Concerning into dry, they're - Collaged Poetry

Concerning into dry, they're is a series of five collaged poems I have completed - one of which appeared in an earlier post. I used found text, image and pen markings. I have no conceptual statement fully articulated yet - but I think they are perhaps largely explorations in mixing different understandings of size and representative scale.

- E xx

How it is, raining...

... a lot in Auckland.

My window, perpetually, looks like this.


Am (re)reading these wonderful books ...

Keeping happy with these lovely bits ...

I found the charming Dancing Girl Press. It is so wonderful, focused on independently publishing chapbooks by emerging female writers - this girl, Kristy Bowen, certainly keeps herself busy! Not only handling this project, she edits an online journal, Wicked Alice and makes her own paper arts and beautiful jewellery, and collects vintage objects and other delightful items - making her etsy shop a storehouse of enviable, delicious treats. (Kristy keeps a lovely blog here too).

Spelling ( ) Bound (Ellectrique Press 2008) is a poetic collaboration between Cara Benson, Kai Fierle-Hedrick, and Kathrin Schaeppi and looks like a wonderful project - I certainly hope to get a copy.

The projects exhibited in the New Media section in the latest issue of How2 equally much - I thought that Rosheen Brennan's Motion was particularly beautiful.

Reading a manuscript too. Not mine. An energetic surge, sustained. Practically inhaled it.


Making things: some new packettes for chapbooks -



Large handmade envelopes, hand stitched together to create a visible seam and using the same illustration as the last packette experiment.

I have been working on a few different collages/visual poems (that genre)...

Here's one I have completed (though have not titled yet).

- E xx

More Winterling Packettes...

For my next set of chapbook swaps I wanted to create an alternative cover/sleeve. I decided to make simple large envelopes - without seal or adhesive, these may be opened and closed by the tie at the top.

I decided to pare the collage for these covers right down - the back of the envelope looks very similar. I am basically working with part of a map/some kind of numerated diagram image - so cutting up found material and then using a basic computer illustration program to erase most of it, aswell as the evidence of my cut up procedure.

I think I will keep generating more ideas and possibilities for these packettes and try to establish a kind of loose aesthetic 'feel' for the Winterling project. Please be in touch if you would like to do chapbook or an "anything else" swap! (There is a link to my email on my profile). Thank you so much for those who have responded so far - your packettes will be posted at the end of the week. I hope you will enjoy them.

More soon! X

P.S. I was not sure if the US Postal Service would let me send thank-you-note-twigs from New Zealand - so I made a little collage and printed it on handmade paper instead!

The Critical Proximity of Memory

Today I am posting a selection of pages from a 30 page un-bound book I created. I choose not to bind this book because I wanted it to be a text that could be read in any order and be endlessly recreated by its reader. This book structure is inextricably linked to its narrative, both are conceptually structured around the complexities of remembering and the possibility of recovering memory.

The materials I used for the project, both for the writing and the book as a physical structure, are all recycled or as I like to call them, "waste-language" materials. I made the book from language that people normally throw away, for example, pages of photocopies that come out incorrectly so people throw them away and things like receipts.

I collected text-paper-rubbish and other such waste materials that engaged with language. A lot of collage was involved. I alternated between using the actual words themselves (cut them out and pasted them on the page), copied some text directly from the source material or deviated from the source material by interpretation and extension, to create 'original' text.

This project illuminates the impossibility of making decisions for multimedia writing projects in advance, prior to the making, regarding form, structure and the use of materials, and also decisions about writing (although it is difficult to separate it from my use of materials) that is the process of writing and the physical words that end up on the page. The narrative actually evolved and established itself as I created each page singularly.

I hope to do more projects using "waste-language" materials.