Checking in on Poemics

A Poemic in the style of Satu Kaikkonen

It's been a while since I've shared some of my poemic work on this blog.  When I am not doodling political cartoons and commentary over at Black Magpie Theory, I also noodle around with experimental comics forms, including poemics, abstract comics, and asemic writing.  "Poemics" is a term coined in 1991 by Alvaro de Sa, a Brazillian poet who considered poemics a "metalanguage of poetry."  While this origin locates poemics as an outgrowth of visual poetry ("vispos") and concrete poetry, contemporary poemic artists explore a variety of hybrid possibilities between poetry and comics.

When I stumbled across Piotr Szreniawski's poemicstrip blog a little over a year ago, I recognized a literary/art form I had already been exploring with a local arts collective, BAR Corporation, as we made conceptual art comics for the SIUC student newspaper.  Working with Piotr and other poemic artists, I've contributed work to collaborative artist book projects, an up-coming issue of Xerolage, a forthcoming essay on connections between experimental comics and performance art for the Polish comics journal, Zeszytow Komiksowych, and had a multi-page graphic poem accepted in the journal, Palooka.  And all that more or less just in the last year. Whew!

All of which is simply to say that poemics and experimental comics have been very good to me.  I encourage you to check out the work being done at some of the blogs in the list over there on the right, or to follow the hyperlinks in this post.  Copied below is some of the work I've been contributing to the poemicstrip blog.  Enjoy.

In response to a prompt about "visual technologies"

Working with asemic writing

In response to a prompt on "fashion"

An homage to the collaboration of e.e. cummings and Krazy Kat

A poemic haiku

A love poemic for Valentines Day