Thursday, May 26, 2011
Friday, May 20, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
staring@poetics

staring@poetics
2011, 5" x 8", 56 pgs, Full Color.
ISBN 1-936687-03-8 | EAN-13978-1-936687-03-9
$12
To read about the book or purchase a copy - http://xexoxial.org/is/staring_at_poetics/by/nico_vassilakis
from the book:
How do our retinal experiences alter what we think we know about alphabet? From minimal to maximal, the alphabet is explored and expanded on. From the contextual aggregates and combinations of letters to the visual elements that form a single letter. The visual poetry of alphabet insists that writing is the drawing of what and how we think, and within that writing, images accrue, the letters themselves, drawn, or otherwise printed, are illustrating or reproducing our thought.
Nico Vassilakis works with text and visual alphabet. Nico, with Crag Hill, edited the forthcoming The Last Vispo: Visual Poetry Anthology 1998-2008. He has published several books, including West of Dodge (redfoxpress, 2009), Protracted Type (blue lion books, 2008), Text Loses Time(Manypenny press, 2008), Disparate Magnets (BlazeVOX, 2009) and DIPTYCHS (Otolith, 2008). Nico lives in Seattle with the poet Crystal Curry and their kids..
staring poetics:
http://staringpoetics.weebly.com/
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Sunday, May 08, 2011
Thursday, May 05, 2011
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Sunday, May 01, 2011
Saturday, April 16, 2011
100 Thousand Poets for Change
Do you want to join other poets around the USA and across the planet in a demonstration/celebration of poetry to promote serious social and political change? 100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE is organizing a global event for September 24, 2011. If you think you would like to participate or organize your own event, please sign up on Facebook or contact 100 Thousand Poets for Change at walterblue@bigbridge.org.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Friday, April 08, 2011
Monday, April 04, 2011
Thursday, March 31, 2011
100 Thousand Poets for Change Anthology
100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE: An Anthology
(Ed. Anny Ballardini & Obododimma Oha, in collaboration with MICHAEL ROTHENBERG)
"We will turn to the idea of the messianic in Chapter Ten of this book, but for the moment it suffices to stress that both Benjamin and Agamben employ the term in singular fashion. For them, a messianic idea of history is not one in which we wait for the Messiah to come, end history, and redeem humanity, but instead is a paradigm for historical time in which we act as though the Messiah is already here, or even has already come and gone. What is so difficult about Agamben's use of the term messianic is how radically it is to be distinguished from the apocalyptic. Agamben says that to understand "messianic time" as it is presented in Paul's letters "one must first distinguish messianic time from apocalyptic time, the time of the now from a time directed towards the future" (LAM, 51). To this he adds, "If l had to try to reduce the distinction to a formula, I would say that the messianic is not, as it is always understood, the end of time, but the time of the end" (LAM, 51). The model of time corresponding to this idea is one that no longer looks for its decisive moment in a more or less remote future, but instead finds it in every minute of every day, in this world and in this life; and it is through such expressions as "dialectics at a standstill" and "means without end" that the two thinkers aim to return our gaze from the distant future to the pressing present."
(from GIORGIO AGAMBEN: A Critical Introduction, Leland de la Durantaye, 2009, p. 120)
Set in the context of this split between "the end of time" and "the time of the end" is Michael Rothenberg's recent invitation for the global writing public to participate in "a demonstration/celebration of poetry to promote serious social and political change" titled 100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE on 24 September, 2011. As protests for political reforms sweep across North Africa, the Middle East, in some parts of Europe, in the United States, with the recent disasters in The Gulf of Mexico and in Japan, one cannot help thinking about the "Rothenberg Project” as a highly significant creative response to change as something more than an adjustment to the way social relations are constructed.
Obododimma Oha and Anny Ballardini, in collaboration with Michael Rothenberg’s event, will edit and feature outstanding poetic compositions for the 100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE on Fieralingue's Poets’ Corner. Visual artwork, poems, poetic fiction, poetic nonfiction, and photographs to be submitted for consideration should go beyond the simple and gratuitous statement that ‘a change is needed.’ Our present, our Messianic time requires a STILLSTELLUNG (Benjamin’s word) translated by Dennis Redmond in On the Concept of History (1940) with “an objective interruption of a mechanical process” into which we have been engulfed. Dennis Redmond continues in his explanation of STILLSTELLUNG: “rather like the dramatic pause at the end of an action-adventure movie, when the audience is waiting to find out if the time-bomb/missile/terrorist device was defused or not.” We feel that we are living in a similar situation, and we are in need of a Stillstellung followed by ideas to offer our politicians, to make students/friends/our communities more aware of how we can change, revise history, start over again.
Visual works and photographs for submission are to be saved in JPEG format, while texts, which should not have rigid formatting, are to be in Word. All submissions should be emailed to the editors anny.ballardini@gmail.com and obodooha@gmail.com by September 1, 2011 with "100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE" in the Subject line.
Best wishes,
Obododimma Oha
Anny Ballardini
SIGN UP TO JOIN US AT 100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE-- THE EVENT
Ps. If you are interested in signing up to participate as a reader, organizer or attendee, in the 100 Thousand Poets for Change event on September 24, 2011, (in your town) please go to Facebook for more details and indicate that you would like to attend the event. Link:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=106999432715571 . At Facebook you will be able to read more about event organization ideas and our thoughts about “what kind of change.” Over a thousand people have already signed up and over twenty cities have begun to organize events for their communities. JOIN US!!
(Ed. Anny Ballardini & Obododimma Oha, in collaboration with MICHAEL ROTHENBERG)
"We will turn to the idea of the messianic in Chapter Ten of this book, but for the moment it suffices to stress that both Benjamin and Agamben employ the term in singular fashion. For them, a messianic idea of history is not one in which we wait for the Messiah to come, end history, and redeem humanity, but instead is a paradigm for historical time in which we act as though the Messiah is already here, or even has already come and gone. What is so difficult about Agamben's use of the term messianic is how radically it is to be distinguished from the apocalyptic. Agamben says that to understand "messianic time" as it is presented in Paul's letters "one must first distinguish messianic time from apocalyptic time, the time of the now from a time directed towards the future" (LAM, 51). To this he adds, "If l had to try to reduce the distinction to a formula, I would say that the messianic is not, as it is always understood, the end of time, but the time of the end" (LAM, 51). The model of time corresponding to this idea is one that no longer looks for its decisive moment in a more or less remote future, but instead finds it in every minute of every day, in this world and in this life; and it is through such expressions as "dialectics at a standstill" and "means without end" that the two thinkers aim to return our gaze from the distant future to the pressing present."
(from GIORGIO AGAMBEN: A Critical Introduction, Leland de la Durantaye, 2009, p. 120)
Set in the context of this split between "the end of time" and "the time of the end" is Michael Rothenberg's recent invitation for the global writing public to participate in "a demonstration/celebration of poetry to promote serious social and political change" titled 100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE on 24 September, 2011. As protests for political reforms sweep across North Africa, the Middle East, in some parts of Europe, in the United States, with the recent disasters in The Gulf of Mexico and in Japan, one cannot help thinking about the "Rothenberg Project” as a highly significant creative response to change as something more than an adjustment to the way social relations are constructed.
Obododimma Oha and Anny Ballardini, in collaboration with Michael Rothenberg’s event, will edit and feature outstanding poetic compositions for the 100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE on Fieralingue's Poets’ Corner. Visual artwork, poems, poetic fiction, poetic nonfiction, and photographs to be submitted for consideration should go beyond the simple and gratuitous statement that ‘a change is needed.’ Our present, our Messianic time requires a STILLSTELLUNG (Benjamin’s word) translated by Dennis Redmond in On the Concept of History (1940) with “an objective interruption of a mechanical process” into which we have been engulfed. Dennis Redmond continues in his explanation of STILLSTELLUNG: “rather like the dramatic pause at the end of an action-adventure movie, when the audience is waiting to find out if the time-bomb/missile/terrorist device was defused or not.” We feel that we are living in a similar situation, and we are in need of a Stillstellung followed by ideas to offer our politicians, to make students/friends/our communities more aware of how we can change, revise history, start over again.
Visual works and photographs for submission are to be saved in JPEG format, while texts, which should not have rigid formatting, are to be in Word. All submissions should be emailed to the editors anny.ballardini@gmail.com and obodooha@gmail.com by September 1, 2011 with "100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE" in the Subject line.
Best wishes,
Obododimma Oha
Anny Ballardini
SIGN UP TO JOIN US AT 100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE-- THE EVENT
Ps. If you are interested in signing up to participate as a reader, organizer or attendee, in the 100 Thousand Poets for Change event on September 24, 2011, (in your town) please go to Facebook for more details and indicate that you would like to attend the event. Link:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=106999432715571 . At Facebook you will be able to read more about event organization ideas and our thoughts about “what kind of change.” Over a thousand people have already signed up and over twenty cities have begun to organize events for their communities. JOIN US!!
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
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