Play It! Make It!

Click here to be directed to some writing I have done about Luke Munn's one night exhibition.

Wee-Gifts from Dusie

The package finally arrived...

... oh look! Darling reproductions of miniature Continental antique jumping jacks! I will have fun assembling these... a sweet thank you note on a gorgeous postcard... I love these touches and attention to detail... Can't wait to open up ...

... and look what's inside! Nine delightful wee chapbooks (I purchased the first three sets of the WEE CHAPS series - each set has three chapbooks) - I cannot wait to read these. Thank you dusie! X

dusie shop at Etsy

(chapbooks, collage, packettes, ephemera, artful objects and assemblages).

Dusie - Giving and Sharing Poetry

Many might recognise Dusie as Mina Loy's student nickname, it is also, quite fittingly, a name that encompasses the concepts, creative ouput, poetic projects and collaborative activity, instantiated and cultivated by Susana Gardner. The word Dusie has several different personal resonances for Gardener, Dusie projects and press activities are similarly diverse. Dusie exists as an on-line poetry journal, a small press, a website, a series of collective poetics projects, and a community. Although largely based and distributed online, a distinctive handmade aesthetic and craft-ephemera sensibility is carried across to these virtual spaces.

~ Dusie Links ~

Dusie.org operates as the main hub site for Gardner and her collaborators' activity. Note that the link will take you to Dusi/e-chaps Issue Seven but you will find all the other issues archived here and e-chaps that are downloadable and free, easily accessible and printable in pdf format. You will also find information about Dusie, and links to current projects and a wide poetics community.

micawberesque - Dusie blog

How2 A Small Press Feature: Dusie Books

Frances Kruk 'Welcoming Space: Susana Gardner and Dusie Books' - a beautifully written and informative piece about Dusie

An Interview with Gardner

Improvisational Writing - En Mouvement

Ahead: the sameness of place. Whispering operations are dream-like. Certainty of the
and yet there is potential to get on and off at the same place. Such time passes, surely. But she is looking at Other Times and moving through timelessness. Voices swell. Define becoming that is swollen. Turn over into shrieks. They all remove and now because seats are not taken and she tosses waking in the air, you felt it coming. Remove margins: but then this is not smooth sailing, this is “thanks screw driver” and drawn-eyed explosions. Passing is cold and quiet. Obstructed gaze closes consciousness but that’s just too bad, and she wonders why there’s no, and with her. She articulates the, and that running man. There’s just too much content and goings intent are made. You may well ask her to surprise you with measure but there is a preference to be centring some kind of premium life.

182.

228.

Assured by movements, hands in pockets. It’s a friendly silence now. She is sitting up
of the
She cannot see what, She cannot watch what they are doing or even fantasize that she is one of them. She decides not too move, voicing “bad faith” makes you feel guilty for even thinking she could. This is strange because she does not know what Sartre’s voice sounds like.

Probably just a handful of them:

Business First Transact account (shaped glass explained) and members (all dressed in black by chance, unpersuasively)

Stores.

Cigarette is lit, but not like a film star. Watching her scrunching tissues, balling her tight hands and you ask with a final reduction. Mattress, does this mean we are good friends? She has seen this all before. You watch from upstairs. It is warm. She gave thought to signature, deciphering the knocked up lease. Dry-cleaning. Park Drive.

451.

Cardboard fedora gives her the two-dimensional glad eye. Seamy drips conceal that there is apparently no exit. She walks within the room, framed. Empowering, a question of dine-in or

Does not tell her time. Only railing to a point. Any point. She would follow the guy in your green shorts. She does not see your face but your mouth is moving and behind the signs, she is expecting more, a communication and refusal.

Adult uniforms, adult bookshops, adult entry into, adult keep clear, adult tow away zone. She is situation. Internally frontal at eleven oh and seven. She counts to such even time. Superette conflict, souvenir vault. Rubbing noses focusing on optometry beneath the smoke, intervention and the generalised purpose. Very rarely did she question the ______________ waiting for the and the girls in, crossing the street, between the cars, uncarefully. Leaning over no language she apprehends the taxi rubbing up against her thigh, such battery transformations are temporary. Clearance bounces this game, Yesterday insists you hand precedent asking. She gives no answer. Noon claims lineage. You welcomed her, she sold places and pleasing information – café, coast, country.

1811.

The studio portal invites this month with a full on court and bird-like siblings, such hospitality is industrial. Empiricism is all over her, inhale what is fuel for life. Last night’s woven cloth is serviced centrally. Whim follows and once again she would join the spectacle of watching you light up. Instead she disappoints you by simply not doing it, almost doing it.

She misses the cigarette.

54.

Inquiry makes the journey easier, she is seeing proof.

88.

Only skin, more in home and living and rhythm. Drag if you will: three lamps, arabesque and Thomas Valentine, her one true love. Scripts nestle when this accepted busyness falls into reverie. She imagines such a scarf tied around the neck and it would be an easy death. Wrapped up in flaking breath you tell yourself that she will see fires tomorrow, but slowing here today.

Reference break-up: now enter “ Alakanak or anywhere”

Reference in Berssenbrugge’s ‘Alakanak Break-Up’ is veiled with ambiguity. Reference is full of possibility and potentiality in conjuring up images in the reader’s mind those that we “can see,” and those we cannot which are created through prose language, becoming an image-making operation. Here reference functions dualistically. Impossible worlds may be created. Essentially language can only take us so far in the text’s literal situation. While deictic expression brings us immediately to aspecific moment and situation reference propels us beyond, into a more imaginativeand abstract zone, that can be seen through language or imagined. Reference conveysmeaning about something not present.

Something separate from the immediatelinguistic/ textual situation. Reference language is denotative and descriptive tying usto a physical or metaphysical world. Although it does not, necessarily provide clarity.It rather expresses multiplicity and transports the reader, with fluidity, from the deicticimmediacy, Berssenburgge’s descriptive reference pushes us beyond the specificlinguistic situation we are positioned in, however her poem does not depend upon it.The title ‘Alakanak Break-Up’ has historical and cultural implications of settlementand colonisation. We may bring, or we not may bring, this particular referential“reading of text” forward. The references to ‘frozen’ matter and rocks and silencemay evoke Alaska vividly or obviously, however these references are not used toprevent readers imaging some other place, or if they are to image, anything related tothe reference to Alakanak at all. Allowing us to ‘see’ through the language of the text to create image.

Instances where the language refers to something we cannot see must be imagined, as exemplified in ‘it splays out like contents its occurrence there.’ ‘Splays’, seems problematic and out of place. ‘Contents’ is spilt or poured out, we could imagine rock crumbling, or breaking up then imaginethe pieces of rock ‘its insides’ which are now exposed. ‘Splays’creates an image difficult to see, the implications of its use are not particularly clear. It requires, the reader to diverge from seeing the rock to imagining something, which splays outrather than is split, the reader must examine, how reference shifts through at onceimage-making and simile. ‘Splays out contents’ made me think of surgical procedures, incisions-openings-autopsy. The image of medical surgery does not see to belong in the setting of Alakanak similarly the word ‘splays’ disrupts a cohesive image. That of a broken rock. The image of human organs being splayed to be examined surfaces for me however it does not displace other images that could arise.

Ultimately the reader determines the image. This does not erase the landscape.Reference to landscape creates the space for image associations. Counter-intuitive it may seem. This idea of splaying the contents of the landscape as a referential moment is extremely dense, it may be read in conjunction with the social, cultural and historical readings of this poem. Moving from the specific situation to a space wheredifferent readings proliferate. To follow this progressing idea further, focusing on reference as mobilising language, we see ‘splays’ disrupting the image, but also allowing us to unravel them.

Alliance, between image and the words of images, is established so language is mobilised. ‘With silence as a material’. Like a material silence becomes pliable and shapely matter. This is at odds with our understanding of silence, still and empty. Silence as material becomes something we have to imagine a reference we cannot see as given in the language/ text. We may connect to ‘plane itself is silent’, although this intra-textual reference is not necessarily present, there is no origin to find – to give reference meaning. As the doubled reference ‘plane’/ ‘plain’ indicates. We connect these references through their sound.

Berssenburgge is playing with our expectations of referential language. How may we distinguish between ‘plane’ and ‘plain’. There is a disparity between what we see and hear. We may associate many things with these two words. Distinct low relief uniform colour without additions. Surface without slope aircraft level of existence. The reader invests in referential possibilities of the image created or not created through language.

Notes

Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge has been a really important poet for me over the last couple of years. Inspired particularly by Empathy (1989) I thought it would post a piece of writing about reference in her poem 'Alakanak Break Up' (I also have a component piece about deixis in the same poem that I will post perhaps another time). Decisions regarding how many words per sentence and the number of sentences were made in advance (closely following another piece of writing as a model). My expression was forced into a particular syntactic arrangement, creating fragmentation and anacoluthon.

Post(Your)Secret(s)... And they will remain confidential...

A postcard is an easily identifiable and recognizable social object, distinguished by its regularized size, flatness and double-sided appearance (one side usually presents a visual image of some sort, and on the other a blank space where a message or note is typically written). Sharply contrasted with the expansive format of the letter, a postcard offers scope for brief and compressed linguistic expression. Envelope-less, a postcard is the perfect choice for sending a souvenir whilst on travel (which has been its normative historical function). The postcard, along with letter writing has been replaced by the enabling speedy and efficient capabilities of email and internet communication that which manages to circumvent the postal service altogether.




Accompanied by a precarious art history of its own (eroticized dusky maidens enticing visitors to a South Pacific paradise come to mind as one of many examples), the postcard, has also been exploited for commercial art purposes. Most galleries and museums now cheaply reprint, the most well-known and iconic canonical art images, from Monet to Warhol, onto postcards and make available for purchase.

This is at odds with the use of postcards for the artistic trading activities and processes of exchange that characterized the international mail art network and movement beginning in the 1950s & 60s. Via the postal service, artists gifted and received a multiplicity of ephemera. Ranging from postcards and handmade books or zines to images made from photocopied materials or with rubber stamps, and other found objects and materials usually relegated to the margins of artistic productivity.

(Useful resources for mail art online - Mail-Art, International Mail Art Archives, EMMA)

Based upon ideas surrounding of freely exchanging art objects and critiquing the dominance of art institutions, mail art “focuses [up]on the social context of art production, circulation, and reception, rather than the evaluation of particular works of art” (Gell 3). This focus is closely linked to a contemporary community art project that similarly makes use of postcard format. PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard to a postal address. From here they are "posted" onto the PostSecret blog (blogging and mailing postcards as two forms of "posting"). Sharing secrets has extended to artists using video formats and book publications of the collected postcards.

PostSecret is a mixed reality work. Real life experiences and activities, transferring a deep dark secret onto a postcard, are mixed with the virtual activities of, posting the postcards onto the blog itself and users experiencing the art project online. Exposing secrets to wide internet readership and constructing secrets, literally reifying that which is essentially considered to be a ‘feeling’, ‘regret for past action’, or a ‘worry’ into a concrete object, are expressive and "performative" processes, resulting in the production of a vast range of social media objects.


From the humorous and trifling …

... to a confession of either superficiality or desperateness

... to a statement of guilt, perhaps commenting further (and maybe beyond the creator's intention) on the effects of political correctness and the ways in which marginal groups are socially "visible".

If a secret is understood as that which is kept hidden from knowledge or view, that which we kept internalized, concealed, and do not express, our very notion of ‘secret’ or ‘secretness’ must shift when a secret is shared between individuals or materially expressed in some way. The intrinsic format of the postcard makes a posted secret constantly in visible. It cannot be concealed at any stage of the circulation process, between its initial creation, postal processing and reception on the internet.

And yet these "secret-spillers" remain anonymous. Evading vicious gossip discourse, the project protects its creators by making it impossible to discover their identity. But because secrets have been shared and exposed this potential curiosity seems to be already in effect satisfied. Perhaps more importantly considered is the nature of the ‘secret’ itself and our notions of ‘secretness’. Is a secret still a secret when it is expressed and shared with a large audience?


PostSecret writes that “Sometimes a secret we keep from ourselves only becomes true after we read it on a strangers postcard.” The capabilities of social agency instantiated by the project goes beyond the creator’s intention (Gell 3) to perhaps simply "get something off their chest." Reading the secrets of others can potentially make us realise that we perhaps hold that secret too.


Works Cited

Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1998.

S T R E E T C O R N E R

Forgetting what meant, of that, and this is, beyond discolouration, recognising

around - mouth

coming out of, from simplism described

inability to, and at times never seeking

when said, felt and whispering minutiae. Board, such with insides and having the, and critical, of

when said, were and not to do this since, desire is finding / shivering with life

becoming streets, bodies - sounded

patience

saw planar refusal - bitten wives and we left, to left untouched round in sculpt

Wanting speech to movement, dreamt light on connected surfaces and not back to that

dove broke birth pulsing and wet and wanting to movement

pointing birth realised having edification

against is lies calling, so far gentleness

development cured, drawing on the walls and the liking to be away

looking at the pages wrote on the walls and of the liking to be

footed, highly suspicious of activity.

I have been interested in Stefanie Schneider's photographic projects for a while now and frequently use them for inspiration in writing. The use of long expired polaroid stock offers evidence of chemical photographic process that is typically disguised. This enables Schneider to layer blemishes and imperfections, in what some critics describe as a painterly fashion, over narrative potentialities. I think perhaps what I most enjoy about these photographs is their lack of specificity. There is something troubling about these images, and the unsettled feeling experienced when I view them spurrs such writing, that which is similarly unsettling and meandering, in its syntactic arrangement and vague preoccupation with narrative.

I HEART POLYSYLLABICS - a promise to come back to you...

In my first blog entry I published a sample of writing that was to be part of a book length poem, a forthcoming Winterling Press publication. This publication is still coming. I have not, until very recently, continued to work on these sequences. I guess this is due to the fact I have been extremely busy, having little time to work on any writing (unrelated to university) and when I have been doing writing unrelated to university I have been preoccupied with other projects.

I have made some progress - established a working title, Anathema, and not deflagrations or associations with length and completed the first three sequences for the publication which I have posted below. (However I think this will be subject to future alteration and change, and to what extent I cannot say at this stage - so if you find what I write in the chapbook radically different to what I have posted here you will know why).

Anathema, and not deflagrations or associations with length

1.

The influence of eaves, and from, movements of – and sounded in my bedroom. Alight and this kind of becoming, uttering like word, between swollen seeds from grasses that numb your lashes – though not, we.
At the bowl’s lip.
I write, “Welcome home”, this, contained to and looking up from low pictures, are seen in light, a light, in front.
From the side. You – and it is cardboard, and down from, stretched.
Pacing kitted bone and on the boardeon, lying flat on your stomach and on your back.
We stayed in there for some time and no one wanted to come in, too, though this could never be inisolable, like bending a leaf.
Extending far beyond the captions to not a picture, so connected at once suspended and moving, like the clutter of day, around.
It could be pointed out anywhere, a row of sounds, like scales.


2.

Bodies and not parts or them, is lifted and not to be a face. More simply oblique enabling such, we drift through the front.
Wrist on window tactility, I write, “On your lip”, although constructions do not produce. Something spoken of, semi-solidity nothing meant glass or flesh.
Unveiled by the movement of fluids, water is where you collected various fluids. The place, but water is not the substance.
This is unveiled by water.
It is where you collected various fluids.
You found a deepening, an assimilated inurement.
Boned skies, a weighted throat.
Cephalic programming becomes the task of weighing up and relating the difference between what is imagined as seeing, and what is said to be seen.
Salts on paper edge along watery, the place, but water is not the substance.
This is unveiled, is where you collected various fluids, now opening.
Scoring membrane is invasion. In real-time, but water is not cut over, you should, closer up. And come back – so that down at the sides, come away from.
Without the flexing side, come away from the side.




3.

Not everything seen, where every sky is produced singly, and thought.
Could, and no cutting, not a passage through.
Without warning, it is gone. Withheld to the base of the spine, there are some spaces that enclose borders.
Losing stability, this interpretation extends away from the sound, come away from the side. I saw staying flatness, spilt out on the floor.
A voice’s resin, columnar. Traveling toward,
toward the miser trading materials ( ) for another’s thought. Boned skies, where every sky is produced singly, and they thought they could, turnings, not excitable or turning into, not of a floating. I write, “Play a game with me”, though I fail to see it is where you collected the meanings of glass or flesh.

Plans for Winterling Press

I am concurrently working on my first two Winterling Press chapbook series - each series will be made up of three chapbooks. Eventually (yes eventually, press activity is not an easy solo gig when you are attempting to do all the writing and publishing - and yes, eventually I hope to expand and get other writers on board), I hope to make these chapbooks available (for trade with other artwork, chapbooks, writing & or interesting collected/found materials or alternatively for a very small cost, but hope to make the exchanges mostly trade based). I will give more detail of this soon. X

From: N. “cl[e]ap.s” E

To: ".dirtee codah."
Date: Monday April 7, 2008 8:11pm
Subject:Subject: mez[angelle]. [[Int.errupt[ing] you.r

<< r [ea].Der ] [s norma.

t-iv. e r[[eadin.g pro.

c[ess]]]es [[[[[[[]]]]]]]]] + &p.us [h]ing.

A]]gain.st line[ar] . writ.ing
[M]od.es are strategies em[ploy]ed

by many writers, [artist]s. T[he]


[a] in. [t]er[active. web wri.tinG /


c.oDe poet.ry] [[[ of.

[M][ez] (or [M]ary Anne Bre[e]ze).

i.s en.gag.ing []]]]]]

i.n this kind of a pract[[[[ [ice

b[u]t [up] [on]] a part.I.cularly i.nte.rest.Ing scale.


Mezangelle (the language Mez is writing in) forces together human reader codings and computer reader codings and has developed as a language over the last twelve or thirteen years.

While it looks visually interesting, I encourgae one to absolutely experiment with reading Mezangelle aloud.

I should point out that above is an "imitation" of Mezangelle, and that such a rendition of Mezangelle actually takes it out of its original web context, where hypertextual links activate the virtual dimensionality - you can view an example of Mez's work - pro] [tean] [.lapsing.txts. - by clicking here.

Mezangelle exceeds a "restricted economy of meaning".

An endless variety of reading effects and possibilities are created by non-normative usages of punctuation, syntax and word fragmentation. What is interesting about Mez’s work besides its interruption of normative reading processes is that I noticed many different things about my own personal reading procedure and how I usually "work through" any piece of writing. I typcially experience a lot of horizontal backwards-forwards movement during reading (not dissimilar to most reading of normative print books where reader's often flick back and forth between pages). So while Mez interrupts our normative reading procedures, an awareness of what constitutes normative reading procedures is potentiated.

I engaged in multiple re-readings (and re-articulatings) of syntactic flows, creating shifting and mutliple dynamic specificities, concerning namely pace and "meaning" (usually at the level of a word or "sentence"/"line"). These altered depending on what “interruptions” I recognized and how I recognized them, and in what o[h]r.d[e]e[a]r.

The combination of human and computer reader coding creates tension not only betwen processes of writing and reading, but the multiple and diverse processes of reading. Mez evades conventional poetic undertakings by illustrating that poetry itself cannot be contained by normativity. pro] [tean] [.lapsing.txts. for example, displays the process of its own making, that which constitutes it, as a piece of writing. It requires a reader to navigate both the hyperlinks and linguistic irregularities, to engage in "paradgimatic reading". Reading over or past these non-conventional "interuptions" results in flattening linguistic embodiment into mere furnishings or accoutrements.

Be directed to other projects by Mez by clicking here and link to _knott404_ a very interesting blog project.