cordite

Peter Minter is one of the greatest poets I read, and one of the greatest poets I know. I regard him, his conversation, his attention, his criticism, his aesthetics and his ethics as militantly tender, tenderly militant. Minter is uncompromising and committed in the things he makes and does, and his politics are manifest in his making and doing, interfacing variously with discourses and methodologies of an eco-anarchist left.

Since the proliferation of internet magazines it seems there has been a corresponding proliferation of visual poetry. I'm not sure why. That colour reproduction isn't a money issue is perhaps one, and that we have stopped seeing the visual aspect of text in print. The internet wants to be a movie. One aspect of reading visual poems online is that of movement and perspective.

One effect of the virtual departure of Jacket from Australia is the bringing forward of other internet journals such as cordite. cordite has been an innovative presence for years, but I think really took off with its collaborative issues, involving reworkings of each issue, beginning with 30: Custom/Made. They are not the only magazine to invite remixes but they are possibly the only one to invite contributors to post their own poems, and to use comment streams to create collaborative works. This is largely thanks to the genius of managing editor David Prater, currently resident in Sweden.