asemic writing

Grateful to be in Up the Staircase Quarterly #57. This issue is full of great poetry and art. Poetry by these people included:

Quinn Forlini | “Attenuation”
Sanvitti Sahdev | “I fill up”
Fiona Lu | “hunting”
Oluwafisayo Akinfolami | “Semantics”
Satya Dash | 2 poems: “Elasticity” and “Two Deaths”
Jill Khoury | “Subjective Units of Distress Scale 1-10”
Ran Zhao | “floodpath”
Olivia J. Kiers | “Shower: Arc de Triomphe”
Anaïs Deal-Márquez | “Gringa.”
Jace Raymond Smellie | “for my grandma doris almost four years after”
Chase Dimock | “Contaminants”
Kolbe Riney | 2 poems: “sexy villain” and “voyager”

and artwork by:

Sara Louise Wilson | Haunt Me + more
Elizabeth Wing | Blüd Rites
jw summerisle | Strangers
Shelbey Leco | Blue.
Koss | Wuthering Heights 1, Magpie +more
Tomislav Silipetar | WHAT IS LEFT

Emanuela Iorga is the issue illustrator with multiple bullet-riddled images in a starkly graphic (not literal) style.

Also, reviews by:

Tyler Friend | Him or Her or Whatever
Jasmine Elizabeth Smith | South Flight
L.E. Bowman | What I Learned from the Trees

I have four pieces from a magpie/hare series slated for my book, plus one visual poem that utilizes text from a poem, “Shoulder Story,” originally published in Rogue Agent. The other pieces reference or erase passages of Wuthering Heights. Find my page here, and read the whole issue here.

I’ve been taking a break from writing poetry and doing visual word art, including asemic writing/recycling from journals, crossword poems, and uncategorizable stuff, but I have lots of work coming out in the next few months, including some difficult abuse writing and some more visual poetry in Diode. It feels good to get back to painting and drawing.

Magpie asemic art piece with writing and Wuthering Heights erasure poetry text in and surrounding black magpie. — Up the Staircase Visual Poetry, Asemic Writing, and Erasure Poetry by Koss

Finished a couple pieces and am playing around with another asemic art or writing piece. The big-nosed magpie on board is finished. I posted it earlier. I’m still playing around with drawing/writing on crossword puzzles. Used a fixative, but am struggling with (albeit intrigued by) how media behaves on the cheap newsprint/manila paper. Conjures memory of hauling around huge sketchpads as an undergrad. So consider it an in-progress shot. The hare poem is now finished (an earlier state posted in another blog post. The original poem was called “Shoulder Story” and published in Rogue Agent. I shortened it, cut it up, and used it in the piece. I like that there’s a weird positive/negative play and the large black shape could be a womb, a black flower, or a fist. The stem might be entrails . . .