SMS/SMU Genesis 16-2

So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed

Genesis 16-2 And Sarai said unto Abram, Behold now, the Lord hath restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid; it may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai.

"An Egyptian servant, Hagar once belonged to the Pharaoh who gifted her to Sarai, Abram’s wife. Abram and Sarai were past 80 and still had no children. Spending 10 years in Canaan, Sarai became impatient and offered Hagar, as a second wife, to her husband to impregnate, due to her barrenness. As Sarai’s slave, Hagar’s baby would belong to the couple. “Listen, now! Since Yahweh has kept me from having children, go to my slave-girl. Perhaps I shall get children through her” (Genesis 16:1-2)." Marilyn A. Batchelor, Hagar and Intersectionality in Feminism and Religion.

 

SMS/SMU: Asherah

 

So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed

"Asherah, along with Astarte and Anath, was one of the three great goddesses of the Canaanite pantheon. In Canaanite religion her primary role was that of mother goddess." Susan Ackerman, Jewish Women's Bible.

"Then some of the learned folks in the city decided she was made up, that she wasn't real. 'Yahweh is the only God,' they said, and the good kings tore down her high places and the sacred poles and tress dedicated to her. They had nothing good to say about her followers in Deuteronomy, Judges, Kings and Chronicles. Not a single good word. Gideon destroyed her high places at night under a cloak of darkness. King Josiah, that righteous man, didn't just cut down the poles, he burned them. He didn't just destroy the altars, he crushed them into dust. And he dug up the graves of the people there on the high places and set their bones on the dust of her altar and burned them too. Strong actions against someone who didn't exist." Alice Connor, Fierce: Women of the Bible and Their Stories of Violence, Mercy, Bravery, Wisdom, Sex and Starvation, Fortress Press, 2017.

Connor goes on to mention women who have been forgotten

"By prioritizing male accomplishments, female accomplishments become collateral damage. This approach to recording history must end. Denying acknowledgment of female achievements leads to cultural and individual identity loss. By diminishing their legacies, society reduces women to mere “ghosts.” In general, inadequate female representation in history derives from a patriarchal social construction that accredits the primary powers in our system to men, be it economic power, moral jurisdiction, political guidance, or social privilege." Melanie Michel, Cultural Erasure of Women: How Women Are Remembered in History."

SMS/SMU 2 Samuel 14-15

So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed

2 Samuel 14-15 Howbeit he would not hearken unto her voice: but, being stronger than she, forced her, and lay with her. Then Amnon hated her exceedingly; so that the hatred wherewith he hated her was greater than the love wherewith he had loved her. And Amnon said unto her, Arise, be gone.

UN Women's Global Initiative: Creating safe and empowering public spaces with women and girls

Sexual harassment and other forms of sexual violence in public spaces, both in urban and rural settings, are an everyday occurrence for women and girls in every country around the world.

Women and girls experience and fear different forms of sexual violence in public spaces, from unwelcome sexual remarks and gestures, to rape and femicide. It happens on streets, in and around public transportation, schools, workplaces, public toilets, water and food distribution sites, and parks.

This reality reduces women’s and girls’ freedom of movement. It reduces their ability to participate in school, work, and public life. It limits their access to essential services and their enjoyment of cultural and recreational activities, and negatively impacts their health and well-being.

Although domestic and workplace violence is now widely recognized as a human rights violation, sexual harassment and other forms of violence against women and girls in public spaces are often neglected, with few laws or policies in place to prevent and address it.

 

SMS/SMU John 8 4-5

So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed

John 8 4-5 this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned.

Ottawa Coalition to End Violence Against Women (OCTEVAW) unites organizations and individuals in the Ottawa region who are working to end gender-based violence.
"In Canada, women are 20% more likely to be subjected to violence, and Indigenous women are three times as likely to be subjected to violence than non-Indigenous women. In Canada’s territories, there is a lack of resources and support for women experiencing gender-based violence, and women living in the territories are violently victimized at eight times the rate of women in Canada’s provinces. Senior women and women with disabilities also disproportionately experience gender-based violence.

SMS/SMU Genesis 19-8

 

So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed

FemTechNet's Centre for Solutions to Online Violence

Genesis 19-8 Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes

SMS/SMU GENESIS 38-24

So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed

Genesis 38_24 And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.

“A total of 87,000 women were intentionally killed in 2017. More than half of them (58 per cent) ̶ 50,000 ̶ were killed by intimate partners or family members, meaning that 137 women across the world are killed by a member of their own family every day.”

Global Study on Homicide, Gender‐related killing of women and girls, United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, November  2018

https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/GSH2018/GSH18_Gender-related_killing_of_women_and_girls.pdf

May 5th is the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG).
“Each year on May 5, we mark the annual Red Dress Day and the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls by wearing red and honouring the lives of the lost women and girls across Canada,” said Ontario Regional Chief RoseAnne Archibald. “Today, I am encouraging all to participate and stand with us in honouring the lives lost while forging a path toward a gender-balanced, safe space for all Indigenous women and girls, where they will be treated with dignity and respect always.”Ontario Regional Chief RoseAnne Archibald, Chiefs of Ontario. 

SMS/SMU Matthew 5-28

 

So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed

   Matthew 5-28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. 

So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed

 Numbers 31 – 17-18 “Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.”

So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed will respond to ongoing patriarchy and the oppression of women through visual poems which take passages from the Bible as found text. The Bible continues to be used to justify violence and hatred against women and other marginalized groups. The work will honour and celebrate women who are silenced, unnamed and erased.

The poems will take the shape of the female body using various clothing items from Biblical garments to mini-skirts and lingerie, iconic images and the naked body as represented in art and popular culture. The work is a celebration of women and a response to violence and abuse toward women, the male gaze, objectification, and exploitation, fatphobia, issues of beauty and acceptance and the poor treatment of women in the fashion and garment industries, extrapolating to the labour of women in general.

 

Evangelical and ultra-Conservative readers of The Bible have exploited its poetic language to use as justification for hatred and violence. Visual poetry is a way to subvert this literalism.

I will be working on this project for the next two months, and will post visual poems here. I will include research sources and also share information and resources related to ongoing misogyny and gender-based violence. 

thanks to the Ontario Arts Council which funded this project through two Recommender Grants for Writers, and thanks to Invisible Publishing and the New Quarterly for recommending the project. 

The Vispo Bible: Exodus 38 in Beir Bua Journal III

 thanks to Michelle Moloney King of Beir Bua Journal for including Exodus 28 from the Vispo Bible in issue III of the journal. It's jam packed with great vispo!

3 essays to support Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry now on line

1. Women at the Vanguard of Visual Poetry, If Only We Had Known: Overcoming Erasure to Make Connections Between Past, Present and Future Women Making Visual Poetry
published in Periodicities, March 23, 2021. thanks to the editor, rob mclennan.


2. Women Making Visual Poetry As Radical Acts of Witness, Memory and Insistence
published in the Typescript, April 5, 2021
thanks to the editor, Theresa Smalec.


3. Creating Culture Among Women: A Conversation with Imogen Reid: Friendship and List Making for Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry
Part 1, April 7, 2021
Part 2, April 9, 2021
Part 3, April 12, 201
published in Wisdom Body Collective
thanks to the editor, Amy Bodeba


stay tuned for essays in print publications eventually.
and please keep supporting and sharing the IndieGoGo campaign for Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry, A 21st Century Anthology edited by Amanda Earl and forthcoming from Timglaset Editions soon!


thanks to all the contributors and all who've supported the book and the campaign. you're lovely.

Please support Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry

 

Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry, the Video

Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry, the Video We are raising money to fund the publication of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry, a 21st Century Anthology to be published by Timglaset Editions this spring. With your help, we will center and celebrate the vast contributions of women making visual poetry, open up and create new spaces. Back the campaign here. igg.me/at/judith We invited women making visual poetry to send us a video saying “I make visual poetry” in their own language. Thank you to the women who star in the video: Rosaire Appel, Kimberly Campanello, Angela Caporaso, Paula Damm, Johanna Drucker, Amanda Earl, Cinzia Farina, Claudia Frau, Naoko Fujimoto, Carmen Herrera Castro, Ava Hofmann, Satu Kaikkonen, J.I. Kleinberg, Dona Mayoora, Lina Nordenström, Mary Olivanti-Duerksen, Astra Papachristodoulou, Amy Rodriguez, Silje Ree, Imogen Reid, Mado Reznik, Viviane Rombaldi Seppey, Karen Sandhu, Shloka Shankar, Kate Siklosi, Kristine Snodgrass, Ana Verónica Suárez, ayşegül tözeren, Seet van Hout, Ankie van Dijk, Terri Witek. Thank you to Sara Riis Hasselskog - video, Testbild! – music and Jennifer Pederson - voice over

The Grey Girls' Guide to the Alphabet of Trauma, a work in progress by yrs truly

 

a field guide to fanciful bugs reissued by above/ground press

 thanks to rob mclennan for republishing a field guide to fanciful bugs, originally published as an e-book by avantacular press in 2010.

you can purchase a copy of the chapbook here. 

the League of Canadian Poets publishes Exodus 23 as a poem of the day

 Thanks to the League of Canadian Poets for publishing three of my visual poems from the Vispo Bible, including Exodus 23. 

Just Fucking Around

 

The Vispo Bible: Glue, Strings and Binder Rings published by the Babel Tower Notice Board

 Extreme gratitude to the darling Babel Tower Notice Board for publishing this essay, in which I talk about the various bindings and publication styles that have been part of the Vispo Bible's journey from creation to dissemination. 

You can read the essay here.

Vizpo Dahlings of 2020

 I think it’s fair to say that 2020 was a shite year for most things but a great year for visual poetry. Here are a few folks that stood out in the pandemic year and made my world a better, more joyful, imaginative and thoughtful place.

 Joakim Norling: Timglaset Editions (Sweden) is dedicated to the publication of visual poetry. Joakim treats the work of the visual poets with great care and thought. Three works that I return to again and again for their strength, imagination, and memorability:

 Language, Lines and Poetry by Dona Mayora

Mothers’ Milk by Sacha Archer

Asemic Walks: 50 templates for pataphysical inspection, now in its 2^nd printing by Hartmut Abendschein

Anna Hedenrud, on ameocha

Clara Daneri & Anthony Etherin: Penteract Press (UK)

In 2020 the press has published a number of great titles, including Gary Barwin’s colorful and playful Ampers&thropocene, Read(writ)ing Words: A Meandering Material Dialogue by Rachel Smith and Myth & Metamorphosis, which includes Clara’s intricately made Llud and Llefelys, Sacha Archer’s Narcissus and Even the Best Laid Plans, Wunjo & Haglaz by SJ Fowler, Gary Barwin’s Two Water Sigils, for Rita Wong, Dani Spinosa’s Megara and Eurydice, Maria Celin Val’s Athena (Wisdom), the Labyrinths of Rachel Smith and Luke Bradford and James Knight and his Minotaur pieces, not to mention more books that I wish I’d had the money to purchase. A shout out to Anthony for his astounding palindromes which I guess can’t be considered visual poetry…or can they? 😊

 They also have a great podcast with favourite and informative episodes such as the Visual Poetry panel episode with Laura Kerr, Derek Beaulieu and Rachel Smith, and the episodes with Gary Barwin, Kate Siklosi and Dani Spinosa. They’ve had 18 episodes so far and I intend to listen to earlier ones that I have missed too.

Dani Spinosa (Canada) for her engaging book OO: Typewriter Poems published by Invisible Books, and To Whom Shall I Sing published by Noir: Z.

Kate Siklosi (Canada) for her beautiful collection , 6 feuilles, published by Noir:Z and the work elsewhere, which is activist and environmental as well as being beautiful and well-made. Kate and Dani are the proprietresses of Gap Riot Press, which has started to publish some memorable and beautiful visual poetry including PSW’s ON LINEatureS and sophie anne edwards river writes.

 Sacha Archer (Canada), for Mother’s Milk, obviously, but also for all the creative and fascinating work he does, from video to the paper pushing pieces scanned and posted on Instagram and FB. He’s also the publisher of Simulacrum Press, a press which has published numerous great works of visual poetry and other stuff too.

 Petra Schulze-Wollgast (Germany) for her own work but also for ToCall, a Mimeograph magazine with contributors from all over the world.

 Women Asemic Writers and Visual Poets Global (WAAVe) the powerhouse group on FB helmed by the delightful Kristine Snodgrass. I love being part of this group.

 Satu Kaikkonen (Finland) who gifted me several gorgeous minimal chapbooks this year and whose work is stunning and beautiful as always.

 Renee Gladman (USA) for One Long Black Sentence (Image Text Ithaca Press) with Anindex by Fred Moten, a creative, playful and beautiful book of asemic drawings, grids, lines and architecture that I received as a gift from a dear friend and that spark my imagination every time I open the book.

 Ava Hofmann, (USA) visual poet and editor of Sporazine, a journal of experimental literature written by trans people. I love Ava’s work, which I see mostly through Twitter, but this year her poem [A WOMAN WANDERED INTO A THICKET] published by Puritan Magazine blew everyone away. Sporazine’s 1^st issue was an eye-opener for me, including some writers and visual poets I had heard of before, such as Zefyr Lisowski through Ghost City Press, and some who were new to me, such as essa may ranapiri.

 Gregory Betts (Canada) for Sweet Forme from Apothecary Archives is a delight of whimsy and wonder and colour. Is it vispo? Why yes, yes it is.

 Astra Papachristodoulou (UK) for her own work and for her Poet Atlas exhibits, which are fascinating and push the boundaries of visual poetry.

 Silje Ree (Norway/UK) for her work and also for her multilingual exhibits of visual poetry through Mellom Press established this year.

 Sarah J Sloat for Hotel Almighty (Sarabande Books) a delightful erasure book of Stephen King’s Misery.

 Gary Barwin, (Canada) who is always pushing the boundaries of visual poetry and everything else with all of his work, his videos and books and responses to others’ work.

 Derek Beaulieu (Canada) for his work and for his continued promotion and attempts at raising awareness about the world of concrete/visual poetry, both its history and contemporary work. On the Penteract Press podcast visual poetry panel episode I mentioned earlier, Derek said something that I found inspiring and motivating: he talked about the need for writers and artists to constantly push and challenge themselves. This is something that I think is essential for my own practice.

 Kyle Flemmer, the Blasted Tree (Canada) for all the work he does with the press and this year for Concrete and Crystal by sophie anne edwards (gifted to me by a dear friend), his own publication of a clematis leaf in homage to Kate Siklosi (Purple rain: 100 Petals for Kate Siklosi), and Ben Robinson’s Without Form, which translates the numbers of the Bible into visual poetry. I am so delighted to see more visual poetry with the Bible.

 All of the women in Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979 published by Primary Information. a long overdue book and acknowledgement of great work by these women and more who were paving the way (groan!) for future women visual poets, including me! The effects of erasure of women in visual poetry, literature, art, film etc…are long lasting, depressing and inhibiting.

 Katy Telling for her wonderful interviews with visual poets and others, including Sascha Aktar whose visual poetry collection Not Been Seen As Such published by IceFloe Press earlier this year looks exquisite.

 Richard Capener, The Babel Tower Notice Board (UK) for including and promoting and introducing me to some great visual poetry such as Labyrinth: In Search of the Answer I and II by Rachel Smith, Madelaine Culver, Katy Telling, T.W. Selvey, Maggs Vibo, Max Shirley and Cat Chong, not to mention the playful and experimental work of the entire first year of TBTNB.

 No doubt there are numerous vizpo dahlings I haven’t had a chance to learn about yet. I could easily mention all of the visual poets in the latest issue of Experiment-O for example. To those of you I haven’t mentioned, give me a shout and links to your great work and others so that we can all learn more together.   I look forward to more vizpo dahlilngs in 2021.

The Vispo Bible: Acts from the New Testament Now Completed

Acts 27

I began Acts in February and completed it today, December 19, 2020. That makes a total of 319 pages since beginning in June, 2015. For Acts, I began to use Adobe Illustrator, moving from Photoshop and that slowed me down a bit. I had to learn new software and also figure out how to glitch it for the types of transformations I do to text for the Vispo Bible. While there are repetitive processes involved in using software to create visual poetry, I find that at least for this work, I still need to bring a sense of exploration, whimsy and imagination to the work. 

I feel that the pandemic made it difficult to focus. I also began a new part of the Vispo Bible, not based on including every verse and chapter from every book, but rather taking individual passages and using them as the source text for So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed, which is a project to turn misogynistic text in the Bible into affirmations of women's strength and resilience via shapes which resembles women's bodies, many wearing dresses, corsets and other garments associated with women as a type of reclamation. We will see what 2021 brings. 

 

Working with Adobe Illustrator; Progress on the Vispo Bible

 

Acts 11 from the New Testament

Photoshop has become a pain in the ass, constantly upgrading and making it difficult to work with. Since Adobe is forcing me to relearn everything anyway, I've been learning how to make visual poems in Illustrator, which I have been told by fellow visual poets is a good tool for such. Since the summer I have been making little visual poems, of one letter or one word, going back almost to my early days of working with MS Paint in 2005 or so, when i focused on an individual letter or word. But I've finally gotten to the point where I can work with whole blocks of text again, so I made the next visual poem in the Vispo Bible: Acts 11 from the New Testament. I began Acts in February of this year, just before the pandemic. Many other things distracted me, but mostly it was the annoyance of Photoshop's constant upgrades that slowed my progress. I feel now that I can resume work on Acts and hope to have it completed by the end of this year, all being well.

For those interested, or perhaps keeping track, I've said that the Vispo Bible is a life's work. I began it in 2015. Here's the progress so far:

This year I have also taken a side trip, going through the Bible for passages about women, both named and unnamed, and started a new section of the Vispo Bible called So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed. You can see examples here on the Pi Review whose editor kindly published the visual poems, along with poems on the women of the Bible. 

I have plans to look thematically at various subjects in the Bible and recently made this piece entitled Leviathan, but made in Photoshop in the summer:

Job 41: 31 He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment.

I haven't been submitting new chapbook manuscripts for the Vispo Bible. I want So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed to be a trade book in full colour. I don't expect it to be ready for some time, but if you have any ideas on who might publish it, I'd love to hear them.

The Vispo Bible: Revelation published by Timglaset Editions is now available as a free pdf

 Timglaset Editions has kindly made free pdfs of sold out books, including Revelation, from the Vispo Bible. take a look here. there's a vast catalogue of joyous work. Revelation was published in November, 2018. almost two years ago. so happy that Joakim Norling accepted my query. it was the start of a great friendship and mutual appreciation of visual poetry.