The second exercise to my visual poetry group. Who keep doing wonderfully – our conversations together, their serious play, astound me. I wish I had leisure to write how much fun it was to talk with them today about Grenier’s Sentences and Cage’s 4:33 and Olson’s “high-energy construct” and Duchamp’s readymades.
Back. On. Track. An exercise cued by Judith Copithorne’s Runes, rather more obscure than A Humument, but very delicious, and in its way more luscious, an investigation of the threshold where grapheme becomes idly wandering line.
The prompt. Write a poem by hand in which the character of the writing is central to the experience of the poem.
Pointers. Again, by all means, take Copithorne as your model, but avoid slavish imitation. You might start by exploring ways of stylizing your usual handwriting. What happens when the cross-strokes on your t’s, the loops on your g’s, are allowed to run riot?
I’ll post a few of their soon. Till then, a bit from Copithorne (what, BTW, a lovely Norsish name).
the art of compost 
2 thoughts on “Exercise – Inscription”