– A Visual Poetry Exhibition –
11TH MAY – 7TH JUNE 2020
Mellom Press is proud to present twenty talented visual poets and artists all sharing our passion for visual poetry and language. Exploring translations between languages, media and multilingual code-switching, their poetry ranges from the prospect of the handwritten to experimentation of the systematical aspect of digital manipulation. Visual poetry is an ideal medium to examine languages and meanings and allows for the untranslatable to be understood – through context or visuals. The exhibition is curated by Silje Ree.
Poets and Artists:
Catalina Aranguren: I was born in Bogotá, Colombia. At the age of 5 my parents moved and I was raised in Caracas, Venezuela. I studied K – 12th at the International School there. Growing up, my friends were from everywhere in the world; religion, race, culture and language were not things I was aware of as differences …it wasn’t who they were innately, it was merely a part of where they came from.
My childhood was a constant wavering between languages, cultures, and third and first worlds, on a daily basis. At home, we would sit around the dining table and I would speak Spanish with my parents, turn, and speak in English to my sister.
I moved to Chicago to study photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and received my BFA. Before I graduated, I did a semester in Europe at the Spéos Photographic Institute in Paris, France.
My husband and I are currently raising three bilingual, bicultural, biracial and bustling boys in New Jersey.
argia.photos
The author of twenty-two books of poetry and fiction, Gary Barwin is the author of the nationally bestselling novel, Yiddish for Pirates (Random House) which won the Leacock Medal for Humour and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award and was a finalist for the Governor-General’s Literary Award and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. His poetry includes For It is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe: New and Selected Poems, ed. Alessandro Porco (Wolsak and Wynn, 2019) and A Cemetery for Holes, a poetry collaboration with Tom Prime (Gordon Hill, 2019). His poetry, music and performances have been widely published, broadcast and performed internationally. It has appeared in such places as Granta, Poetry, The Walrus, and online in the Paris Review and Scientific American. A new novel, Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy will appear from Penguin Random House Canada in 2021.
garybarwin.com
Derek Beaulieu is the author/editor of over twenty collections of poetry, prose, and criticism, including two volumes of his selected work, Please, No More Poetry (2013) and Konzeptuelle Arbeiten (2017). His most recent volume of fiction, a, A Novel was published by Paris’s Jean Boîte Editions. Beaulieu has exhibited his visual work across Canada, the United States, and Europe and has won multiple local and national awards for his teaching and dedication to students. Derek Beaulieu holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Roehampton University and is the Director of Literary Arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. He can be found online at derekbeaulieu.wordpress.com
Richard A Carter is an artist and lecturer in Digital Media at the University of Roehampton. Carter’s artistic work is an extension of his research practice, exploring the potentialities of seeing, knowing, and writing at the intersection between human and machinic actors.
richardacarter.com
Theodoros Chiotis is the editor and translator of the anthology Futures: Poetry of the Greek Crisis (Penned in the Margins, 2015). Other publications include Screen (with photographer Nikolas Ventourakis; Paper Tigers Books, 2017) and limit.less: towards an assembly of the sick (Litmus, 2017). His work has appeared in Litmus, 3:am, Datableed, Adventures in Form, Austerity Measures, Shearsman, aglimpseof, Poematlas, Harana, amongst others. His project Mutualised Archives, an ongoing performative interdisciplinary work, received the Dot Award by the Institute for the Future of Book and Bournemouth University; he has also been awarded a High Commendation from the Forward Prizes for Poetry in 2017. He tweets as @selfcoding.
S Cearley has tricked a computer into making poetry when it thinks it is making art.
futureanachronism.com
Iris Colomb is a poet, artist, curator and translator based in London. She has given individual, collaborative and interactive performances in the UK, Germany, Austria, Romania, and France, at the Bucharest International Poetry Festival, the European Poetry Festival, and the Southbank Centre’s Poetry International Festival among others. Iris’ pamphlet ‘I’m Shocked’ come out with Bad Betty Press in 2018, her chapbook ‘just promise you won’t write’ was published by Gang Press in 2019, and her artist books have been collected and exhibited by the National Poetry Library and Chelsea College of Arts’ special collection. Her poems have appeared in magazines such as The Interpreter’s House, Zarf, Tentacular, Poetry Wales, Para•text and Datableed, as well as in a number of UK anthologies. Iris is the Co-Editor of HVTN Press, one of the editors of Pamenar Press and a founding member of the interdisciplinary collective ‘No Such Thing’.
iriscolomb.com
Amanda Earl’s visual poetry has been exhibited in Canada, Brazil and Russia. Chapters from the Vispo Bible have been published as chapbooks by publishers in Canada, Sweden and UK. Earl’s vispo has also been published in the last vispo: anthology: visual poetry 1998-2008 (Fantagraphics, 2012), Of the Body, (Puddles of Sky Press, 2012), Bone Sapling, a collaboration with Gary Barwin, (AngelHousePress, 2014), a field guide to fanciful bugs, (avantacular press, 2010), Montparnasse: this is visual poetry, (chapbook publisher, 2010) and in the magazines, untethered (2017) and dreamland (2016). Amanda’s visual poetry also appears in online journals, Brave New Word, Angry Old Man, Ustanga, h&, Our Teeth otoliths, tip of the knife, ffooom, the new post literate, Logalia.com, DrunkenBoat, and the Bleed. Gary Barwin gave a lovely write up of Amanda’s visual poetry on Jacket2, “What kind of [sic] sense is that?: Amanda Earl & the synaesthesia of reading” (June, 2013). For more vispo, please visit amandaearl.com
Sara Elgerot is a bilingual Book Artist and Writer, living in Sweden, with a background in comparative literature and translation.
rareautumn.com
SJ Fowler works in poetry, fiction, theatre, film, photography, visual art, sound art and performance. He has published seven collections of poetry, four of artworks, five of collaborative poetry plus volumes of selected essays and selected collaborations. He has been commissioned by Tate Modern, BBC Radio 3, Whitechapel Gallery, Tate Britain, the London Sinfonietta, Wellcome Collection and Liverpool Biennial. He has been sent to Peru, Bangladesh, Iraq, Argentina, Georgia and other destinations by The British Council and has performed at festivals including Hay on Wye, Cervantino in Mexico, Berlin Literature Festival and Hay Xalapa. He was nominated for the White Review prize for Fiction in 2014 and has won awards from Arts Council England, Jerwood Charitable Foundation, Creative Scotland, Arts Council Ireland and multiple other funding bodies. His plays have been produced at Rich Mix, where he is associate artist, and his visual art has been exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo, V&A, Hardy Tree Gallery and Mile End Art Pavilion. He’s been translated into 27 languages and produced collaborations with over 150 artists. He is the founder and curator of The Enemies Project and Poem Brut as well as editor at 3am magazine and former executive editor at The Versopolis Review. He is lecturer in Creative Writing and English Literature at Kingston University, has taught at Tate Modern, Poetry School and Photographer’s Gallery. He is the director of Writers’ Centre Kingston and European Poetry Festival.
stevenjfowler.com
Helen Frank: In the tradition of the French literary avant-garde, I playfully explore mathematically creative methodologies by inventing then enacting constraints (a set of self-imposed mathematically inspired rules) that function as a structure to produce artwork. I am based in northern England but exhibit and work internationally (as a member of the Oupeinpo, the visual art iteration of the OuXpo groups who work in parallel to the Oulipo). I often have work in publications, national and international, including publications in the Tate collection and the Bibliotheque Nationale Paris.
helenfrank-who.blogspot.com
Peter Jaeger is a Canadian writer based in London, England. He is the author of twelve books, including works of poetry and hybrid creative-critical research. Publications include the artist book The Shadow Line (2016) and a process-based text on walking and pilgrimage entitled Midamble (2018). Jaeger is Professor of Poetics at the University of Roehampton, where he also directs the Exploratory Writing Research Group.
writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Jaeger.php
James Knight is an experimental poet and digital artist. His books include Void Voices (Hesterglock Press) and Self Portrait by Night (Sampson Low). His visual poems have been published in several places, including the Penteract Press anthology Reflections and Temporary Spaces (Pamenar Press). Chimera, a book of visual poems, is due from Penteract Press in July 2020.
thebirdking.com
Canan Marasligil:
i write & i translate
i tell stories with images: still, moving
i curate artistic and literary programmes
i edit and create online content
i create handmade books, i make collages
i take on any medium and creative tool that helps me express myself, challenge official narratives and advocate freedom of expression.
cananmarasligil.net
Luke Murphy is a London based design engineer with an artistic background. As a hobbyist photographer, he is always experimenting with expressing feelings and moments through carefully taken and presented photos.
@lukas.pascal_
Astra Papachristodoulou is a poet and artist with focus in the experimental tradition. She is the author of several poetry pamphlets including Stargazing (Guillemot Press) and Blockplay (Hesterglock Press) and her work has been published at various magazines including Ambit Magazine and Eborakon Journal. Astra won the Pebeo Mixed Media Art Prize in 2016, and her visual work has been showcased at contemporary visual poetry exhibitions at the National Poetry Library and The Poetry Café in London.
astranaut.co.uk
Silje Ree is a Norwegian poet and visual artist based in London, currently exploring the interplay between words, languages and imagery through the medium of the book. Her work has been published and displayed in places such as 3:am magazine, the Poetry Society, 5th Base Gallery and Museum of Futures in London, and Lasso, Filologen and Studio K in Norway. Her two poetry pamphlets Melodilaust tone fall (2019) and E∩N (2018) explores code-switching between English and Norwegian.
siljeree.com
Imogen Reid: My name is Imogen, I completed a practice-based PhD at Chelsea College of Arts, my practice being writing. My work has appeared in: Hotel Magazine, LossLit, Gorse Journal, Zeno Press, Elbow Room, and 3AM Magazine. I have a pamphlet with Gordian Projects.
@vilmastuttle
Danni Storm is a Danish artist and writer living and working in Copenhagen.
His works include visual poetry, erasure poetry, cut-up, text manipulation and translation.
He is also the editor of Danish literary magazine Addenda.
@danni_storm
Nico Vassilakis writes and draws language. Many of his results can be found online and on his website, Staring Poetics. Recent books include Alphabet Noir, In The Breast Pocket Of A Fine Overcast Day and DIESEL HAND. He co-edited the collection The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998-2008. (Fantagraphics Books 2012). He lives in the country with his wife, Crystal Curry.
staringpoetics.weebly.com
– Video Series –
Celebrating the opening of the online visual poetry exhibition ‘Trånslatiøns’, Mellom Press presents a series of videos made by visual poets and artists contributing to the show exploring and expanding on their own work.
Mellom Press – Est. 2020