog, & on Tumblr. The entire Vispo Bible's Book of Genesis translation is on YouTube:
3 pieces from the Vispo Bible's Book of Exodus, Old Testament have been published on Ustanga.it. thanks to Ustanga for being such an interesting site for experimental & visual poetry from all over the world.
as part of a graduate course given by Professor Robert Stacey. PhD student, publisher, poet and dear friend, Claire Farley interviewed me for the presentation and lovingly displayed my work as part of an exhibit on visual and concrete poetry at the university.
the conversation was fascinating and fun. i'm glad to see that students are being introduced to visual/concrete poetry. when i first heard of such, i was amazed. the possibilities are endless.
thanks to Claire for this great photo, for the wonderful display and for choosing my work as her subject.
i'm now working on the Book of Leviticus, the third book in the Old Testament. I've finished Genesis, Exodus in the Old Testament, Revelation and Jude in the New. onward!
the Book of Revelation in the New Testament has 22 chapters. I worked on Revelation from March to May, 2016. The Book is full of colour, texture, beasts, chaos, disaster and symmetry through
numbers, particularly even numbers. These visual poetry pieces, which contain
all the text from each chapter are attempts to render the above elements.
Note
that the numbers in Revelation also have to do with the Golden Sequence of Phi,
according to some mathematicians. This sequence appears in nature in
nautilus shells, sunflowers, peacocks
tails and other phenomena of nature. These visual poems attempt to articulate
similar shapes, using layering of even numbers of the text to recreate them. The image below is Revelation, Chapter 3.
My visual poetry has been exhibited three times so far. In Russia and Windsor, Ontario, as part of the Last Vispo Anthology and now in Brazil as part of Mirages: the XXIV Congresso Brasileiro de Poesia(XXIV Brazilian Congress of Poetry).
The work was part of the collection of 152 visual poems from 44
countries on display from 13 untill 30 September 30, 2016, in the Fundação Casa das Artes (House of Arts Fundation) in Bento Gonçalves city, Brazil. I find it very exciting when my work travels & rubs shoulders with the visual poetry of others. I was very pleased to be invited to participate. Thank you to the organizer, Tchello d’Barros. Take a look at the pieces in the exhibit, which are on display over on FB. they're amazing!
i'm not good at remembering hallmarks, anniversaries, etc, but looking thru my files, it seems i've been creating visual poetry for a decade. i love the whimsy of it, the close attention it requires, the way it makes my eye & mind & body learn a new language. it's taken me down some interesting paths, caused me to be introduced to a world of creative people i would never have met otherwise, both living & dead. i don't intend to stop playing around with vispo. watch this blog.
in the meantime, here's one of the first visual poetry series i ever had published. it was published in 2007 at UnlikelyStories.org & created in 2006. Entitled "Red."
