Rosaire Appel: New York, where I live, is visually surreal and endlessly inspiring. I walk everywhere, camera phone in pocket. Recently I’ve been giving a lot of attention to sounds, focusing on listening. Over the years I’ve made many books, both commercially printed and unique. My drawings and digital prints are exhibited intermittently. My website is www.rosaireappel.com 

What inspires you to create visual poetry (asemic texts, and other language based visual arts)?

It was the look of poetry on the page that attracted me, as a youth, to poetry. Short lines with air flow among the words and letters/ white space/ openness – this was inviting. Individual words stood out and my eyes could, at a glance, find a rhythm of e’s throughout the lines. Paragraphs, in comparison, were dark forests, a struggle to get through. 

Also from my earliest days, the feel of marking paper with a crayon or pencil - making tracks, scribbling -was a rich sensual pleasure.

Reading and looking are locked in eternal conflict with each other; the tension can be a source of energy. Gradually I found ways to bring these two strands together in my work. I draw writing, and I also write drawings. A quote from Split-level Poems : “Between the level of words and the level of images – who goes there and by what means?”

What inspires me is, actually, the pleasure of working, materially and cerebrally . The term visual poetry still feels pretty open. A single definition of it hasn’t been encased in cement (cutting off its oxygen, suffocating it). Practitioners can wander through the field creating their own paths rather than being required to follow well-traveled ones. The borders of the territory can still be expanded - the rules are still soft.

What is the one thing you would like readers to gain, to understand, about your work, the breadth of asemic writing and the work you have undertaken?

I would like my work to make your fingers itch with impatience to pick up a pen, or crayon or camera – to open your lungs and say or sing - move your feet - put thoughts of all kinds into words or marks. To place more emphasis on creating than consuming.