The VisPo Issue
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Afieya Kipp on Kristie Shoemaker’s do graves get wifi
Janet McCann on Christine Boldt’s For Every Tatter
Joshua Gottlieb-Miller on Tom Haviv’s A Flag of No Nation
Wendy Call’s Twelve Books I Loved Last Year
Ann E. Michael on Ren Powell’s Impermanence
Greg Kosmicki on Tom Hunley’s What Feels Like Love
Maureen Alsop on Amanda Earl’s Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry
Maureen Alsop on Jennifer Sperry Steinorth’s Her Read: A Graphic Poem
Maureen Alsop on Holaday Mason and Sarah Maclay’s The “She” Series
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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
Jeehan Ashercook is a Doctorate student of Fine Arts at the University of Glasgow. Her poems have appeared in various publications including, Gutter Magazine, BlueHouse Journal and IR11. She won first prize for The Voice of Peace Continental Anthology Competition and was also a John Byrne Award top-ten finalist.
Amy Bobeda holds an MFA from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. She's the founder of Wisdom Body Collective. Her first two books are forthcoming in 2022, and her work can be found in Denver Quarterly, Entropy, Full-Stop, Ecotheo Review, TYPO, and elsewhere. Find her @amybobeda on twitter.
Lawrence Bridges is best known for work in the film and literary world. His poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, and The Tampa Review. He has published three volumes of poetry: Horses on Drums, Flip Days, and Brownwood. As a filmmaker, he created a series of literary documentaries for the NEA’s “Big Read” initiative, which include profiles of Ray Bradbury, Amy Tan, Tobias. Wolff, and Cynthia Ozick. His photographs have appeared in the Las Laguna Art Gallery 2020, Humana Obscura, Wanderlust a Travel Journal, the London Photo Festival, and displayed in the ENSO Art Gallery, Malibu, California.
Pushcart Prize recipient Elena Karina Byrne is a poet, lecturer, editor, and program director. Her fourth book If This Makes You Nervous will release with Omnidawn in October 2021. She has also just completed a book of published, “interrupted” essays: Voyeur Hour: Meditations on Poetry, Art & Desire. As part of her interdisciplinary, collaboration-adventure, she is enrolled in Antioch University Santa Barbara’s MFA program in Writing & Contemporary Media. Her publications include her publications include the Best American Poetry, Poetry, the Paris Review, the Kenyon Review, the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Verse Daily, BOMB, diode, the Kyoto Journal, Persea Books anthology, the Eloquent Poem, Poetry International, and forthcoming issues of Blackbird, Narrative, Entropy, Adroit Journal, and New American Writing.
Wendy Call is a writer, editor, translator, and editor. She has translated two books of poetry, both by Mexican-Zapotec poet Irma Pineda, that are forthcoming in 2022. She co-edited the craft anthology Telling True Stories and wrote the award-winning nonfiction book No Word for Welcome. She lives in Seattle, on Duwamish land, and in Oaxaca, on Mixtec / Zapotec land.
Louise Carson lives near Montreal in a small house surrounded by gardens with a forest out back. She writes poetry, historical fiction and mystery novels. Her poems have featured in two 'Best' Canadian anthologies - in 2013 and 2021 - and in two books - Dog Poems and A Clearing. Carson’s piece “Wallpaper” originally published in Talking about Strawberries All the Time.
Federico Federici is a conceptual artist working in the fields of writing, video art, installations and physics. His works have appeared in international journals and anthologies including «3:AM Magazine», «Art in America», «Jahrbuch der Lyrik», «Poet Lore», «Sand», «The Manhattan Review» and others. Among his books: “Liner notes for a Pithecanthropus Erectus sketchbook” (2018), “A private notebook of winds” (2019), “Transcripts from demagnetized tapes” (2021), “Lettere d'amore a Peter Rabbit” curated by Paolo Giovannetti (2021), “Profilo Minore” curated by Andrea Cortellessa (2021).
Tim Gaze began his writing career writing quirky short stories and experimental poetry, sometimes using computer programs to manipulate words. More recently, he began exploring illegible writing and non-alphabetical symbols. He founded Asemic magazine in 1999, which has grown from a folded pamphlet to a 100 page book. Attempting to understand the illegible “asemic” domain, he has written some short essays, some of them published in English or in translation. Even more recently, he is creating abstract narratives using inkblot shapes. Asemic writing, visual poetry or abstract comics are the best descriptions for some of his creations. His longer works include Glyphs of Uncertain Meaning (Post-Asemic Press) and noology (Arrum Press). He is also active in sound poetry, with the album Shapes and a weekly internet radio show, Sound Poetry etc. Tim lives on the Peramangk people's traditional land, in the Adelaide Hills of Australia.
Stephanie Barbé Hammer is a 6 time Pushcart Prize nominee in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. She is the author of a full length poetry collection, HOW FORMAL? as well as the prose poem chapbook SEX WITH BUILDINGS. She is also a novelist (THE PUPPET TURNERS OF NARROW INTERIOR, RESCUE PLAN) and writing teacher. Stephanie is a continually displaced city-slicker: a New Yorker, who moved to Southern California, who now lives for the moment in rural Washington state. She is managing editor at SHARK REEF.
Jean Harper’s writing has appeared in The Florida Review, North American Review, Iowa Review, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Indiana Arts Commission, and been in residence at Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Originally from rural, southern Kentucky, Rose Menyon Heflin is a writer and artist living in Madison, Wisconsin. Her poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies spanning four continents. It won a 2021 Merit Award from Arts for All Wisconsin, and one of her poems was choreographed and performed by a local dance troupe. Additionally, she had an ekphrastic creative nonfiction piece featured in the Chazen Museum of Art’s Companion Species exhibit. Among other venues, her recent and forthcoming poetry publications include Deep South Magazine, Defunkt Magazine, Fauxmoir, Feral, Fireflies’ Light, Great Lakes Review, La Raíz Magazine, Red Weather, sPARKLE & bLINK, SPLASH!, Star*Line, W.E.I.R.D. and Xinachtli Journal (Journal X).
Born in an island archipelago, ithacan now resides somewhere north of El Paso. ithacan’s published work include poetry, prose, and hybrid works.
Afieya “Fi” Kipp (they/them/he/him) is a trans artist and poet from Northern New Jersey. They received their MA in Poetry from Southern New Hampshire University and a BFA with distinction in Painting from Kean University.
J.I. Kleinberg’s found poems have been published in print and online journals worldwide. An artist, poet, freelance writer, and three-time Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, she lives in Bellingham, Washington, USA, and on Instagram @jikleinberg.
Greg Kosmicki is a poet and retired social worker who lives in Omaha, Nebraska. He founded The Backwaters Press in 1997, for which he now serves as Editor Emeritus. Greg’s poetry has been published in numerous magazines since 1975, both print and online.
Lisa C. Krueger, Ph.D., MFA, is a clinical psychologist and poet in Pasadena. Her poems have appeared in various journals, including Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, Rattle, and Prairie Schooner; she has published articles on imagery and parallels between poetry and therapy. Her fourth collection of poems with Red Hen Press, Run Away to the Yard, was published in 2017. She maintains a therapy practice with focus on girls’ and women’s issues, health psychology, and writing therapy.
Jeffrey Ethan Lee’s works include the novel, The Autobiography of Somebody Else (White Pine Press, 2016), the full-length dramatic poem, identity papers (finalist for the Colorado Book Award), and invisible sister (finalist for the first Many Mountains Moving Book Prize). Lee won an Editor’s Prize from Seven Kitchens Press for towards euphoria(poetry chapbook), and the Sow’s Ear Press Prize forThe Sylf (poetry chapbook). Other chapbooks were published by Ashland Poetry Press and Moonstone Press. Poems, essays and stories have appeared in North American Review, Xconnect, Poemeleon, Crab Orchard Review, Crazyhorse, Many Mountains Moving, Crosscurrents, American Poetry Review, Green Mountains Review, and Spillway etc. Lee has a Ph.D. in British Romanticism and an MFA from NYU. He teaches in the humanities at Temple University and in Creative Writing at the Shambhala Center of Philadelphia.
Cristina Legarda was born in the Philippines and spent her early childhood there before moving to Bethesda, Maryland. She is now a practicing physician in Boston. Her work has appeared in America magazine, The Dewdrop, Plainsongs, FOLIO, Smartish Pace, The Good Life Review, and others.
Jason Ly is an artist and writer based in Virginia. He received his BFA in Fine Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2018. He received a fellowship in New Media from the Virginia Museum in Fine Arts in 2017. He enjoys playing with words, cats, and word play.
Ann E. Michael lives in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. She currently directs the writing center at DeSales University. Her most recent collection of poems is Barefoot Girls; her next book, The Red Queen Hypothesis, will be published sometime in 2022 (Salmon Poetry). More info at https://annemichael.blog
Joshua Gottlieb-Miller’s poetry appears in or is forthcoming from Poet Lore, Concision, Rattle, Berru Poetry Series, and Brooklyn Rail. Multimedia work and hybrid writing appears in MAYDAY Magazine, Bat City Review, and Talking Writing. Currently he tutors in a writing center and teaches creative writing to seniors and schoolchildren.
Journals publishing Janet McCann’s poetry include KANSAS QUARTERLY, PARNASSUS, NIMROD, SOU'WESTER, NEW YORK QUARTERLY, TENDRIL, POETRY AUSTRALIA, etc. A 1989 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship winner, she taught at Texas A & M University from 1969 until her retirement. Most recent poetry collection is LIFE LIST: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (Wipf and Stock, 2021). She has written many reviews, for WOMEN’S REVIEW OF BOOKS, CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE, TEXAS REVIEW, and many other journals.
Shringarika Pandey is a 21-year-old poet, writer, and Spotify playlist connoisseur from India. On her good days, you can find her reading Richard Siken, taking care of her houseplants, and posting doodles on her Instagram
Randy Prunty lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and works as a bus driver. Recent poems can be found in New American Writing, Fence, Parentheses, and forthcoming in Volt. He has several chapbooks, most recently Red Wax from the micropress Ethel.
James Redfern was born and raised in Long Beach, California. Redfern is a graduate of Grinnell College. His poetry has appeared in High Shelf, Beatific Magazine, The Raw Art Review, Transcend, We Are Antifa (anthology, Into the Void), 2020: Good Writing from a Bad Year (anthology, Dutch Kills Press), Verity La: The Clozapine Clinic, Dime Show Review, Swimming with Elephants, Montana Mouthful, Anti-Heroin Chic, Great Lakes Poetry Press, Fear and Loathing in Long Beach, The American Journal of Poetry, Passengers Journal, DoveTales, Genre: Urban Arts (forthcoming), and elsewhere.
Emmalea Russo lives at the Jersey shore and edits Asphalte Magazine. She's the author of two books of poetry/essay, G (2018) and Wave Archive (2019), as well as several artist books and chapbooks. Currently, she's working on a series of projects on film and medieval mysticism. Her website is https://emmalearusso.com/
Santucci is a poet and collage artist in Cleveland. His work can be seen in Roanoke Review, Star82 Review, and Ponder Review.
Anthony Santulli (he/they) is a New Jersey born writer with a B.A. in Creative Writing and Italian from Susquehanna University. His recent work has appeared in Heavy Feather Review, minor literature[s], the tiny journal, Beaver Magazine, and Impspired.
Jen Schneider is an educator who lives, writes, and works in small spaces throughout Pennsylvania. She is a Best of the Net nominee, with stories, poems, and essays published in a wide variety of literary and scholarly journals. She is the author of Invisible Ink (Toho Pub), On Daily Puzzles: (Un)locking Invisibility & On Crossroads and Fill in the Blank Puzzles (forthcoming, Moonstone Press), and Blindfolds, Bruises, and Breakups (forthcoming Atmosphere Press).
Michael Sohn grew up in the Massachusetts town that spawned “Mary Had a Little Lamb”. He has lived in Chicago, a whole lifetime in New York City, a few years in Marseille and presently in Utah. For too many years he taught Freshman Composition in NYC while working on his own poems, reading and writing about contemporary French poetry, and thinking about the relationship between text and image, the visual arts and poetry. He currently teaches in the Honors Program at the University of Utah. He has published articles on French poets Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) and André du Bouchet (1924-2001). He recently published a book of visible poetry, Still Forms, with Wet Cement Press. A book of experimental and shaped prose about the French painter Pierre Tal Coat (1905-85) is forthcoming from L’Atelier contemporain. He is currently working on a book of critical prose poetry around André du Bouchet and the problem of writing painting.
Benjamin Stallings is an American musician and poet based in Las Vegas. He grew up in Beijing. He was a finalist for the Dan Veach Prize in 2019 and a runner-up for the Sublingua Prize for Poetry in 2020.
Rachel Stempel is a genderqueer Ukrainian-Jewish poet and PhD candidate in English at Binghamton University. They are the author of the chapbooks Interiors (Foundlings Press, 2021) and BEFORE THE DESIRE TO EAT (Finishing Line Press, 2022). They currently live in New York with their rabbit, Diego. Find them at www.racheljstempel.com.
Rebecca Thrush has poetry published both in print and online with a variety of journals. Most notably, she was featured to be part of Viewless Wing’s 2021 Scary Art Show and Line of Advance’s 2021 Wright Award series. She also has original art online with Decomp Journal and Oddball Magazine.
Cecil Touchon is a painter, performance artist, collector, draftsman, photographer, publisher and curator. But it is through his collage work that he has made his most lasting mark. His collages are the seeds that grow into his other practices. Touchon's paintings are abstractions based upon typography. Using the techniques of collage, he reassembles portions of letter fonts from billboards and printed material into pure abstractions that transform verbal language into a form of visual architecture. His paintings use trompe l'oeil techniques to painstakingly create the illusion of large collage abstractions. They are characterized by warmly colored geometric shapes — overlapping rectangles and rounded wedges - that seem to revolve and recede into the background. The resulting works are a play of lightness and mass that are both visually striking and, because of the hints of letters, intellectually satisfying. Cecil Touchon was born in Austin, Texas (1956). His artistic inspiration was ignited early and explored throughout his childhood and into his young adulthood. He received his BFA from the University of Texas at Arlington. Throughout his career, which spans over 40 years, Touchon has been collected worldwide and figures prominently in the Massurrealism movement. Touchon is a founding member of the 1987 Post-Dogmatist Group and director of the Ontological Museum - the group's archives - as well as a respected member of the Art Mail, Asemic Writing and Fluxus communities. Touchon's work can be found in many private, corporate and international collections and archives.
Nance Van Winckel’s ninth poetry collection, The Many Beds of Martha Washington, is just out with the Pacific Northwest Poetry Series/Lynx House Press. She's also published a book of visual poems with Pleiades Press (2016) and five books of fiction, most recently Ever Yrs, a novel in the form of a scrapbook (Twisted Road Publications, 2014). The recipient of two NEA fellowships, the Washington State Book Award, a Paterson Fiction Prize, Poetry Society of America's Gordon Barber Poetry Award, a Christopher Isherwood Fellowship, and three Pushcart Prizes, Nance teaches in Vermont College’s MFA Program and lives in Spokane, Washington. Her author website is: http://www.nancevanwinckel.com; her visual poetry website is http://photoemsbynancevanwinckel.zenfolio.com
Christine Walde is a poet, artist, and librarian whose work combines library and archival research with interests in experimental prose, poetry, visual poetry, performance, and the visual arts. Walde lives and works on Lekwungen Territory in the Cascadia Bioregion of the Pacific Northwest.
Janet Jiahui Wu is a nonbinary Hong-Kongese-Chinese-Australian visual artist and writer of poetry and fiction. She has published in various literary magazines big and small. She currently lives in South Australia with two sassy fat cats, Puss (in boots) & Pablo (Neruda). She acknowledges and pays respect to the Kaurna people and their elders past, present and future.