filling Station Magazine and Otata 40: Experimental and Condensed Poems
Two poems on page 42: "Sea Lion Head Hunters" and "Leaf-green Tender Sea."
These poems first appeared in filling Station Magazine, Issue 71, Science & Tech, March 2019.
Two Floppy Perspectives poems: "0.SCR, with Translastion: 0.SCR" and "AWARE.DEF, with Translation: AWARE.DEF"
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| Pages 20-21 in filling Station, Issue 71 |
Four poems made it out into the world during April. They represent my two favorite forms within the poetry spectrum, condensed and experimental. My forms and procedures vary based on what the poem reveals.
My two condensed and compressed poems in Otata are from my book-length photo ecopoetry project. For four years, I’ve been documenting and writing about coastal boundaries conveyed through the space where the Pacific touches land on the California coast. How man and nature speak to each other.
My darkly dry sense of humor is a blend of silliness and seriousness. In filling Station Issue 71, two of my ASCII translations found a home. The poems arise from my floppy disc translations. No, these are not intended as ASCII poems in the concrete sense. These translations reflect the many ways symbols might be interpreted.
Structure, whether in life or in writing, is a welcome constraint (not a limitation or restriction). We may want to do everything at once. This is so impossibly human. We need something to frame our day, our process. Constraints serve as guidelines, helping us prioritize the important stuff.
Because paper was hard to come by, Abraham Lincoln handwrote a daily routine on the inside page of a book. This act of restricting his day actually made the important stuff more tangible. (Talk about undermining my schedule, I just spent a ridiculous amount of time looking for that handwritten image I hold in memory.)
Back to the poems. I’m thrilled to be included with such talented writers in Otata 40 and filling Station Magazine, Issue 71 – Science & Technology in Experimental Literature. Sharing my writing connects me with something beyond my solitary writing life. I feel connected to a global ecosystem of readers who notice more than what’s written in the text. We see how things are framed and why space is necessary. The absence of space is a statement, too.
Because paper was hard to come by, Abraham Lincoln handwrote a daily routine on the inside page of a book. This act of restricting his day actually made the important stuff more tangible. (Talk about undermining my schedule, I just spent a ridiculous amount of time looking for that handwritten image I hold in memory.)
Back to the poems. I’m thrilled to be included with such talented writers in Otata 40 and filling Station Magazine, Issue 71 – Science & Technology in Experimental Literature. Sharing my writing connects me with something beyond my solitary writing life. I feel connected to a global ecosystem of readers who notice more than what’s written in the text. We see how things are framed and why space is necessary. The absence of space is a statement, too.
