Saturday, August 1, 2020

ISSUE 18


Brave New Word ISSUE 18 
AKA The Magnificent Return

Editor's note:

Hello there! It's been a while. The last time I did a new issue of Brave New Word - the world wasn't falling apart that blatantly. We live in some tough times, and it is hard to make plans for the near future, not to mention anything long term.

I think it is ironic that the last time I did the introduction, I mentioned having one of the lowest points in my life. Guess what? The best was yet to come. It is was a different kind of bad, but bad nevertheless.

I didn’t intend to make such a long pause in-between issues. I intended to start soliciting submissions from the get-go, but then the lockdown happened, and things started falling apart. I've lost my job, spent like three months freelancing non-stop, got numerous job offers that fell through because "y`know its crysis, bro, can't be sure noh moh,” my book of visual poems fell through because of that, an exhibition became a non-starter, and to top things - landlord raised the rent. In this atmosphere - doing another issue of BNW wasn't at the top of my list of priorities. These were some crazy months. Down with whining.

This issue has a different approach than the rest. I wasn't posting calls for submissions and actively inviting to send something (apart from a couple of instances when I was finishing the issue). But the submissions were going regardless. I guess there is enough interest. It's been five months since the last issue and no announcements whatsoever, but I still got 42 submissions - more than enough to choose from - the meme of Brave New Word lives on.

Ok, enjoy the issue.

Without further ado - Brave New Word, Issue 18.

***

Issue Line-up:

  1. John Guzlowski - Five poems
  2. Paul Ilechko - One and an Other (the Dialogs)
  3. Dave Read - Six Asemic Pieces
  4. Andriy Antonovskiy - Transhumanism 
  5. Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad - Visual Works
  6. Mark Young - Five Poems
  7. Serse Luigetti - Three Visual Poems
  8. Jeff Bagato - Three Poems
  9. Tom Jenks - Letter Frequency Visualizations
  10. David Matthews - Three Work-in-progress poems from the book "Max Nix"
  11. Jim Leftwich - trashpo photos 02.11.2020
  12. AG Davis - Five poems
  13. Steven J Fowler - 3 Crayon Poems
  14. Rőczei György - Trios 1 2 3
  15. Andrew Brenza - mirror & mirage

Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad - Visual Works


Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is a Sydney artist, poet, and improv pianist. She holds a Masters degree in English. Oormila has been painting and exhibiting for the past twenty years. Her recent poems have been published in The Ekphrastic Review, Poets Resist, Eunoia Review, Neologism Poetry, The Maier Museum of Arts Journal of Ekphrastic Poetry, and several other literary journals in the US, Canada, Australia, and the UK. She was a finalist in the Waverley Woollahra 9X5 Landscape Prize 2018. Oormila works out of a studio space in her home. She regularly performs her poetry and exhibits her paintings in Sydney.

Oormila's instagram : www.instagram.com/oormila_paintings

David Matthews - Three Work-in-progress poems from the book "Max Nix"


David E. Matthews lives in the Hill Country of Texas. He is saddened by the direction of events, but more perplexed that things are not worse than, or better than, they actually are, if what people believe is true. He has become suspicious - not to say paranoid - of people who seem positive of what is real, and true. The reverberations and resonances of literature is all that sustains him.

Serse Luigetti - Three Visual Poems

Serse Luigetti (born on August 3, 1949 in Castiglion del Lago (PG) Italy). Mail Art extraordinaire since late seventies. Also interested to visual poetry, his works can be seen on various zines, reviews, catalogues, books, chapbooks, cds, tapes, records, cd roms assembling magazines, web sites all over the world.

Andrew Brenza - mirror & mirage


Andrew Brenza’s recent chapbooks include Poems in C (Viktlösheten Press), Bitter Almonds & Mown Grass (Shirt Pocket Press), Waterlight (Simulacrum Press), and Excerpt from Alphabeticon (No Press). He is also the author of three full-length collections of visual poetry, Automatic Souls (Timglaset), Gossamer Lid (Trembling Pillow Press) and Album, in Concrete (Alien Buddha Press).

Andriy Antonovskiy - Transhumanism


Andriy Antonovskiy is a poet from Ukraine who currently lives in Barcelona. He is a strong proponent for Catalan Independence and he considers his primary mission to be building a cultural bridge between Ukraine and Catalonia.

Photo by Zhenia Perutska.

AG Davis - Five poems


AG Davis is a sound poet & extreme performer, author of the hypermodernist poetry books
Bathory and Glass, both published by Abstract Editions in 2016 and 2018, respectively.
Another book of poetry is due out later this year.

Rőczei György - Trios 1 2 3




Rőczei György (1956. Budapest) – Graphic artist, artist book publisher, teacher. His works are in collections of Hungarian and other countries.

Paul Ilechko - One and an Other (the Dialogs)


Paul Ilechko is the author of the chapbooks “Bartok in Winter” (Flutter Press) and “Graph of Life” (Finishing Line Press). His work has appeared in a variety of journals, including Juxtaprose, As It Ought To Be, Cathexis Northwest Press, Inklette and Pithead Chapel. He lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ.


Steven J Fowler - 3 Crayon Poems


SJ Fowler is a poet and artist. He works in the modernist and avant-garde traditions, across poetry, fiction, theatre, sonic art, visual art, installation and performance.  He is the poetry editor of 3am magazine, Lecturer at Kingston University, teaches at Tate Modern and is the curator of the Enemies project.

Tom Jenks - Letter Frequency Visualizations

Tom Jenks' most recent book is A Long and Hard Night Troubled by Visions (if p then q, 2018). He edits the small press zimzalla, specialising in literary objects. More at https://www.zshboo.org/ 

Jeff Bagato - Three Poems


Jeff Bagato produces poetry and prose as well as electronic music and glitch video. He has published nineteen books, all available in the usual online markets, including And the Trillions (poetry) and The Toothpick Fairy (fiction). A blog about his writing and publishing efforts can be found at http://jeffbagato.com.

Jim Leftwich - trashpo photos 02.11.2020


Jim Leftwich is a poet and essayist who lives in Roanoke, VA, USA. He is the author of Six Months Aint No Sentence Books 1 -187 (Differx Hosting@Box, 2011 - 2016), three volumes of essays entitled Rascible & Kempt Vols. 1 - 3 (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2016-2017), and i reMEmber petrOLeum (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2019).

Mark Young - Five Poems


Mark Young's most recent books are a collection of visual pieces, The Comedians, from Stale Objects de Press, & turning to drones, from Concrete Mist Press. Due out within the next few months are turpentine from Luna Bisonte Prods, & from, from Ma Press of Finland.


John Guzlowski - Five poems


John Guzlowski's poetry appears in North American Review, Rattle, Ontario Review, Salon.Com, and many other journals. His poems and personal essays about his Polish parents’ experiences as slave laborers in Nazi Germany and refugees making a life for themselves in Chicago appear in his memoir Echoes of Tattered Tongues. He is also a columnist for the Dziennik Zwiazkowy (the oldest Polish language newspaper in America) and the author of Suitcase Charlie and Little Altar Boy, noir mysteries set in Chicago. His most recent book of poems is the autobiographical True Confessions.

Dave Read - Six Asemic Pieces


Dave Read is a Canadian poet living in Calgary.  His short form poetry and asemic writing has appeared in many journals.  His work can be found at davereadpoetry.blogspot.ca.

Monday, March 2, 2020

ISSUE 17


Brave New Word ISSUE 17 
AKA Taking Care of Business

Editor's note:
If there is an appropriate time to say "Things have changed" - that's it. The last time I was doing a Brave New Word issue - it was at one of the lowest points of my life. My employment for the previous two years, more or less, went down with a whimper due to politics, professional jealousy, greed, and backstabbing. The emotional toll of November and December left me creatively spent and without many career prospects. Ain't going to lie - I felt screwed, but in the end - it is over. That's not my problem anymore. I'm over it - going towards new frontiers. I don't have time to fight the specters of the past.

The downside is that since last September and up until the very end of December, I more or less put aside much of my creative output to focus on the job. As a result - I did a whole lot of what ultimately amassed to nil and not much else of worth.

I snapped out of it in early December because the bullshit got too ridiculous, but the damage was done. Brave New Word Issue 16 was the first step of my rehabilitation, but it wasn't enough to reinvigorate my creative senses. I've spent much of December and January picking up the pieces and slowly getting back to form.

The work on Issue 17 began in earnest around early February. In fact, I've spent a month working on it - the project started on February 5th and is over by March 2nd. The fastest turnaround since 2017.

One thing that I've noticed while analyzing the performance of Issue 16 is that 20 pieces sequence results in some posts getting significantly less attention when the issue is viewed as a whole. The numbers don't lie. Because of that, Issue 17 features only 14 spots - similar to the early issues.

Without further ado - Brave New Word Issue 17.

***

Issue Line-up:


  1. Jeremy Stewart - bugs groucho 1-5
  2. J.I. Kleinberg - Five collage poems
  3. Eddie Watkins - from Leap Frogs
  4. Janis Butler Holm - queen dregs hand yam
  5. James Sanders - Chyrons and Plants
  6. Kristine Snodgrass - Six asemic pieces
  7. Nils Geylen - Stress Bot Crash Test Subroutine
  8. Heller Levinson - excerpts from from here goes 
  9. Olchar Lindsann - Five poems 
  10. Luc Fierens - Baby Doc / Fatale / Fotomodella / Gold
  11. Mary Kasimor - Three Poems
  12. hiromi suzuki - au bord de la mer
  13. Jeremy Hight - Donnie Darko retold as self-help book section
  14. Tom Prime / Gary Barwin - collaborative mayhem

Sunday, March 1, 2020

hiromi suzuki - au bord de la mer


hiromi suzuki is a poet, fiction writer 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), INVISIBLE SCENERY (Low Frequency Press, 2018), Andante (AngelHousePress, 2019). Her works have been published internationally in poetry journals, literary journals and anthologies.

Jeremy Hight - Donnie Darko retold as self-help book section



Jeremy Hight is a professor of English and Creative Writing and is proud to have a text and image work in the Whitney Museum. He writes prose, poetry and critical theory and lives with his loving wife Lisa in Los Angeles


Olchar Lindsann - Five poems


Olchar E. Lindsann is a writer, theorist, publisher, historian, teacher, performer, archivist, organiser, and translator, dedicated to the formation, maintenance, and transformation of marginal countercultures. A co-founder of the International Post-NeoAbsurdist Collective, he is also actively engaged with Fluxus, Neoism, the Eternal Network, and many other radical and avant-garde projects internationally. He is the editor of mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press, and of the print periodicals Rêvenance and The In-Appropriated Press. The author or co-author of 40 books of critical and social theory, verse, historiography, performance scores, visual poetry, polemic, and collage, Lindsann has performed and lectured extensively in the US and the United Kingdom. He maintains several archives of contemporary and historical countercultures. Lindsann teaches cross-disciplinary Humanities classes, writing and history at a progressive school in Roanoke, Virginia.

Heller Levinson - excerpts from from here goes


Heller Levinson Submission Brave New World Magazine.
The originator of Hinge Theory, Heller Levinson lives in New York. His most recent book, Seep, is scheduled for release from Black Widow Press in Spring 2020.



J.I. Kleinberg - Five collage poems


Artist, poet, and freelance writer, J.I. Kleinberg is a Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee and winner of the 2016 Ken Warfel Fellowship. Her found poems have appeared in Diagram, Heavy Feather Review, Rise Up Review, The Tishman Review, Hedgerow, Otoliths, and elsewhere. She lives in Bellingham, Washington, USA, and blogs most days at thepoetrydepartment.wordpress.com. 

These visual poems are from an ongoing series (1,700+) of collages built from phrases created unintentionally through the accident of magazine page design. Each chunk of text (roughly the equivalent of a poetic line) is entirely removed from its original sense and syntax. The text is not altered and includes no attributable phrases. The lines of each collage are sourced from different magazines.​

Nils Geylen - Stress Bot Crash Test Subroutine


Nils Geylen was raised between the arctic and the equator and currently stuck in Belgium. He works in literary inclusion and literacy promotion. His creative writing currently investigates topics such as human and machine behavior and the oppressive qualities of culture and history. He is interested in the illegible and or the incomprehensible. Faced with the limitations of print, he prefers online journals and is always looking to escape the lexical, phrasal or narrative constraints of writing in favor of a more experiential delivery.

Luc Fierens - Baby Doc / Fatale / Fotomodella / Gold




Linked to the Fluxus tradition, and with deep roots in postal art and visual poetry, Fierens has the rebellious and challenging look of a poet determined to upset the flattening of our imaginary. Its deeply desacralizing and incisive tone finds in the assault and violence of the advertising and journalistic language a privileged way to intervene critically about reality, giving expression to an alternative and dissident visuality. The focus of his work within the field of collage focuses on his poetic vision, a transgressive vision that is involved in a persistent game of contradictions to end up in a hybrid entity halfway between the plastic and the purely poetic: collage-poem.

The aesthetic option of Luc Fierens is nourished by the fragment, the deviation, and above all, a will of critical activation that is not very present in the field of collage. As he struggles to awaken other visions, which can counteract the cosmetic visions of mediated reality, his work transcends the boundaries of mere combinatorc exercise to deepen the much wider and more sensitive territory of a poetic that unravels and unmasks.


Kristine Snodgrass - Six asemic pieces


Kristine Snodgrass is an artist, poet, professor, curator, and publisher living in Tallahassee, Florida.

“Asemics by Kristine Snodgrass offer the possibility of a new way of "reading" that thus far has only been partially mapped; the content of her work is an exploration of new depths of human experience. In this context, asemic writing becomes a new form and practice after the postmodern and into the brave new world of the post-literate. ” -De Villo Sloan

Kristine is the author most recently of, the chapbook, These Burning Fields (Hysterical Books 2019) as well as Out of the World (Hysterical Books 2016) and The War on Pants (JackLeg Press 2013). Her solo poetry has appeared in decomP, Versal, Big Bridge, 5_Trope, Shampoo, 2 River View, Otoliths and South Florida Poetry Journal among others. She is the author of the chapbooks, Put the Pie Away Quietly and Without Fervor (Cy Gist Press 2012) and Fledgling Starlet (Grey Book Press 2009).

Janis Butler Holm - queen dregs hand yam




Janis Butler Holm has served as Associate Editor for Wide Angle, the film journal. Her prose, poems, and performance pieces have appeared in small-press, national, and international magazines. Her plays have been produced in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.

James Sanders - Chyrons and Plants





James Sanders is a member of the Atlanta Poets Group, a writing and performing collective (http://atlantapoetsgroup.blogspot.com/). He was included in the /2016 BAX: Best American Experimental Writing/ anthology. His most recent book, Self-Portrait in Plants, was published in 2015. The University of New Orleans Press also recently published the group’s An Atlanta Poets Group Anthology: The Lattice Inside.

Jeremy Stewart - bugs groucho 1-5




Jeremy Stewart won the 2014 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry for Hidden City (Invisible Publishing). He is also the author of (flood basement (Caitlin Press). His work has appeared in Canadian Literature, Geist, Lemon Hound, Open Letter, and elsewhere. He is a PhD student at Lancaster University, UK.

He once dropped a piano off a building.


Tom Prime / Gary Barwin - collaborative mayhem



Tom Prime is a PhD student in English at Western University. He has an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Victoria (Specializing in Poetry). He has a BA at Western University. He has been published in Carousel, Ditch, Fjords Review, The Northern Testicle, The Rusty Toque, and Vallum.

His first chapbook, A Strange Hospital, was published on Proper Tales Press. His latest chapbook, Gravitynipplemilkplanet Anthroposcenesters, was published on above/ground press.

His collaborative collection of poems written with Gary Barwin, A Cemetery for Holes, is available from Gordon Hill Press.

His latest 2 chapbooks have been released on Serif of Nottingham Press. They are collaborations with Gary Barwin entitled Throat Fixtures: an Almanack of Dazzle and Birds are the birthmarks of flight.

***

The author of twenty-two books of poetry, fiction and books for children, Gary Barwin is a writer, musician and multimedia artist from Hamilton, Ontario and the author of the nationally bestselling novel, Yiddish for Pirates (Penguin Random House Canada) which won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, the Canadian Jewish Literary Award was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award; and For It is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe: New and Selected Poems, ed. Alessandro Porco (Wolsak and Wynn, 2019.)

A finalist for the National Magazine Awards (Poetry), he is a three-time recipient of Hamilton Poetry Book of the Year, has also received the Hamilton Arts Award for Literature and has co-won the bpNichol Chapbook Award and the K.M. Hunter Arts Award. He was one of the judges for the 2017 CBC Poetry Prize.  Barwin has been Writer-in-Residence at Western University, Hillfield Strathallan College and McMaster University and the Hamilton Public Library. He will be the Edna Staebler writer-in-residence at Wilfrid Laurier University in Winter 2019.

His writing and recordings have been published/released in hundreds of magazines and journals internationally—from Readers Digest to Granta. He is on the organizing committee for Hamilton’s LitLive Series and regularly presents, performs and exhibits in the city.
His collaborative collection of poems written with Tom Prime, A Cemetery for Holes, is available from Gordon Hill Press.

Barwin lives in Hamilton and at garybarwin.com

Eddie Watkins - from Leap Frogs


Eddie Watkins is a hard working family man and poet living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He lets language have its way with him.


Mary Kasimor - Three Poems

Mary Kasimor who has been writing poetry for many years, considers her work experimental. Her recent poetry collections are The Landfill Dancers (BlazeVox Books 2014), Saint Pink (Moria Books 2015), The Prometheus Collage (Locofo Press 2017), Nature Store (Dancing Girl Press 2017) Drink Me (BlazeVox Books 2019), and Disrobing Iris (above ground press 2019). Her poetry has been published in many journals, including Word For/Word, Touch the Donkey, Posit, Human Repair Kit, Arteidolia (collaboration with Susan Lewis), and Otoliths.