four new poems at the avatar review

I have four new poems--"Condition of the living room," "Liner notes: so sharp, so pencil-thin," "Slow burn: serious," and "Statement"--now online as part of issue #15 of The Avatar Review.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Robert Swereda

Author of re: verbs (Bareback editions) and a chapbook ionlylikeitwhenitrhymes, Robert Swereda is a member of the Filling Station collective. He studied creative writing at Capilano University in Vancouver. Other work has been published by The Puritan, ditch, West Coast Line, The Incongruous Quarterly, steel bananas, The Capilano Review, Enpipe Line and Poetry Is Dead.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Change my life? Although the recognition feels nice and maybe my ego got a boost, I didn`t exactly win the lottery. My work has been getting more and more visual. I`ve been experimenting with forming sculptures with text, collages, investigating dead languages such as Latin and Futhark and playing with translation. These new adventures don`t feel so different than what I`ve done in the past, I`m just expanding my palette.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
From my late teens and on I`ve been interested in metaphysics and through that I found Robin Skelton, who published a few volumes on Paganism and many books of poetry. Fiction I have dabbled in a little but never felt confident enough to try to publish it yet. I find there is so much more room for experimentation with poetry.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
When I first started writing, everything spewed out of me rapidly. As some years have gone by, the process has really slowed down. I guess when I was new to writing I wanted to try any type of writing prompt that was available to me. Each piece takes a different amount of time to be realized. I`ll have an idea in my head, but it may need time to brew in my brain before it`s ready to transfer to paper. Maybe I don`t try to edit and revise as much as I should, I like my writing to have a rawness to it.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
Sometimes they`re like “ AH-HA!!” moments, when I`m not even thinking of writing and some new idea will spark. Other times I see an idea I want to try out just to see what happens. That`s how my Flarf chapbook I only like it when it rhymes happened. Other times I want to use techniques from other mediums and figure out a way to use it poetically like, "Arpeggios on Leo Brouwer" in my book re: verbs. My attention span is quite short, so my pieces are also. Though I feel that the section of my book "b)rainstorms" could have been something book length.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I`m a terrible performer. I get too nervous, I hate using microphones and hearing myself through the speakers. Since my work is more visual, I think that performance is more a way to promote myself it doesn`t really aid my writing. I do feel public readings are important though. There have been a few books I read through and the text alone didn`t do it for me. Then I got to see the author live and I came out with a better understanding of how they wanted their work to be interpreted.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
Answering questions, no. Raising questions, yes. I`m just here to make a big mess.

I`m interested in the flexibility of language, especially English. How nouns can flip to verbs and back again, how one word can have several meanings. I demonstrate this in "Arpeggios on Leo Brouwer" in my book, and in a piece called "signature move" http://horselesspress.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/hlr12.pdf

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I wish writers, especially poets were more celebrated in North America. I spend Canadian winters in Latin America, When I tell people I meet in Canada that I write poetry, I get responses like “uh, that`s....interesting” or they assume I`m writing traditional poetry, or they might know something of the Beat Generation. When I tell people from Latin countries the same thing, it`s like I`m some rock star. They`re more curious and excited and ask a billion questions.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Honestly, I don`t have much experience. When Bareback Press was putting my book together, the editing was only for space and layout, which didn`t affect the pieces so much.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
I had the opportunity to interview the Peruvian poet Tulio Mora, and I asked if he had any advice for younger writers: I would tell them to be intransigent, rebellious, self-demanding, to avoid lying to themselves, to take any feedback with disbelief, especially if they start receiving praise. Those who care about the comments and reviews that appear in newspapers are not poets. A poet is the one who transcribes how the world shivers at our survival.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to photography to visual art)? What do you see as the appeal?
Poetry is actually the last medium I`ve attempted. In my mid 20`s I was really into painting. I`ve played guitar and wrote music for a long while now. http://soundcloud.com/burntumber Also photography and video collage. Usually I focus my attention on just one of these for a short time until I change direction on to the next. But really they`re no different from each other. A paintbrush, a guitar, a pen, a laptop, a camera – they`re just tools for one humungous job I`m getting done.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I can`t say I have one. When I have an idea, I either plough away at it right then and there, or let it steep in my head for awhile. I used to keep a writing book, now I do most of my writing on my laptop. I`ll have scraps of paper for a few notes. I find it useful to try writing in different places, cafes, laundromats, malls, buses. In my house, or outside.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I just try to forget about it. And that never works. I distract myself with other things, and then something will eventually pop in my head. I`ve tried to force myself to write on a few occasions and didn`t care for the outcome. In my case, writing just needs to happen.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Alfalfa and cough syrup.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
I mentioned music before. Some other pieces, their layouts were stolen from patterns in abstract visual art, geometry, architecture.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Probably like most 20-something males I went through the Beat phase. I was more into WSB and Brion Gysins practice of majik through the arts. I found the San Fransisco Beats getting entwined with hippies and Buddhism to be kind of flakey. The paintings of Cy Twobly always fascinated me, and I stole from him for my more visual work for sure.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Tell you about the last time I ate a pear. Paragliding.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Most likely visual arts.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I do plenty of other things, as mentioned before. I just found the writing community a little more welcoming. So my energies have been focused in that direction for the past few years.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
On Seeing and Noticing – Alain de Botton. Not the last film I saw but, Gummo ( Harmony Korine) reminds me of my growing up in rural Alberta.

20 - What are you currently working on?
A manuscript of visual poetry and Flarf, as well as a gluten free cook book.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Sally Ito, Alert to Glory

My short review of Sally Ito's Alert to Glory (Turnstone Press, 2011) is now online at Bywords.ca

Lorine Niedecker, Lake Superior

The journey of the rock is never ended. In every tiny part of any living thing are materials that once were rock that turned to soil. These minerals are drawn out of the soil by plant roots and the plant used them to build leaves, stems, flowers and fruits. Plants are eaten by animals. In our blood is iron from plants that draw it out of the soil. Your teeth and bones were once coral. The water you drink has been in clouds over the mountains of Asia and in waterfalls of Africa. The air you breathe has swirled thru places of the earth that no one has ever seen. Every bit of you is a bit of the earth and has been on many strange and wonderful journeys over countless millions of years. (Lorine Niedecker, “Lake Superior Country, Vacation Trip ‘66”)

I’m absolutely fascinated by the new collection-study Lake Superior (Seattle WA/New York NY: Wave Books, 2013), wrapped around the six-page poem of the same name by the late American poet Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970). Perfectly built for study (Hoa Nguyen recently organized a course around the book) Lake Superior includes Niedecker’s poem, as well as her “Lake Superior Country, a journal,” a piece that was written during the same period, even to the point that trace echoes, as well as more obvious connections, can be found between the two works.

In every part of every living thing

is stuff that once was rock

In blood the minerals

of the rock

With the addition of an essay by Douglas Crase, “Niedecker and the Evolutional Sublime,” the remainder of the collection exists nearly as an exploration of the time, influences and considerations of the composition of the poem, whether directly or possibly indirectly, including “Three Letters from Lorine Niedecker to CidCorman,” “Excerpts from Back Roads to Far Towns” by Bashō, “’Tour 14A’ from Wisconsin, A Guide to the Badger State” (the note at the end of the piece: “Niedecker worked on this guide for the WPA”), “On a Monument to the Pigeon” by AldoLeopold, “Excerpt from the writings of Pierre Esprit Radisson” and “Excerpt from the writings of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft.” There are some elements of Crase’s piece that are quite stunning, but also just a tad precious in tone, as he opens his “Niedecker and the Evolutional Sublime” with:

Poetry is words. Yet when I think of the Whitman who found he incorporates gneiss, the Stein who says anybody is as their land and air is, the Stevens who locates mythology in stone out of our fields or from under our mountains, then I have to admit that the sublimest American poetry has always read to me as if it would rather restore, or even realize its desire for a wealth outside words, a wealth that is wild outside the human voice. That is what I always liked about it. It is what I liked at once about Lorine Niedecker’s “Lake Superior,” that spare ferropastoral of a poem in honor of the rock and mineral wealth

                                    Iron the common element of earth

for which the human species is just another mode of transport.

Over some ninety pages of material surrounding a six page poem, this is an exceptional study of an important poem by an important American poet. Why can’t more studies such as these exist? The only frustration comes from the fact that Vancouver critic Jenny Penberthy’s (a noted Niedecker scholar) essay on the poem, “Writing Lake Superior,” isn’t included in the selection, a piece that actually introduced me to the short piece by Niedecker, although the acknowledgments do include this: “We would like to thank Jenny Penberthy for all of her work, and for Lorine Niedecker: Woman and Poet, which was an inspiration for this book.” To read through Penberthy’s original essay (which, fortunately, is available online), many of the components of the book are referenced. As Penberthy’s piece opens:

Lorine Niedecker’s “Lake Superior”—the first long poem she would see into print—occupies five pages with a total of 395 words. Her research and preparation for the poem, the punning and aptly named “millenium1 of notes for my magma opus” (Niedecker to Corman, August 20, 1966), numbers 260 mostly typed, single—spaced pages. Tens of thousands of words.

In late July 1966 Lorine Niedecker and Al Millen set off in their Buick on a week-long journey around Lake Superior, “by way of L. Michigan shore to Mackinaw Country and Sault Ste. Marie…along the Ontario shore and down the Minn. side” (Niedecker to Corman, July 12, 1966). The impulse to research the “magma opus,” her epic of rocks and minerals (Davie 73), can be traced most directly to the previous summer’s road trip through the Black Hills of South Dakota. Niedecker remarked to Corman on the “[r]eddish gravel beside the paved roads and in a couple of places a pale gold driveway—covering with gold bits or yellow diamond sparkles all thru it!” and “[t]he big rock structures in the hills…merely greyish or pinkish or yellowish depending on the time of day” (July 28, 1965).

Still, the one thing I wondered: why is an editor not credited for such a collection? Lake Superior provides a rare glimpse on how a poem might have been made, and the works surrounding such a piece. Niedecker clearly had clear knowledge of geology, ecology and other natural studies, something she researched vigorously, a research that appears far deeper, ongoing and direct than, say, Don McKay’s poetic studies over the past decade in stone and geologic time. What this collection provides through the collage of pieces is the “story” of the short poem. We get to see the influences, the conversations, notes and journals, tracking what might otherwise be too ephemeral to follow.

12 or 20 (small press) questions with Guy Bennett on Mindmade Books

from the Mindmade Books website:

Founded in 1997, Mindmade Books (formerly Seeing Eye Books) is a small press publishing chapbooks of modern and contemporary poetry. Among the more than sixty titles that have appeared to date are works by internationally renowned poets, several “first collections,” and occasional reprints of little-known or long-out-of-print texts.

While there is no single editorial vision, many Mindmade Books have explored the virtuality of the short lyric; the asemantic sign as a medium for poetry; and/or self-reflexivity, seriality, and constraint as compositional strategies. They have also tended to reflect an interest in coherent, chapbook-length works as opposed to groups of otherwise unrelated poems.

Brief bio:

Guy Bennett is the author of several collections of poetry, various works of non-poetry, and numerous translations. Recent publications include Self-Evident Poems and a translation of Mohammed Dib’s Tlemcen or Places of Writing. His writing has been featured in magazines and anthologies in the U.S. and abroad, and presented in poetry and arts festivals internationally. Publisher of Mindmade Books and co-editor of Seismicity Editions, he lives in Los Angeles and teaches at Otis College of Art and Design.

Questions:

1 – When did Mindmade Books first start? How have your original goals as a publisher shifted since you started, if at all? And what have you learned through the process?

Mindmade Books started in 1997 under the name Seeing Eye Books, which I had to change in 2008 when The Seeing Eye, Inc. – the folks that train dogs for the blind – threatened to sue me if I continued to publish under that imprint. I bring out four titles a year and am at this writing preparing my 66th chapbook (Guy Pettit’s My Life’s Work).

My original goals were pretty straightforward: promote writers whose work I found interesting and, if possible, bring it to the attention of readers who might not otherwise be aware of it. Ideally this would be a mix of well-known, lesser-known, and for all intents and purposes unknown poets, include at least one translation a year, and regularly feature L.A.-based writers. Those goals haven’t changed much since I started out.

As for what I’ve learned in the process – I honestly don’t know. Maybe the fact that I’m still doing it shows that I haven’t learned a thing…

2 – What first brought you to publishing?

Chance, and a translation I’d done of an early “freeword” poem (“Dune”) by Marinetti, which I proposed to Douglas Messerli of Sun & Moon Press when we met at a conference on Italian Futurism at UCLA in 1993. He wound up offering me work designing and typesetting his books, which I did for eight or nine years; later he also published my first collection of poetry and several of my translations. During that time I worked for a number of other small literary presses and magazines (Agincourt Press, Aufgabe, Green Integer, Littoral Books, Marsilio Editions, O Books, Potes & Poets Press, Rhizome, and a few others), mostly designing and typesetting their publications, but also occasionally doing editorial work and translations. I have been working in small press publishing in one capacity or another ever since.

3 – What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?

The very same I would ascribe to publishing endeavors of any size. As for its role: bring out works you find compelling by writers you would like to promote and that you sense people would/should like to read/know. As for responsibilities: try to do so ethically and in a timely fashion, respecting the work, author, and reader (and probably in that order).

4 – What do you see your press doing that no one else is?

I’m not sure it is doing anything that no one else is, aside from publishing the particular works I do, the chapbooks having the particular look and feel they do, etc., but these things are no less true of any other press.

5 – What do you see as the most effective way to get new chapbooks out into the world?

I don’t know what the most effective way would be; if I did I’d be doing it. What I do do with Mindmade Books is send out publication announcements via email, one at the beginning of each year indicating forthcoming authors/titles, and one as each new title is published. These messages go out to between 500–600 people, some of whom share them on list serves and blogs. There is also a website (www.mindmadebooks.com) containing this information and which also includes a descriptive catalog of all Mindmade titles, reviews of selected works, information on ordering, etc., and that’s it. I’m not on Facebook, I don’t tweet or social mediate in any way. I’d like to believe (and do secretly hope) that readers interested in the writers and/or types of work I’m publishing will find their way to me.

6 – How involved an editor are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?

I tend to request texts from writers and translators whose work I know and admire, or which I have stumbled across and am curious about. Without exception have published whatever they’ve sent me. On occasion I have made editorial suggestions ranging from corrections and alternate renderings in the case of translations, to minor grammatical tinkering in the case of original English-language texts. I have also occasionally suggested that a line or passage or poem or two be dropped. In all cases I consider these mere suggestions and have always deferred to the author/translator. I suppose that would make me more of a “light touch” editor, as you put it.

7 – How do your chapbooks get distributed? What are your usual print runs?

Mindmade Books are distributed uniquely by me. (Well, nearly uniquely: Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop has titles up through 2011 and sells them at the Brooklyn Flea, from what I understand, and I have seen a few for sale via abebooks.com…) Early on I had discussed with Small Press Distribution the possibility of their distributing my chapbooks, which they were kind enough to consider doing, but it wouldn’t have been cost effective for me so I’ve gone it alone.

My print runs are generally double the number of subscribers I have at the moment in question (and by “subscribers” I mean folks who purchase the year’s run of four chapbooks in advance), with additional copies being produced as ordered. Printing the chapbooks “on demand” has saved me money and space, since I wasn’t having to pay to produce and store runs of chapbooks that might not sell, and that has helped make the project sustainable.

8 – How many other people are involved with editing or production? Do you work with other editors, and if so, how effective do you find it? What are the benefits, drawbacks?

For better or worse, Mindmade Books is a one-man operation: I request the work, do any necessary editing, layout the pages and covers, print, trim, and fold them, assemble the chapbooks, address and stuff the envelopes, then carry the lot off to the post office. I’ve been able to maintain a rhythm of 4 chapbooks per year for the past 17 years while working full-time, having a family, and pursuing my own writing, translating, and other activities, so obviously it works for me.

I have worked and am currently working in other publishing projects involving co-editors and production assistants. I enjoy working in that way as well, it’s just an entirely different thing. With Mindmade Books, I’m in charge of all aspects of every step of the selection, editorial, and production processes, which take place on my schedule in my rhythm. As soon as you’ve got an editorial or production team, you’re adding that many other schedules and rhythms to the mix, and as we’re talking about small press publishing here, and thus everyone most likely has another “day job,” as it were, it can be challenging, not to mention time consuming, to coordinate tasks with everyone’s respective schedules and the time they can devote to the process, and see to it that things get done properly and in a timely fashion, that they don’t fall though the cracks, etc.

So I suppose that the benefit of working alone is that you get to do it all yourself and avoid the complications that arise when working in a team, and the drawback is that you have to do it all yourself and get none of the benefits that come with working in a team.

9 – How has being an editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?

I think it has made me more humble about it, and (I’d like to believe) a bit more discriminating.

10 – How do you approach the idea of publishing your own writing? Some, such as Gary Geddes when he still ran Cormorant, refused such, yet various Coach House Press’ editors had titles during their tenures as editors for the press, including Victor Coleman and bpNichol. What do you think of the arguments for or against, or do you see the whole question as irrelevant?

I don’t have a strong feeling about it one way or the other. Over the years I’ve been involved with projects that as a matter of principle did not publish their editors’ work (Paul Vangelisti’s New Review of Literature, for example), and with others whose contributors were the de facto editors (namely Lowghost, a monthly, work-in-progress journal, also edited by Paul, and which knew two separate, year-long runs). Of the 60+ Mindmade Books published thus far, only one is a work of my own poetry, though I have published several of my own translations.

I suppose it’s worth recalling that Blake, Whitman, Lorca, and undoubtedly many other “greats” published their own work, as did many not-so-greats. Whoever brings it out, in the end it floats or sinks on its own merits or lack thereof, so the issue is perhaps not quite as important as it may seem.

11 – How do you see Mindmade Books evolving?

Very little, in fact, and maybe I should be concerned or embarrassed about that. The basic vision I outlined above has remained the same, as have the method of production, the format, papers I use, the approach to layout and design…even the price of the chapbooks hasn’t changed since I started the press in ’97. At this point I don’t see any reason to do anything any differently.

12 – What, as a publisher, are you most proud of accomplishing? What do you think people have overlooked about your publications? What is your biggest frustration?

1) Having had the good fortune to publish the writers and texts I have; sustaining the press as long as I have; publishing every work I ever committed to; bringing every title out on schedule.

2) That they exist; how wonderful they are.

3) I don’t know that I really have any frustrations, strictly speaking. That said, I am surprised that more of them have not been reviewed.

13 – Who were your early publishing models when starting out?

The immediate model was a chapbook collection Douglas Messerli was publishing in the early ‘90s: “20 pages,” it was called. As the name implied, the works were twenty pages long. I can recall titles by Aaron Shurin, Ray DiPalma, Charles Bernstein, and Adriano Spatola. I remember thinking, “I’d like to do something like that,” when I first saw them. Douglas was having these printed off-set, and thus they cost quite a bit to produce – more than $1,000 for a few hundred copies. When I learned the cost I thought I could never afford to do it. Later I realized that, since some Sun & Moon Press titles were actually being printed from my laser-printed pages and the quality was fine, I could forego the idea of off-set printing and produce the chapbooks myself using my laser printer, and that’s what I’ve done. I knew that I would probably never get distribution and so decided to sell the chapbooks myself in yearly series by subscription, which I still do to this day (though I now also sell current titles – and of course all previously published titles – individually).

I also remember being impressed with Lyn Hejinian’s Tuumba Books. She printed them letterpress on relatively thick paper, something I knew I was not going to be able to do, but I did like their format and their clear layout and typesetting. I had been in touch with Lyn before starting the press, and she was kind enough to send me a selection of Tuumba chapbooks to look at and learn from. In fact the first title I published was a work of hers: one part of her Books from a Border Comedy, which she was then working on.

Finally, I’m attracted to printed ephemera of all types, particularly brochures and other book-like forms and have undoubtedly been inspired by the inherent smallness and unpretentiousness of such things. I have saved a number of booklets over the years and occasionally look them over. I dream of using them as models for future publications.

14 – How does Mindmade Books work to engage with your immediate literary community, and community at large? What journals or presses do you see Mindmade Books in dialogue with? How important do you see those dialogues, those conversations?

I don’t really seek to engage the literary community in any way other than by publishing these chapbooks. I realize that that may sound sacrilegious in this age of hypernetworking, but that’s how it is. Nor do I feel that I am dialoging with other presses or journals (though I may well be, unconsciously and unintentionally, perhaps it’s unavoidable). What I am working to do is create the possibility of a dialog, broadly understood, or at the very least an encounter between a reader and a writer, via these publications. Honestly, and perhaps to my discredit, I don’t hope for much beyond that.

15 – Do you hold regular or occasional readings or launches? How important do you see public readings and other events?

Though I enjoy readings – both giving and attending them – I do not organize Mindmade Book launches or public readings because I simply couldn’t afford to regularly bring writers to Los Angeles or travel to wherever they might be in order to publicly present their work and/or promote the press. To this day there has never been a Mindmade Book event (at least, none that I’m aware of).

16 – How do you utilize the internet, if at all, to further your goals?

See question 5 above.

17 – Do you take submissions? If so, what aren’t you looking for?

Officially, I don’t take submissions. Being the one-man operation I described, I feared I might not have the time to give them the attention they deserved. Unofficially, I have accepted a submission or two following an unsolicited query, but have declined a great many more.

18 – Tell me about three of your most recent titles, and why they’re special.

Peter Schmidt, The Thoughts Behind the Thoughts

Schmidt was an artist who long fascinated me, especially his water colors, which often depict plain views of mundane things. I first encountered his work on the back cover of Brian Eno’s Before and After Science LP, and later learned that he had also designed the sleeves of Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain (by Strategy) and Eno and Fripp’s Evening Star. More importantly perhaps, he and Eno collaborated on the Oblique Strategies, which have subsequently become quite well-known. Well, the precursor to the “Strategies” was Schmidt’s The Thoughts Behind the Thoughts, a mixed-media work whose heart is a series of aphoristic statements most of which comment on the thinking that precedes the creative process. This chapbook contains those aphorisms, which collectively constitute a kind of ante-ars poetica.

Terry Dernbach, Filmic Scenes

Terry is an old friend – we played together in a couple of bands in the 1980s and ’90s – who always impressed me with his imagination and creativity. Over the years we worked together he was active in music, painting, photography, and writing. He was also interested in film, and in the mid-80s showed me some “ideas for films” – brief, enigmatic texts that he was writing at the time. In the mid-90s sent me a typescript of some 17 of these pieces, collectively titled “Filmic Scenes,” which I fell in love with. I read and reread often over the intervening years, and last year I asked him if I could publish them – I don’t know why I waited that long to do so! Describing Filmic Scenes, I wrote that they “suggest films that might have been made by Max Jacob or Taruho Inagaki, had either of them worked in this medium.” And they do!

Giovanna Sandri, Hourglass: The Rhythm of Traces

Well, to be honest this is not a recent title (it came out in 1998), but I hope you’ll forgive me for highlighting it all the same. Sandri is a poet whose work truly deserves to be better known than it is. She began as a visual poet – her first book, Capitolo zero [“Chapter Zero”] from 1969, contains not a single verbal text – but over time created a personal, hybrid poetic language that fuses the verbal and visual. The poems that make up Hourglass exemplify her mature style: minimal verse texts paired with equally minimal abstract graphic compositions derived from basic written forms and suggestive of some unknown writing system. Writing is in fact the subject matter – whether implicit or explicit – of her work, and not writing as activity, but as trace: the material graphic sign representing language and thought. Though we never met, I was fortunate enough to correspond with Sandri in the years preceding her death, and to discuss with her the translation of this work, whose Italian original won the Lorenzo Montano prize in 1992. Later this year Seismicity Editions will publish an edition of her selected poems.

12 or 20 (small press) questions;