conundrum

the queen's xmas message

Le Rendez-Vous

Smallish mongoose; pointed
face; solitary, in pairs or small
groups. Slightly diminishing
the polar distance. The history
teacher lectured us every day,
did not sacrifice the quality
of her scorn for speed, her words
at first awakened horror but
continued abuse became mere
recitation. Something about a
dead horse, diurnal floggings.

COLDFRONT magazine

has just started publishing a series, curated by Nico Vassilakis, entitled Singular Vispo: First Encounters, in which a number of poets were asked if there was an experience, a specific interaction with visual poetry that "infected your brain, made you see language differently or drew you toward exploring vispo further? Is there a vispoem that captured your imagination. What piece first awakened in you the possibility of a visual alphabet/language alternative"? That was the general question posed & the first two sets of results can be found here.

Nico notes that though this query is overly reductive, the poets were kind enough to choose, for the most part, a singular vispoem as example of this phenomenon. The over forty posts will be rolled out in groups of five each.

wednesday newstrip

A giant explosive belt stretching for one kilometer & covered in millions of arachnids has appeared overnight in a small Memphis, Tennessee suburb ∙ the British army is to be restructured to create two “strike brigades” of 5,000 soldiers who can be deployed immediately to fight the plague of rats that an environmental group warns could descend on New Zealand next year ∙ Pram Minister Malformed Turnip-Ball seemed genuinely shocked today hearing through a jet lag haze of an explosion which damaged a public restroom at a controversial shrine in Tokyo that honors Japanese war dead ∙ in a crash that released a swarm of angry bees, a man has died after a truck carrying beehives appeared to have collided with the back of a logging truck travelling slowly in thick fog, police said.

the baths @ cyrene

D Minor

wednesday newstrip

Global stocks of baby formula are set for a short-term sell-off after Islamist militants launched co-ordinated attacks across Paris ∙ three key pieces of evidence are driving an international investigation into Prince Charles' brief encounter with WA's happy quokka during a visit to Kings Park on Sunday ∙ a 6-month-old boy & a 4-year-old boy arrived in Turkey on Sunday for a summit that has taken on new urgency after the attacks in Paris ∙ Lady Diana Spencer had to be snuck out of Australia in 1981 ahead of the decision by the ACT planning authority to approve what will be the territory's second highest residential tower ∙ Minister for I'm migrating Pedal Dustbin has expressed outrage after I'm migrating Minister Pedal Dustbin rejected calls to close Australia's borders to refugees in response to the recent terrorist attacks in Paris.

reciprocity—a detail

ballade

Mais où sont
les vol-au-vents
d'antan?

geographies: Turkmenistan

flensing

wednesday newstrip

Pope Francis on Sunday condemned the leak of sensitive Vatican documents as a deplorable crime but said that in East Antarctica & the interior of West Antarctica, there were gains in ice that offset any losses ∙ Israeli prime minister Netanyahu appears to have done an about-face & is now seeking public support for becoming the next Bachelor star on TV3 ∙ a gene in an ancient Australian native tobacco plant has hit back at widespread claims it gouges passengers with the surcharges it levies on fares paid by credit & debit card ∙ your smartphone is about to head to Antarctic waters to target illegal fishing of Patagonian toothfish ∙ a 73-year-old woman was seriously injured when she was thrown from a horse-drawn app today.

Today the
postman brought
me one of those
so-called smart
bombs. Don't
know why they
call them that. I
asked this one a
couple of simple
questions & it
couldn't answer
either of them.

rêve

atoll erode

wednesday newstrip

Butchers expect only a short-term reaction to the 'vague' report that a man with a meat cleaver was mounting a siege in Melbourne ∙ former Prom Minister Toe Knee Ass-Bit has warned a gathering of British conservatives in London that the imperative to "love your neighbor as you love yourself" is leading Europe into "catastrophic error" with regard to refugees ∙ a videographer has captured some dramatic footage of a killer whale kicking the new Apple iPhone 6S & 6S Plus 80 feet into the air off the coast of British Columbia ∙ the World Health Organization has thrown everyone into a panic by releasing a report categorizing the arrest of a student who refused to leave her high school maths class as a cancer-causing agent ∙ a Waikato family has used hormones to deliberately stunt the growth of their disabled daughter & keep her child-sized forever ∙ increasingly warfare is waged in cities with blithe disregard of international obligations to protect life — & there are no repercussions.

inferences

Otoliths issue thirty-nine is live

Issue thirty-nine, the southern spring issue of Otoliths has just gone live.

As always, it's a cornucopia of delights, with work from Pete Spence, Annette Plasencia, Shataw Naseri, Philip Byron Oakes, horace p sternwall, Kyle Hemmings, GS Smith, j4, fátima queiroz, Raymond Farr, Angelos Sakkis, John Lowther, Texas Fontanella, Mark Pirie, a. j. carruthers, Jack Galmitz, Marco Giovenale, Michael Aird, Karen Greenbaum-Maya, Dale Wisely, Olivier Schopfer, Anne Gorrick, Mike Gullickson, Simina Banu, Rob Cook, Andrew Topel, Michael De Rosa, Judith Roitman, Peter Ganick, Demosthenes Agrafiotis, Eileen R. Tabios, Steve Dalachinsky, Jim Leftwich, John M. Bennett, Volomydyr Bilyk, Lakey Comess, Seth Howard, Nicolas Grenier, Christopher Barnes, Laurent Grison, Brendan Slater, Charles Wilkinson, John Vieira, Richard Kostelanetz, Howie Good, Pearl Pirie, Willie Smith, C.S. Fuqua, Márton Koppány, Sandy McIntosh, Charles Freeland, Jürgen O. Olbrich, Alexandre Pierrepont, Cecelia Chapman, Simon Perchik, Scott Keeney, Anneke Baeten, Branko Gulin, Martin Burke, Bill DiMichele, Bobbi Lurie, Felino A. Soriano, Karl Kempton, Michael Rothenberg, Jeff Harrison, Marcia Arrieta, Natsuko Hirata, Sanjeev Sethi, Robyn Art, Jesse Glass, Vaughan Rapatahana, Marilyn Stablein, Caleb Puckett, Shloka Shankar, Johannes S. H. Bjerg, hiromi suzuki, Katrinka Moore, Mark Staniforth, John Pursch, Mark Russell, sean burn, Bob Heman, Joe Balaz, Robert Lee Brewer, Stephen Nelson, PT Davidson, Tony Beyer, Jake Goetz, J. D. Nelson, Tom Brami, Michael D. Goscinski, John Hand, Edward Kulemin, Jill Jones, & Gian Luigi Braggio.