Marco Giovenale, 6 Glitchasemics

Marco Giovenale, 6 Glitchasemics

Michael Mc Aloran, Untitled #2 from vapour tones

Untitled (Oil on Canvas, 2003), image by Michael Mc Aloran 

Untitled #2 from vapour tones

   as through the neck-snap winds a regal flowing of the blood of silence(d) overtures blossoming within the weight of flesh of broken hours of fragments felt where to having been is of the else neither of the none unspoken from lapse till lapse once more of the eye’s design it is the absence of one thousand lightless pageantries skinned as of begun throughout the nectar of all that ever was & ever of the non-speech of it where the unsung clasp breaks upon nothing more denounced cold edge of the bite of nullity collapsing into dark what of it senseless attrition of the depth carving out the breath where skull is once & once only of the sky’s expulsion of the collision edge of sarcophagus tears breaking from fear till fever sensed the stun what quarry exigent of blood of further blood flesh further nothing as if demolished where haven shiv clefts the meat of pulse as if to echo-prism collage in feast of din & static observed paring away through the cold chase of eye as revealed to be of the were where vacuum tread brings tears to the eye-line & then no more a spat out solace of unto demarcate is to further onwardly misspoken the vibrating teeth in a bitter light through which was once unsaid yet not a trace to bear when all is lapse in the freedom of lapse the lack of burning entities & the severance of dissolve what colours etched into the sands only to be reclaimed by the oxide sweep of the neck-snap light casting its contaminate from out of foreign in the exile burning deep into from out of skip along little children through the decapitative hours & the break stun ashen echoing out through cavern of skull meat dense as of the singular shadow’s longing for the silenced ever-in nothing of the soldered dereliction amassed in lapse along in entity of blood’s confetti settling upon the skin the breathless of it speaking of the once worthwhile the silent thrust of blade into the dark what dark what stripping the skyline through which the ocular raves all having nothing other than to break before the wastage of bone pageantries & the revolt through the hours of horror spent through (the-the) key turns the lock is devoid a doorway opens into nothing ever-eye untold reeks as if it could it is the redolent of what once was to parry unto blow as sunken in the reek of all the breaking broken passage of where stun obsolete collapses into soundless silence a room emptied of all but the shadow biting its way into white-washed walls the surface peeling away as of the worst possible ending it all said it is the spinal cracking the bind the cast the exposed in none what else nothing of it in the white heat sudden in outcry of the turning of some malignant screw in the pulse bulb of flesh stretching the light to limitless abounding nothing to breathe of nothing to observe no other than the flourish of flame in the rotting pelts of times cast breaking as once done given to reduced paroxysm where the soiled skin devoutly kneels upon a placate of nullity as the broken terse is the body vocal obsolete skinned as if to follow onwardly through the demise of it a lack a taste of it yet nothing of in the rudiment of it endlessly forgotten only to resurgence ever through the bankrupt solace of where the absolved broke jaw of words in flesh-deep no ever of it ever to trace through vapour tones & the breaking of it of the light struck from the nothing of all of the null of which gathering into a broken spell of dis-becoming gnarling upon as of a whipped starved canine the blood coming to the fore excised tones of vapour traces shed in the barter for of winds of the relapse throughout cold colours of demise given to silence breathless the words to follow through catacombs of the endless night where once was weighted by the meat of sentience shut short grasping for the film to cover the eyes a frugal exit of two-three-four as was of the nothing of from which to claim through bitter lights becoming of the dredge it falter lung abort as once was in the never having sudden to evacuative din reflexive ever-hollow bound as roundelay it turns in the cracked skull turning from the skyline bled as of it is bitten be the damned by biting of the none that cannot ever other than extrication be that cannot other than all holier than till trace relapse skinning in a pit of sound(less) uttered fallen to landscape where the worst to follow onwardly seeking lack sought to colour-chase the breaking of asunder stray in the reek of non-echoing stead what said echoing throughout the blood of it thankless mire of the oceanic cluster breaking upon sands illusory where to the teeth of it glimmer in moonlight cut cold what trace of hence given expiration nothing of the said nor done or other than through fleshed verandas these silent landscapes of butcher’s colony where orchard bones a swim of light reflected traceless devour of the colourless excise where of till lack as the offal unspoken uttering forth cold damage listless brace in lack of genuflect all said what spoken of the incision mark where crucifixion taste is of the blind circuit collide with the pulse of dead stone arbitrary expulsion traceless to become through the out-breathe till knock yet of yet once a carnival of funereal lights of cremation talons the dense white broken vocal foraging unfelt for the amber long burning shadow throughout in a wastage of breath cold chamber reckless the body broken vocal oft to be what lights never of the in nor of gaining no ground where atrocity is the peeling away the skin the meat the veins the innards revealing nothing more of what was from the beginning echoing out silently into black as if it ever-if mattered of the neither colours of the blind-sighted closes the shutter snap down to hide the exigency the screams of nothing ever yet what is or who no nothing no oppressed by this what film given unto oxidate a skinning motion beneath where neck-snap winds expel the regal blood of fractured emblems of desire long-formed through locket traces of the nothing ever of until where to given is of some close of fist the gnarled barbed wire consciousness a grinding of teeth throughout kicked in from furious devoutly spun as the lungs lie by method of association and of the what is left of it pissing its last from the broken body vocal a shadow’s caress blinding allwhile across the vicious dark the incisor incision steel of carving out one’s tongue one’s attributes as the laughter peels the walls of nowhere & no-thing left to be the eyes revealing null and all of it irredempt where death escapes dead as a lie of which till turn of fissure through which the light sears into the carcass cavern divulged of all given as of yet still yet in a silenced trace what matter where now the vapour tones bleeding their last upon the night’s divine it-speaketh spoken of collectively forgotten the words mark nothing other than collision between the given to wither through unspeaking dense record the cold chase of it in the eye birthing out the vellum infinite null leaking through onto desert’s blood a landscape of which wherein foreign discharge sudden as if to expire the head of sands of broken glass the slashed wrists of echoing ever’s promise  breaking from the violence of till time takes a cigarette in a suicide of breath stun dim light throughout following the passage unto shadow’s entity of nor till bound through trace-becoming the distinction of which is neither of nor other than blood unto bled dry unto the flesh of which throughout the meat unto where colours reject colourings dead vapours of the collide from some succor their final expirations or of the other than biting down upon the metallic down upon cold climates decimation of all erupting into thankless loveless space ocularly overseen by the whittled eye of the within in the not a of it of (a) wrenched cold desolate winds     

  

—Michael Mc Aloran

Rupert M. Loydell, THE WAY THE ARTIST CHOOSES

Benchpress, image by Rupert M. Loydell 

THE WAY THE ARTIST CHOOSES

for Lawrence

Brigadier Benchpress aka The Meter Man

is responsible for pulling the weeds up

each morning, before making breakfast

for the regiment of his dependents.

No-one is authorized to take his place,

he schedules all the activities and sets

the calendar, starting time and pace

of each and every day. He is on his way

to a heightened sense of decorum,

currently manufactures many works

influenced by his childhood dreams

of material expanding into space.

His are crack troops, involved in

art festivals, exhibitions and projects

too secret to name. Benchpress is

creating a complete world of art,

disguised as a garage of old cars

and a scruffy family home. He narrates

the forms of life and the nature of death,

how rust and oil consume metal,

how expensive acrylic paint is,

how he despairs of people in general,

and pursues wisdom and creativity,

old steam trains to take trips on.

Tormented by absence and anxiety,

he attempts to break the still surface

of our consciousness, to stabilize,

restrain and protect. All his threats

are silent, his memories will fade

tomorrow, but we will be left with

knotted and transformed language,

imitating the unconscious, lines

drawn on canvas when words fail

and spectators cannot articulate.

Colourful retrospectives of meaning

demand new purpose for self and time,

transmit life to those who have not

been seduced by digital space.

Benchpress offers us information

about invisible and visible boundaries,

ways to leave traces of belonging,

ways to engage with ourselves.

The world is infinite with no horizons,

only marks created by our hands.

—Rupert M. Loydell

Mike Ferguson, Spambolic Q&A

The Hacker’s Paradise, image by Daniel Y. Harris 

Spambolic Q&A

1

A nutritious asplenium scat –

fern juice fern juice fern juice:

farfetched? It is an endogenous

gastrointestinal squash.

Nutritious? Like chocolate

sicklewort, but beware the

rigorous luxuriant as an

expeditious streptomycin.

2

Incinerate comradery? In a

somersault of snow,

micro snow, to quell the

filthy respite of the codomain.

3

Attach a chamfer

inequivalent, and it is just

protrusion: all slope and no

direction. A meaningless meridian?

4

A girlie girlie sorority

the siren magnetite for girlies?

It is exculpatory to trust

in this inventory of gender.

5

An anthology of psychoanalytics?

It is: vainglorious, mutineering,

eigenfunctional, justiciable by the

fortiori of devious determinates.

6

To unify the metamorphosis of

trepidation and danger into something

awesome: the pupal

of the spam?

7

Adduce audibility to confer the

audible? Then hail ye conferee

of the audibility, this leverage

in the art of hearing.

8

Imploding belief smells of

frailty. Has faith lost its sheen?

In the allegory of this olfactory

snigger, the chronicle of failure.

9

Why are October leaves

at the top of tall poplars the last to

fall? This isn’t in the spam

but just in passing.

10

The stowaway was a

hoot, singing a medley

from Oklahoma.

Was he found straight away?

He was, by a bartender with

a squint, but he heard the

dharma of song.

So he saw the light?

11

To cogitate on the

postponement of infinitum:

paean to the grapheme in a

catechism of these words?

12

The littoral loquacity of waves

in the serendipitous acquiescence

to spam. Is it the wavy sisyphean

handwriting of the imagination?

Or is it the subrogation

in the sharing of the coalitions?

I say it is all about the flexure in

the goose-bumps of meaning.

13

This salvo, this various hail,

this kingdom of words. Does one

dine in a heaven? Yes, in the collocation

of finding questions in answers.

—Mike Ferguson

AC Evans, THE DEVIL WEARS DADA

George Grosz and John Heartfield at the First Dada Trade Fair

Burchard’s Gallery, Berlin, Summer 1920

THE DEVIL WEARS DADA

Chosen for decadence, why not?

All new classic baby doll happiness delivered

Temporary emergency (gentle reminder), but we are

Now approaching artful industrial space:

Old lottery tickets, acupuncture, massage,

Esmerelda du Cane, half price – don’t miss out!

Creative Event Boutique, smash and grab

Run for it Kev! It’s the rozzers!

Eyelashes in all directions (but you’re so gorgeous)

Bongo la, bongo cha cha cha.

She was singing to herself very, very cute. Then,

Suddenly, a crowd of kinky latex pony girls

Ran yelping and screaming through the hall.

Wow!

Unlock the power to pop up anywhere, any time

Keep it personal speckled clouds (whatever).

Yeah, we’re behind the scenes at a trade fair,

Classy bricks cash & carry, confused onlookers,

Gateway to The Rising Sun, bar, BBQ and flashing novelties

Or Shade Enterprises family bucket, why not?

It’s your warm, caring workforce

Collect, swap, play, swipe right, scan this way

Local fresh. And lo! Behold! The Devil Wears Dada!

We saw a weird effigy pinned to the wall

Head like a glowing light bulb (whatever).

It’s not a joke, it’s not funny anymore.

Oi do me favour!

Diversion ends, no entry free to go,

New level… Hello? Hello?

We met up with young Melody Candles, and

Launched a drone from the top of Tatlin’s Tower

So we could film the scene; boy, the pictures were amazing!

Inter-star heavy cut to size award-winning dream designs

Pioneered by ‘Sexy Sophie from Staffs’, but

The Empress Octavia showed us the ropes and

All the tricks of the trade; you wanna climb my rigging?

Ready? Comments? Complaints? Suggestions?

No thanks, yeah, why don’t you…

Die kunst ist tot, the bitch whispered in a husky voice,

As she lovingly kissed the tip of my nose.

Bongo la, I whimpered submissively.

Welcome to the heart,

Oh nah nah nah, what’s your name?

Questions, questions, too many questions.

All across town skirt-crazy blokes are

Looking for Her,

‘Cos that She-Devil Wears Dada.

It was a great number; old press cuttings

And Constructivist make-up.

No doubt about it.

A great number, a great routine.

Well, did you evah?

—AC Evans

            

Colin Winborn, John Tauler

Tauler Erasure, image by Irene Koronas 

John Tauler

(c. 1300 - 1361)

One man can spin,

another can make shoes.

             learn

inner      [...]

[…]        hidden.       ground

late fruit            ,,           

of dust                     derive

    

            of.       is

speaking out.      recording

     sparks come

at night.   earn.       sojourn

                no

                mere.       lore            found

    

                                         erring

babbling water.     seed.             utter.               

     first light    riven.          un

shining.         is.                     strive or

abutting.                  a bounding 

is still    just                within

     [...]                                        reach          

mother

this little           perimeter.               of           

                               [...]    is not.

               aloft

—Colin Winborn

Jonathan Mulcahy-King Interviews Eileen R. Tabios

Eileen R. Tabios

Love in a Time of Belligerence, X-Peri Series, Swan World, 2017 

Jonathan Mulcahy-King 

Interviews Eileen R. Tabios

JMK: What was the first piece of experimental writing that influenced your current trajectory and how can it be seen in your work today? 

ERT: The first “experimental” poets to move me in a deep way were John Yau, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and Arthur Sze. I met them—both humans and their poems—through my book BLACK LIGHTNING (1998) that interviewed leading Asian American poets. I had just began writing poems two years earlier, so they had a major impact. At about that time, I also discovered the work of Jose Garcia Villa and I admired his eager textual experiments. Their work helped me break linear narrative which is how I began writing poems. Their poetry taught me alternative paths to poem-creation which, for me, came to incorporate a trust in the reader’s ability to help create significance out of a poem (this trust in the reader versus the poet preaching meaning at the reader also fit the transcolonial tendencies I brought to English which had been used to help colonize my birth land, the Philippines). I tend to think that the poet begins the poem’s experience, but it’s the reader (or audience) who finishes it.

This trust in the reader is seen in my work through my belief that words come with meanings and significances far beyond the dictionary and (thus) which the poet cannot anticipate. Thus, if you put any combination of words (and perhaps letters, but haven’t gotten there yet) together at random, it’s possible for a poem to surface. I push this perspective most recently in my “Murder, Death, Resurrection Project” which includes what I call “The MDR Poetry Generator”. This Generator contains a database of 1,167 lines that can be combined randomly to make a large number of poems; the shortest would be a couplet and the longest would be a poem of 1,167 lines. More information about it is available HERE: MDR I’ll also be releasing what will be this five-year poetry performance project’s monograph in 2018.

JMK: If your collective work were a piece of music, what would it be?

ERT: I actually feel this question should not be answered by me but by readers who know my work.

Once, someone ascribed cello music to my poetry, something I did not anticipate and for which I had no authorial intention. But I don’t disagree with that assessment.

JMK: I can see that, for me, it would be something post-classical, Nils Frahm, Max Richter, Olafur Arnalds, a kind of refined classical piece interceded by electronic movements…

ERT: I’m heartened they are raised by my poetry … though not from any intentions on my part—which is an example of how poetry transcends autobiography.

JMK: How would you describe the current state of poetry? Could you name some writers/ publishers that excite you right now?

ERT: Judging from poetry I recommend on LinkedIn, my top favorite publishers seem to be Ugly Duckling Presse at the number one spot, and then (in no particular order) Ahsahta Press, Black Radish Books, BlazeVOX Books, Dos Madres Press, Dusie, Farrar Straus Giroux, Flood Editions, gradient books, Graywolf Press, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Les Figues Press, Litmus Press, Lunar Chandelier Press, Marsh Hawk Press, New Directions, Norton, Omnidawn, Otoliths Books, Shearsman Books, Singing Horse Press, Talisman, Wave Books, Wesleyan and Zephyr Press.

Obviously there are authors who would be among my favorites and who are not necessarily published by the above. I won’t name names but cite instead those who actively interrogate (experiment with) form. Perhaps that’s why, looking at the above list of publishers, I have a preference for mostly those who are invested in the experimental tendency as a way to widen poetry’s expanse (there are some exceptions as some published an author or two with experimental tendencies who caught my eye but don’t generally have that interest as publisher).

I’d describe the current state of poetry as blessedly active. It’s also specifically active in reflecting the effects of technology (the internet, social media, et al). I don’t find this to be negative but I do sense some imbalance. The issue with technology is how it maximizes speed for quick results—by itself that process is not good or bad. But there is a lot to be said for its opposite, which is scale. Many things require large scale in order to be created or be effective. Scale includes time and attention. And sometimes technologically-based efficiency works against that. Right now, the scale seems tipped against works that require the depth of scale.

JMK: Is your MDR project a reflection of this culture, a kind of satire, as the work produced therein boasts a similar depth of source material, using manual algorithms to generate large-scale poetry?

ERT: Hm—I’d never thought of it as satire, though that’s certainly a legitimate read of the project, as are your reasons for thinking so. And perhaps, unconsciously on my part, there is that aspect as I’m nodding more in agreement than not.

Yet my conscious intention was actually to pay homage to the brilliance of those who created the programs that generate poetry. But I should note—partly as I’m not as technologically brilliant as those programmers—that my MDR is inspired by them but is deliberately manually generated. When I created the lines for MDR’s database, I read through each of the root source: 27 prior poetry collections. I then created lines not simply by copy-n-pasting excerpts but by noting my personal/subjective/temporal reactions at the time of readings; with hindsight, I perhaps emulated “artificial intelligence” rather than a computer program.

(As an aside, I’d like to share a link to a relatively obscure essay I wrote about my loving engagement with one of the contemporary world’s most adept poet-practitioners of technology/computer programs, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen: Moria Poetry You can see that I rely on manual versus computer programming partly due to my beliefs in subjectivity.)

The MDR certainly poses several layers of implications about poetry and modern society—or I hope there are. But several of these significances are as up to the reader as they are to me.

JMK: How would you describe “Babaylan Poetics” to a new reader, and the personal and political motivations behind this form?

ERT: “Babaylan” refers to an indigenous Filipino leader who functions as a healer and  community leader, among other roles. I had referenced the term to relate to indigenous Filipino practices, specifically “kapwa,” a construct of Filipino psychology meaning togetherness. That is, that all beings are related. In an earlier poetics essay, I’d correlated these indigenous elements with my poetics as such:

There’s an image from pre-colonial Philippine times of a human standing with a hand lifted upwards; if you happened to be at a certain distance from the man and took a snapshot, it would look like the human was touching the sky. I’d described the significance of this image as the moment, the space, from which I attempt to create poems. In the indigenous myth, the human, by being rooted onto the planet but also touching the sky, is connected to everything in the universe and across all time, including that the human is rooted to the past and future—indeed, there is no unfolding of time. In that moment, all of existence—past, present and future—has coalesced into a singular moment, a single gem with an infinite expanse. In that moment, were I that human, I am connected to everything so that there is nothing or no one I do not know. I am everyone and everything, and everything and everyone is me. In that moment, to paraphrase something I once I heard from some Buddhist, German or French philosopher, or Star Trek character, ‘No one or nothing is alien to me.'”

Last night I did a reading of my poem “PilipinZ” from my new book Love In A Time of Belligerence and it ends with the lines:

“But I will never forget we walk on the same planet and breathe the same air. I will never forget the same sun shines on us. I created my own legacy: No one is a stranger to me.”

It may be an impossible goal, but in poetry that’s my goal: that no one or nothing is a stranger to me. I hope to practice a poetics of both knowledge and empathy.

Volodymyr Bilyk, Scanography 9

Scanography 9, Volodymyr Bilyk

Volodymyr Bilyk is a writer, translator, and visual poet from the Ukraine. His works include: visual poems in the series This is Visual Poetry (2013), CIMESA (2013), Casio's Pay-Off Peyote (2013), SCOBES (2013), THINGS (2014), Laugh Poems (2014), Vispo Ay Ai Ay (2014), “To When Tea Ties Hence to Wank It Too” / “Eminent Means of Basil Dado Hem-Welt” in The Chapbook 5 (2015), “Heartbeat, Footclick, Machine Gun Vocalizes” (2016), Understanding (of language) are not enough (2016).

Daniel Y. Harris & Jonathan Mulcahy-King, Excerpt 1.6 from Licentiam

γυνή, image by Olia Svetlanova  

Excerpt 1.6 from Licentiam

1.6

docility stitch unfurled spews  leydig cells to mount

vainglorious modem cellules cue the pulping mallet

failed RTCPeerConnection horns  somatic apologia

brace for  web-farm insertion well-greased fuck  toy

as scorp and stingray wrist or  carotid artery   daubs  

resurgent lick if heavenups knots to comb  hismatic

hair by deavatars in the ruck to foretell cum catalos,

stump to let out the nose as duct tape in a gloryhole
          sate a palfrey slow wax and sulphur melt  boils resin 

                       —Daniel Y. Harris & Jonathan Mulcahy-King