ISSUE#6 / A KIND OF INDEX

 









ABOVE:
Banner for Maggie O'Sullivan, by Astra Papachristodoulou






is a visual-poetic epic of British homelessness “an ancient manuscript for our time” scribed by over 150 people affected by homelessness in poems, artworks, calligraphy, songs and chants, echoing the form of medieval manuscripts, especially the Book of Hours. This collaboration was co-directed by artist Lois Blackburn and poet Philip Davenport, as arthur+martha in Manchester UK 2018-21 and is now permanently housed at John Rylands Library in the city. A 10,000 word Commentary by Jeffrey Robinson (with some illuminations) appears in this issue of Synapse International.


karl kempton published kaldron on paper from 1976-1990; in 1997 it moved online. “North America’s Longest Running Visual Poetry Magazine” is significant archive of experimentation with fusions of word and image, mail-art, concrete and other sundry items of literary marginalia. kempton writes of the birthing of the magazine, and discusses the corpus with Mahmoud Moawad Sokar and Paula Claire.


THREE x 3 = 

In homage to the recent anthology of women's visual poetry, Judith


The ancient sibyls as a source from which to spark /female figures representing power and agency; writing, speaking; the leaves as carriers of prophesies; our own place as women entering our ‘third’ age / voices through which the Sibyl speaks, as described by oval/ova/mouth/orifice; female orifices the sibyl in the bottle, the sibyl in the bottle in the cave. 


Visual poetry embraces history, craft, and technology -- refers, in varying degrees, to traditional forms such as painting, collage, sculpture, literature, music, and textiles. At the same time, it calls upon the future... 



Guest editor Rachel Robinson

What, then, is the role of the author? Does the author control what happens, or does s/he facilitate something that happens on its own? Is s/he like Rimbaud’s concert master who waves his bow and the symphony comes onto the stage of its own accord? The poet is the one who uses Flash to tell the computer to command both the letters and the gibberish sounds to act...

PS = Bi-erasure & others. Astra Papachristodoulou



BELOW:
January, Calendar, various artists. A BOOK OF OURS. 
Photograph by Lois Blackburn








WAKE EVERY MORNING CAN’T BLOODY MOVE 
Wake in the darkness of me 
Wake with the sun in my mouth. 



















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