Asemic writing

 


Once you see you cannot escape seeing; once you're literate you cannot escape writing; once you read you cannot escape meaning.

                                 Words on water, Chris Mansell

Definition of a quad by Chris Mansell

Here is a quad - a strict form I invented and which has appeared in two collections (Stung, and Stung More) to date.

Here is the first quad in the Stung collection:

What a quad is:

1. One quad comprises 4 interlinked squares, made up of 15 characters wide x 8 lines deep, exactly. (Obviously the font chosen is fixed width. They were originally composed on a manual typewriter.) 
2. There is no punctuation, at all, including apostrophes. 
3. There are no gaps at the ends of lines
4. There are words within words.
5. The black/red is not accidental. There must be some red characters on each line. 
6. The reds form a (subsidiary) poem in itself, particularly as a sound poem. 
7. The breaks and elisions in words, and the grammatical enjambment are not accidental and contribute to the meaning, imagery, rhythm etc 
8. Subject matter can be anything: straight imagist as here, though surrealism is good.
9. There are no titles, except for perhaps numbers.

AVES

AVES and VERGE form a pair, sometime soon to be joined by a third, small collections of poems. Whereas VERGE contains three small booklets, AVES contains three folders each with a poem on the subject of birds: The Secret Lives of Birds, [five n twenty], and, Aves and Fishes.

Verging on the new!

Here is the latest limited edition publication, Verge. Each copy has three booklet of poetry inside, Ulysses takes to Sea for the first time, The Movement to Spring, and The Question Arriving.
10.5cm x 10.5cm. It is the companion publication to Aves (see www.chrismansell.com)