Water calligraphy

An anecdote about street calligraphers in Beijing...

Street calligraphers give the poems of the Tang and Song dynasty a fleeting form on slabs of the pavement. They use water as ink, and the stone is their paper. [...] Their creations are ephemeral, lasting no more than three or four minutes, but that doesn't bother them. They are spending time with their friends. Passers-by admire and comment on particularly spectacular verses - for example, those by Li, a retired bookkeeper. Li Wendao imitates Chairman Mao Zedong's calligraphy. 'A great leader,' says Li, 'and an accomplished calligrapher and poet.' In one respect Li surpasses the Great Chairman himself: he writes Mao's verses backwards.

Sometimes in winter a small miracle occurs. Teacher Wang Jiuxiang adds a little salt to the water. The characters freeze and the verses are like little sculptures, fixed in a silvery frost. Wang fiddles with the clip and from his brush flow the verses of the drowned poet Li Po. He writes in powerful, clear kai shu (block characters):

'...Oh, let a man enjoy his life before it fades'

'Can you imagine that? Silver frost?' Wang asks excitedly.

- from "China A-Z" by Kai Strittmatter. I'm not suggesting you buy it, it's crap, just semi-conscious tourist stories. But I liked this passage, and the hint of things buried beneath it. Second time round, it is Mr Li who catches my imagination, and the observation that the calligraphers 'are spending time with their friends' that makes me think.

Rebecca Eddy

First Study in Counterpoint ~ Escapology ~ Hypothetic Syringe ~ Manipulation ~ Cadenza (clockwise from left)




First Study in Counterpoint


Manipulation


"Manipulation is control, bad influence and the conscious effort to distort and exploit. Manipulation is also the protective manoeuvre, the steer to safety and the dexterous engineer of success. Arguably the greatest literary manipulation exists in the composition of a piece itself. The choice of diction, the deployment of punctuation and the synthesis of image combine to construct the ultimate expression of creative control."

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Rebecca Eddy lives in Cornwall, England. Her work can be seen in a variety of publications in Europe, Australasia and North America. She is particularly interested in interdisciplinary practice and creative catachresis.

Last day in Brussels

2 German-speaking mail artists. They knew Jelle and Krikri because they’d been to Jerome Rothenburg’s lecture in Brussels in 2006.
2 French-speaking ’pataphysicists, wearing those knitted hats with flappy bits over the ears
2 little brothers, Mehdi aged 6 and Nael aged 2
2 joke eyeballs, being chased around the floor by Mehdi and Nael
4 more kids, a bit perplexed by Sharon’s Braille piece: “woah, you should hide that from blind people, they’re going to smash it.”
1 poetry editor who was all over your work like a rash, girls, and wanted links to all your websites
2 families with kids, looking for the workshops
1 friend of Bob Cobbing, who works for a publisher of scientific books and came to Brussels for the book fair. He got bored and ended up hanging out at infusoria all afternoon talking about poets we both know.
2 cookies left ...

It feels like months ago, although it has only been two weeks. And this time next week we'll be doing it all over again in Ghent.

Ayşegül Tözeren

Poetic Attack



Ayşegül Tözeren was born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1979. She graduated from Istanbul Medical Faculty in 2005. In the same year, her first visual poem was published in Zinhar magazine. Since then, her visual poems have been shown in the Zinhar Galeri, which is the only visual and concrete poetry blog in Turkish. They have also been published in magazines and shown at festivals.

Alixandra Bamford

Tasseomancy





This quality verbal tea is composed of phrases plucked from only the finest sources and combined to produce unique blends; refreshing, zesty, naturally caffeine free.

Tasseomancy investigates recombination by blending concepts instead of flavours, using craft, ‘found’ phrases, word play, and tea.

“The game is to say something new with old words” – Emerson

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Alixandra Bamford is a writer and artist from Toronto. She edits and publishes small-press magazine "Knives Out", which features the work of Toronto youth. Current projects include a graphic novel, and an (English language) poetry anthology which is open to submissions .

Jenny Sampirisi

Microtopes series:
Burdock ~ Was As Is
Burdock Script ~ Spam Spore





Jenny Sampirisi is a Canadian poet, prose writer and editor. She is the managing editor for BookThug and facilitates the online concrete poetry journal, Other Cl/utter. She teaches English at Ryerson University where she runs the Ryerson Reading Series. She is also an executive member of the Scream Literary Festival. Her first novel, is/was, explores the flexible boundaries of language, media, and the body.

Sharon Harris

Blues



“Blues” is a Braille translation of bpnichol’s poem of the same name which turns nichol’s “love” matrix of language into a tactile, feeling experience.

Where do poems come from?



“Where do poems come from?” is part of the series, “Fun with ’Pataphysics,” which appeared as a column in Word magazine, a section in Harris’s Avatar (The Mercury Press), and in chapbooks from BookThug and above/ground press. The series was also part of a Globe review of Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry, entitled “Let’s Get ’Pataphysical,” by Christian Bök.

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Sharon Harris is a Canadian artist/writer who has been accused of having “ethereal interests” (Toronto Life). She thinks that her eight-year long study of the power of love as a catalyst for personal and political change is nothing but practical. In 2006, her first book of poetry and art, Avatar, was published by The Mercury Press and her first photography exhibition, I Love You Toronto, received national attention. She curates iloveyougalleries.com and iloveyougraffiti.com and blogs at iloveyou365.blogspot.com. Not coincidentally, her current book project is a cultural study of the words, “I love you.”