hiromi suzuki

Eternal Relations

forest —–> 森 / Forest
river —–> 川 / River
rain —–> 雨 / Rain
umbrella —–> 傘 / Umbrella
town —–> 町 / Town
bird —–> 鳥 / Bird
people —–> 人 / People
tree —–> 木 / Tree
The Japanese language is comprised of Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana. Kanji are also Chinese characters, and the same Kanji may have different meanings, shapes, and pronunciations in Chinese and Japanese. In Eternal Relations, I use their Japanese versions. In a sense, Kanji are hieroglyphs. By using Kanji, we can draw every natural phenomenon and mental scene with one letter. It is itself visual poetry. In Japanese culture, the short poem known as haiku evokes nature and daily life. In the same way, by using kanji, I evoke the eternal loop between nature and time, their ‘eternal relations.’
hiromi suzuki is a poet and artist living in Tokyo, Japan. She is the author of Ms. cried, 77 poems by hiromi suzuki (kisaragi publishing, 2013), logbook (Hesterglock Press, 2018) and INVISIBLE SCENERY (Low Frequency Press, 2018). Her works are published internationally in Otoliths, BlazeVOX, Empty Mirror, Hotel, Burning House Press, DATABLEED, MOONCHILD MAGAZINE, talking about strawberries all of the time, Mookychick, Coldfront, RIC Journal, 3:AM Magazine, The Cerurove, A) GLIMPSE) OF), and so on.

Sonja Johanson

Gneiss

At least
reinvent
destiny
tatters
within geological strata
toss them into
a       billion
little
days
All of them

erasure, Anne Rice, Taltos, p.10
Pinnae segments from fertile fronds, Sensitive Fern, Onoclea sensibilis

Divinity

choose
to
fall into
quantum physics
tracing the path of particles
within
this
brimming world
this
empire                      of                      paper
zeal

erasure, Anne Rice, Taltos, p. 470
simple leaves, Pincushion Moss, Leucobryum glaucum

Bradbury

orange
black
mixed and ready,
dying in the air.
a discreet
cleft.
night,
came again,
dark and distinct,

erasure, Anne Rice, Taltos, p. 120
capsules and berries, Japanese Spindle and Privet, Euonymous japonica and Ligustrum compactum

This series of erasures use the Anne Rice novel Taltos as their source text. I elected to perform these erasures using plant materials as a way of celebrating and mourning our current ecological state; the breakneck speed of climate change and globalization is easily observed by those working in horticulture and conservation. These plants represent both native plants that are threatened by habitat loss and the non-natives that are replacing them. In selecting materials for these erasures, I looked for plants that were accessible in the New England landscape during the month of October, and sought diversity of form, texture, colour, and botanical structures.

Sonja Johanson has recent work appearing in THRUSH, Bellevue Literary Review, and American Life in Poetry. She is a contributing editor at the Eastern Iowa Review, and the author of Impossible Dovetail (IDES, Silver Birch Press), all those ragged scars (Choose the Sword Press), and Trees in Our Dooryards (Redbird Chapbooks). Sonja divides her time between work in Massachusetts and her home in the mountains of western Maine. Follow her at sonjajohanson.net.

Buzz Spector

in modern America (2014)

important parts of religious experience (2014)

not even (2015)

the eternal mystery in pictures (2014)

the shadows’ touch . . . (2016)

Artist’s Statement

For the last five years I’ve been making text/image sequences of poetry employing found language on the dust jackets of hardcover books. I clip the last lines of blurbs to compose poetry. These last words, so to speak, are vestiges of writing which is itself deliberately ordinary in function. We are all too aware of the deception of buying a book after reading a blurb more engaging than the volume it’s wrapped around. I’m taking up the challenge of writing as collage from such meager shards, bringing variations of color, typography, and bits of images into the process.

Buzz Spector works in a wide range of mediums including sculpture, photography, printmaking, book arts, and installation. His art makes frequent use of the book, both as subject and object, and is concerned with relationships between public history, individual memory, and perception.

David Felix

Notational

Very Portent

Location

Nowhere Here

 

David Felix is an English visual poet who lives in Denmark. For fifty years or so his writing has taken on a variety of forms, in collage, three dimensions, in galleries, anthologies, festival performances and video and in over forty publications worldwide, both in print and online. As the child of artists, magicians and tailors he has inherited a workroom furnished with a fume hood solvent disposal system, an escape cabinet and a 120-spool thread rack.