I got into concrete/visual poetry via
band logos, psychedelic lettering, calligraphy, fantasy scripts in LOTR,
books on talismans in the school library and actually finding an old collection
(Once Again, Jean-Francois Bory) or two second hand and being amazed.
And looking at the alphabets of foreign tongues. And The Mystery.
I got into comics via comics and monsters. The undergrounds did what the heroes didn't when I was 15.
Oror 70 was an early hit to the brain.
I've always been into books in general..so when a book looks a little different, I'll pick it up...
My definition of comics exploded way wide open in my early 20s and I wanted to pull everything onto the page.
I experimented muchly. This is all open territory nowadays. The really 'weird' comics are not hard to find.
The cognoscenti drool over them publicly. The makers are quirky and real people. And sometimes quite successful artists.
Comics nowadays are enjoying wide networks of exposure and expansive styles and ways of being read.
There are many places where experimental comics edge up to concrete poetry and would be loved by
the mail-artists, collage queens and typography fetishists if they were but discovered.
The 'new' graphic design manifestos edge up pretty close to the outthere strips, as well.
The newness can only be that all these old things have always been related.
We all specialize and the generalists like me
are too word and reference dumb to write essays about what I really mean and what I really love.
Yesway is an attempt to pull together my loves, reveal how closely linked they are,
turn the letterheads onto comics and the idea of comics and the other way round.
Spur on the creation of books. Create dialogue between all the book people.
I feel that there are way too many secrets in the art camps.

the parents of literature
look and sound oral and drawn
true bards and carvers spawned the deal
comics (what are called comics)
got an early start and yes
subsume an array of forms
and goals...

machine based legible documents

the previous eight texts
(with the exception of the one recent map - origin forgotten)
are manipulations of what i believe to be derek beaulieu's
an afterword after words: notes towards a concrete poetic.

mo
em
do

Open Letter to the Taxonomists Of Visual Literature

In establishing/revising
a taxonomy of visual literature,
one that exhaustively details every habit within
visual/concrete/asemic/noise/cutup...
where are comics ?
silent/formalist/experimental ?
strip/novel/gag ?

I find it cute that xerox static and letraset funtimes,
rubberstamps and mail-art cut ups
find place in the discussions
of visual poetry
more often than comics.

Old. What we call comics...is very, very old.

My most recent poster.