visual poetry

Lyric shard as grief’s material

A review of Diana Khoi Nguyen’s ‘Ghost Of’

Kelly Hoffer

Part archive, part elegy, Diana Khoi Nguyen’s debut collection of poetry, Ghost Of, presents the haunting portrait of a grieving family set against a backdrop of intergenerational trauma. Written four years after the poet’s brother took his own life, Nguyen’s poems register this loss as it is refracted through the story of her parents’ immigration to the US as refugees in the wake of the Vietnam War.

June 30, 2022

On Etel Adnan's 'The Arab Apocalypse'

Aditi Machado
From page 7 of ‘The Arab Apocalypse,’ which Etel Adnan began writing in January
From page 7 of ‘The Arab Apocalypse,’ which Etel Adnan began writing in January 1975 in Beirut, two months before the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War.

L’Apocalypse arabe is composed in French by the Arab American poet Etel Adnan. It was published in 1980; Adnan’s English translation appeared in 1989. Of the several rubrics under which The Arab Apocalypse may be read — visual poetry, surrealism, translation, postcolonialism — its work of witnessing most commands my attention. Not least because it was written in response to and in the immediate context of the Lebanese Civil War (which broke out in 1975), but also because these other strands (the visual, the surreal, etc.) make the act of witnessing a provocative challenge to any notion of stability that may — innocently or otherwise — attend questions of representation in literatures of witness.

November 30, 2016

Tiina Lehikoinen

That reality is elsewhere. That it is here. I’m interested in the ruptures between lived and cultural spaces and the gagging information of the Internet age. Unconscious charges and different interfaces are recurring themes in my art. I believe in the politics of play. Surreal juxtapositions are the greatest realism. They capture the tragedy of being — to all the time be both inside and outside. — Tiina Lehikoinen

February 15, 2016

Tero Hannula

What draws me into visual poetry and asemic writing is that I don’t understand it. I was really interested about vispo the first time I heard about it. I didn’t understand anything about it, but somehow I loved it, so I started organizing events and discussions on vispo. — Tero Hannula

February 15, 2016

Satu Kaikkonen

After I made my first few vispos in 2006, I saw an article in Valo, a supplement of the Finnish daily newspaper, Aamulehti, and the ideas from the article remained in my mind. I had already, for quite some time, wanted to do something other than just write plaintext poems, so I went looking to find additional information about “nurous” which was the term for the visual poetry in the article.

February 15, 2016

Sami Liuhto

I found visual poetry and asemic writing in fall 2012, when the Finnish poetry magazine Tuli & Savu published their yearbook Tekstitaide (Textual Art). It was a relief to find out that “meaning” and “message” weren’t the only purposes of writing. — Sami Liuhto

February 15, 2016

Reijo Valta

During a future of poetry class, the professor used Guillaume Apollinaire, Vito Acconci, and Karri Kokko as examples of tomorrow’s literature. That was in the 1980s, and I was very excited about learning these “new” techniques. In a couple of years, I used these techniques in my own writing. But in late 1980s I didn’t find a place to publish, or anyone else working in the same way. So I forgot “new poetry.” The future of poetry, at least for me, started in Finland about a decade ago. The Internet was the only way to publish, to find other poets and get feedback.

February 15, 2016

Mikko Kuorinki

When I install objects in a room I feel like I am placing words on a page. When I place words on a page I feel like I am installing objects in a room. My writing happens a bit like the way empty beer cans, rocks, flat tires, and sticks appear on a roof of a warehouse over time. — Mikko Kuorinki

February 15, 2016
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