issue 4
Spring 2014
Sean DesVignes
Vanessa Raney
Jason Graff
Daniel Lehan
Paul Strohm
Tim Khal
Steve Timm
Reanna Marchman
Edward Dougherty
Mitchell Garrand
Stewart Finnegan
Christina Tierney
Ed Higgins
Namkyu Oh
Alana I Capria
Holly Teresa Baker
Vanessa Couto Johnson
Ali Znaidi
Meeah Williams
Vanessa Raney
Jason Graff
Daniel Lehan
Paul Strohm
Tim Khal
Steve Timm
Reanna Marchman
Edward Dougherty
Mitchell Garrand
Stewart Finnegan
Christina Tierney
Ed Higgins
Namkyu Oh
Alana I Capria
Holly Teresa Baker
Vanessa Couto Johnson
Ali Znaidi
Meeah Williams
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Sean DesVignes
Sean DesVignes is an Afro-Caribbean writer from Brooklyn, NY. A poetry editor at Kinfolks Quarterly, his literary honors include fellowships & scholarships from Cave Canem, Callaloo & the Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference.
He says about his work: The poems in this submission are from my upcoming chapbook, "Take My Eyes To The Dry Cleaners". I wanted to play with visual text and language throughout the entire book and I think these poems are some of the best representations of that work. Throughout the writings of these poems, I was interested in labels, typography, and technical jargon. A Promissary Note
In Translation Battam |
Vanessa RaneyVanessa Raney is an American living in Croatia (and traveling). For a detailed list of her publication history go to http://vanessa-raney.blogspot.com. From 5-8 Dec. 2013 she was a fellowship program participant at Sa(n)jam Knjige u Istri (19th Annual Book Fair in Istria) where she got to network with book publishers.
Her art poems were inspired by similar work she saw while a student in San Francisco, her first attempt published in *Woman in Mind* However, her style differs because she uses text to create images which makes it challenging to follow the text as it moves, changes direction and jumps (the reason she started including cheat sheets to help readers navigate the text, as the text itself isn't random). Though *Lalitamba Magazine* is due to publish the text-only version of an art poem series she created, she was given permission to post the art poem series (without the text-only version) on her blog, this as another example of how she's experimenting with the form. Blame it on the night
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Jason Graff |
Vestments triptych
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Jason says:
My verse can be found in In Parentheses, Subterranean Quarterly, Third Wednesday, Meat for Tea, Canyon Voices, Ol’Chanty,The Delinquent, Clockwise Cat, BrickRhetoric, Zingology and the Split Rock Review. My fiction can be found in The Vehicle, Sterling Magazine, Independent Ink, Thunderclap!, Nazar Look, Bloodroot Literary Magazine and Bosque Magazine. I live in Little Falls, New Jersey with my wife Laura and our cat Shelby. These poems were inspired by Bosch's triptychs and can be read in whatever way the readers finds most meaningful. Vestments Triptych
Janus Triptych Spirit Triptych |
500 STEPS
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Daniel Lehan |
Daniel Lehan – former paperboy, choirboy, shop assistant, ice cream seller, chip shop manager, petrol pump attendant, pub caterer, post office worker, theatre usher, cleaner, adult education tutor, leaflet distributor, front of house manager, t-shirt designer, screen printer, children’s book author and illustrator, gardener, teacher.
He says about his work:
My recent text work is influenced by my visual art training and practice of over 30 years. Now I would describe myself as a writer with a visual aesthetic. The erasures are the first I have made - and I used a scalpel blade to scrap away the undesired text, giving each page of erasure a fragile quality. The typewriter text is one of a series where I used the typewriter to destroy text - I have also experimented with typing no ribbon in the machine. I also immensely enjoy hand painting my texts.
He says about his work:
My recent text work is influenced by my visual art training and practice of over 30 years. Now I would describe myself as a writer with a visual aesthetic. The erasures are the first I have made - and I used a scalpel blade to scrap away the undesired text, giving each page of erasure a fragile quality. The typewriter text is one of a series where I used the typewriter to destroy text - I have also experimented with typing no ribbon in the machine. I also immensely enjoy hand painting my texts.
500 steps
OXOXOXOXOX
The Heart of London - Erasures (GIF)
OXOXOXOXOX
The Heart of London - Erasures (GIF)
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Paul StrohmPaul is an artist.
Shakespeare Meta Sonnet
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tim kahlTim Kahl is the author of Possessing Yourself (CW Books, 2009) and The Century of Travel (CW Books, 2012). His work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, Ninth Letter, Notre Dame Review, The Journal, Parthenon West Review, and many other journals in the U.S. He appears as Victor Schnickelfritz at the poetry and poetics blog The Great American Pinup and the poetry video blog Linebreak Studios. He is also editor of Bald Trickster Press and Clade Song. He is the vice president and events coordinator of The Sacramento Poetry Center. He also has public installations in Nevada City and in Sacramento. He currently houses his father's literary estate—one volume: Robert Gerstmann's book of photos of Chile, 1932).
Sierra (audio file)
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steve timmSteve Timm is the author of 2 books--Un storia and Disparity—and 3 chapbooks--’N’altra storio, Stragetics, and Averrage—of poetry. He also does sound improvisations (for a sample visit here). He teaches English as a second language at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He says: The neologisms are what I hear and, yes, informed in part by native languages of my students and of the woman and her son I have been living with for the past few months. Errogance
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Reanna MarchmanReanna Marchman graduated from California State San Bernardino in June 2012 with her degree in English- Creative Writing. Her poem Late Night Dance Parties is published in the Sand Canyon Review. Her poems Highway Pastoral and Community are published with Honorable Mention by The Wild Lemon Project’s online Journal. Tin Cannon also published her poem Oh that bright side! in their first annual Literary Magazine. Her chapbook, Tie a Woven Bracelet is also forthcoming from Islands for Writers Publishing. Reanna is the Assistant Youth Director at Hillside Community Church. She is also a photographer and makes her own hygiene products. She is happily married to Joshua Smith and they have two dogs and a cat: Sarge, Rocky and Lexi.
She says: "There's a big kid on a little bike" was created while I was driving home from school. There's this big kid on a little bike
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Sean DesVignes |
battam
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Sean DesVignes is an Afro-Caribbean writer from Brooklyn, NY. A poetry editor at Kinfolks Quarterly, his literary honors include fellowships & scholarships from Cave Canem, Callaloo & the Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference.
He says about his work: The poems in this submission are from my upcoming chapbook, "Take My Eyes To The Dry Cleaners". I wanted to play with visual text and language throughout the entire book and I think these poems are some of the best representations of that work. Throughout the writings of these poems, I was interested in labels, typography, and technical jargon. A Promissary Note
In Translation Battam
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Edward DoughertyEdward is an artist.
Slipknot
Fever Word-locked |
Mitchell GarrandMitchell Garrard is from Seattle, Washington, where he spent most of his life watching game shows. He graduated from The Evergreen State College with a focus in Poetics. Recent work has appeared in “Camel Saloon,” “Dead Snakes,” “Futures Trading,” "The Kitchen Poet," “Otoliths,” and "Uut Poetry.
He says: I am not a writer. [But we won't hold that against him.] Autopsy; Old Spectre
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Stewart Finnegan Stewart Finnegan is a writer out of the Chicagoland area with a BA in English from Kalamazoo College. Sometimes he teaches things. His work has appeared in Off the Coast and the North Central Review.
He says about his poems: The poems a and u are from a longer series entitled Cannibals but for the Taste. They're built around the idea of connective tissue--be it linguistic, cultural, emotional--and the feeling you get when you chew on cartilage. We said "mmmm.... linguistic cartilage, oh yeah. a
u |
Christina TierneyShe says:
My poetry and flash fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Fourteen Hills, Poet Lore, Permafrost, PMS, The Tusculum Review, descant, The Yalobusha Review, The Broome Review, Sanskrit, Skidrow Penthouse, Shadowbox, Tattoo Highway, Soundzine, Cider Press Review, Sugar House Review, Gemini Magazine, theNewerYork, Lungfull!, AEROGRAM, This Literary Magazine, Monkeybicycle, Pismire, scissors & spackle, Weave Magazine, Meat For Tea, star 82 Review, Lingerpost, Sleet magazine, inter/rupture, Tell Us A Story, Weirdyear, Voicemail Poems, and The Boiler Journal. My work has been nominated for Best of the Net, a Pushcart Prize, and the Best New Poets anthology. I am an MFA recipient from the University of Southern Maine ’s Stonecoast Writing Program, and I am employed as an after-school director. I’ve been told my work is comical, bizarre and painful. I’ve been told when I read my work aloud people feel awful when they laugh at a funny line because the line that followed was sad or horrifying. I like these descriptions because they describe me to a T. Bladespeak
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Ed HigginsHe says:
My poems and short fiction have appeared in various print and online journals including: Monkeybicycle, Pindeldyboz, Otoliths, Tattoo Highway, Word Riot, Foliate Oak, and qarrtsiluni, among others. My wife and I live on a small farm in Yamhill, OR, raising a menagerie of animals including two whippets, a manx barn cat (who doesn’t care for whippets), two Bourbon Red turkeys (King Strut and Nefra-Turkey), and an alpaca named Machu-Picchu. I dink around with words to make meaning out of my/mine/others' experience(s) of life, the universe, and everything (bit of a riff there on Douglas Adams). Icarus
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Namkyu OhNamkyu is an artist
To Errol
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Alana I CapriaAlana is an artist.
#3 from Travels of the Bovine Utereus
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Holly Teresa BakerHolly Teresa Baker is a PhD candidate in English at the University of South Dakota. Her work has appeared in both print and online journals, such as Painted Bride Quarterly, Blue Earth Review, Eclectica, Literary Juice, LIT Magazine, Citron Review, and others. She has served as both managing editor and artistic director for the South Dakota Review. This work was inspired during a collaborative project with an artist who is obsessed with the solar system.
Small Things
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imponderable 8
impunderible 3
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Vannessa Couto JohnsonVanessa Couto Johnson earned her MFA from Texas State University. She contributed to shufPoetry's third issue. Her poems have also appeared in or are forthcoming in Really System, Eratio, Hot Metal Bridge, Star 82, Storm Cellar, 100 Word Story, and elsewhere. She runs treksift.com, blogs at meansofpoetry.com, and has a BA in both English and philosophy from Rice University.
She says: These three poems are from a series I call "Imponderables in Excess," which is a practice in making three texts no longer obsolete through their interaction. The texts: Love in Excess; or, the Fatal Enquiry; Life’s Imponderables: The Answers to Civilization’s Most Perplexing Questions; and the Reader’s Digest Oxford Complete Wordfinder. Each section of the series (imponderables, impunderibles, umpinderobles, etc.) are thirteen poems long, at which point a "clinamen" enters and alters the constraint/procedure used in repurposing the texts. imponderable #8
impunderible #3 umpinderoble #3 
umponderible 3
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Ali ZnaidiAli Znaidi (b.1977) lives in Redeyef, Tunisia where he teaches English. His work has appeared in Mad Swirl, Stride Magazine, Red Fez, BlazeVox, Otoliths, streetcake, & elsewhere. His debut poetry chapbook Experimental Ruminations was published in September 2012 by Fowlpox Press (Canada). From time to time he blogs and tweets at @AliZnaidi.
He says: These visual poems are the result of erasing materials using a blackout technique and copy & paste, then arranging words in such a way to generate poems relying on mixed media (image, in this case). silence
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meeah williamsmeeah williams is a writer and graphic artist. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
She says about her work: "It's sad & it's scary." We so so agree. faces (cover)
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Background Art:
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