Four visual poems titled ‘A Case of Hysteria’ (1&2) ‘The Clinical Picture’ and ‘The First Dream’. Made using pages from Sigmund Freud’s 1905 work, A Case of Hysteria, these pieces form part of a series titled ‘Corrections’ in which books published by historically influential authors are creatively reworked into poems that challenge their theories and observations.
In the 108th of the Poem Brut series, new poetry by Madelaine Culver.
These images come from a recent series of found pansemic poems, finding markings (be they human-made or natural) that function or can be read as script. In this context, I am attempting to move the emphasis of asemic writing away from the act of mark-making itself and am instead trying to encourage a shift in perception so that almost anything can be read with the attention we would usually reserve for script. I am thus using ‘Pansemic’ with an emphasis on the ‘pan’ and the underlying assumption that ‘everything is readable’. This particular sequence documents pansemic language superseding and obscuring the conventional text of an information board (written in both English and Afrikaans) and creating poems from the hybrid of these fading languages and the unintentional language that will replace and go beyond it.
In the 107th of the Poem Brut series, new poetry by James Kearns.
I remember having remembered – I want and wanted to attempt to find out how much I remember. What I remember, how I shape that memory, etc. The use of the anaphoric unit ‘I remember’ reduces those memories and the act of having remembered something, into a more comfortable or easier state of processing. All manner of things throw up. Nothing is left consciously shadowed.
Epiphany – I remember wanting to create a diagram explaining it all. It resulted in momentary paralysis in St Mary’s aisle, part of a church in Truro, Cornwall. My friend told me it was an epiphany.
In the 106th of the Poem Brut series, new poetry by James Kaffenberger.
All spring, Lisa, you’ve been picking
at the scabs
of the one thing that went right
in your life. All summer
I’ve been watching your calves as they meet
the backs of your knees that you give me to smooth
with cool Noxzema cream from that
blue expired jar.
By Nicholas Rombes.
These typewritten poems were initially conceived of as a joke (at the expense of the 20th century?) and should probably be considered as such.
They, unadvisedly, wilfully inherit from the theories of Jiří Kolář and Group 42, though to their credit possess little in the way of Habsburgian nostalgia.
Repeatedly hitting the same key on a typewriter over and over is surprisingly dissatisfying as a means of ‘writing’, and in fact starts to hurt, so the author would not recommend it.
In the 105th of the Poem Brut series, new poetry by Ben Britton.
I am quilting a Grandma’s Flower Garden out of:
Tight fits. Things that just didn’t sit right. That I didn’t know what to do with (rather than call the boss I stashed it). Impulse buys from the market. Gifted fabrics and excesses. Dye tryouts. With paint stains. Some see-through. Ripped robes.
After I finish working, there are still things left over.
In the 104th of the Poem Brut series, new poetry by Eeva Rönkä.
I don’t bake or exercise, so this was the most finicky, screen-free lockdown activity I could find. Each line is made with the same nine pieces of metal letterpress type, which meant printing the same sheet seven times, calculating spaces for each line and colour, and praying with every pull of the handle that the alignment was right on my fussy little Adana press. I’m obsessed with printing anagrams, which seem to draw out material traces of the repetitive, bodily-mechanical process and of the type itself. This lovely paper was rescued from a retired printer’s garage, where it sat and faded unevenly for a few decades. The case of type I smuggled home the day before campus closed is 48pt Westminster.
In the 103rd of the Poem Brut series, new poetry by JT Welsch.
to kneel at the Wehrmacht haunt
and vacate all pretence
to uniformity simplicity eternity
to flagrantly defy the
flaktum alpine cottage volkshalle
but brazenly appropriate
the starkness quaintness weight
Enjoy 3 excerpts from Oscar Mardell‘s Housing Haunted Housing, a series of poems inspired by Brutalist architecture.
One day, I took out a piece of paper because I wanted to draw a line. To use the line (and see theline) as a kind of record. I gave myself up to curve – to curving freely (within the parameters ofa piece of paper). The beginning was/is always the same – from a point, I begin by making aspiral; I spiral out into circles, and then, the shape of infinity. When I am done, I take the timeand colour everything in. My hand goes from the act of making a line (a record of its movement)to repeating itself – stroke, after stroke, after stroke. I didn’t think much about weight, not until Isaw the first imprint. An unexpected output, the imprint is a record of the action of my hand; ofmy hand’s actions coming through, leaving marks on the piece of paper underneath the one I had been working on. A new connection – hand to marker to paper; to paper under paper. I have done this several times now – no longer unexpected, the intended output is the imprint. I like seeing the imprint as a record of weight; how each one records the weight of a movement.Each one is also a record of time. Over time, my markers are running dry.
In the 102nd of the Poem Brut series, new poetry by Dimitra Xidous.
So, I’d been looking fondly at the propellers on the lined up dry-docked yachts in Aarhus harbour before I found what I was after. Had long since heard of how Mallarmé would inscribe beautiful handwritten verses onto fine paper fans for his female admirers, and wondered what Mayakovsky would do. Probably not a dumped ceiling fan, but then we make do with what we have and the rest, as they say, is history.
I figured it’d be good to rest the fan on a pile of loose cobblestones, as if it were standing reserve for some retro-futurist insurrection, and the strewn roses a swish in the face of good taste. That each blade took on the shape of a tombstone was an unexpected bonus.
In the 101st of the Poem Brut series, new poetry by Matt Travers.
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