Koss Works
Writing | Poetry | Art
Grateful to have erasure work in (Re) An Ideas Journal. Thank you H.E. Fisher and Felice Neal for including me. Pleased to share space with James Diaz, M.A. Scott, Twila Newey, and everyone else!
Check out my other posts and pages for more Wuthering Heights visual poems. They are inspired by someone I love and lost but explore a range of subjects, including grief, women’s issues, and suicide.
See less
I’ve been doing a series of artworks based on Emily Brontë’s novel, Wuthering Heights. Some of them have a feminist bend, some are about someone I lost (who loved this book). Most are pretty nightmarish. Whether you call them collages, blackout poems, or visual meditations, it does my soul good to do them.
This one was from an introduction by Currer Bell (Charlotte Brontë) from a very old copy I’ve been working from. This, like many others, is a combination of handmade materials and digital enhancement. This started out with meditative, modulated pencil work. William Blake meets art deco airbrush meets Xerox machine.
Among other things, I’m searching for a unique visual approach to erasure art, and allowing text to show through, multiple readings, is also part of the practice, as you’ll see on my “garbage dump” page. It may not be “erasure poetry” at all, but I’m more interested in the journey than the destination (name), or aspiring to be like something else. And if you can make anything look remotely original in this post-modern era, just yay! Most of the work is jolie laide or art brut. I try to avoid “designing” or being illustrative, although this one could go that way.
View more erasure poems here or on my thrown-together, temporary gallery. Thank you to the journals who have published them (diode, Anvil Tongue, Up the Staircase Poetry, Harpy Hybrid Review). I also have several forthcoming from (Re)Ideas and in Permafrost’s next print journal. Check out the (Re)Ideas on here.
Honored to be included in this cool anthology along with lots of edgy writers. Bonemilk II is the second anthology from Gutslut Press, edited by Aimee J. Sanghvi and P.D. Hogan. I have a poem, “You, Drawing” in this issue, along with a longer, experimental grief piece, “Dreaming in Tongues” and a caged angel photo. I’m grateful that the gut sluts at Gutslut Press have the courage to publish the hard stuff. Buy it here!
Very happy to have some asemic writing published in diode poetry this past December. This is the second batch of visual poems Patty Paine published (see previous issue too). For more information about asemic writing, check out this book review in Art News.
Honored to have some visual poetry in Harpy Hybrid Review (three pieces included). This is my second publication with them, so I’m thrilled to be invited back. They include questions for the artists to complete describing their process, so I did my best to shed some light. This is a great issue with lots of visual poetry as well as writing. I love this ‘zine. Find my work here, and read about my other Harpy Hybrid publications here.
Petrichor Issue 21 is full of interesting writing and includes a number of great visual art pieces. My work is an ekphrastic poem about Joan Mitchell’s “The Hudson” painting from the 50s, called “The Hudson Looks Different.” Also included is an asemic art or writing piece, made from old journals and sketchbooks, a palimpsest of sorts. I love the range of experimental work in Petrichor and am grateful to Seth Copeland and the other editors for these publications. Find my work here.
