I'm a longtime fan of all things ASCII art related—I’m no expert on it, but I sure know what I like. I’m a sucker for the roflcopter, and even have to grin at the spam I get that spells out the name of the enhancement drug being plugged in a giant font whose letters are formed by an ASCII art influenced attention to whitespace. If I had all the freetime in the world, I would be tweaking aalib's set of allowed character strings and using it to render videos the way I want to wordwatch them.
This is what concrete poetry is about: using language as a material of composition. There's nothing that says you have to use language in only one mode during a composition. The modulation of the multi-modal is, in fact, as you're about to see, a rich and rewarding ground to play in, to work in, to read in, to write in. Here are seven poems by Christopher Major to make you question just what exactly is language doing here, and here, and here.
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This lone wildebeest drinking at the water's edge
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(originally published Lit Kos ezine)
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Sleeve tugging back as I took her // / X \ \\ \ // hand.
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Bang bullet
a d
(published originally in Undergroundvoices ezine)
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t
leg leg leg leg leg
foot foot foot foot o
grass grass grass landmine
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f
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Pssssst.
Oi.
Your go......
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Chris Major lives in Stoke On Trent, England; where he is currently training as a Psychiatric Nurse.
Over the last 20 years poetry has been placed in many print literary magazines such as: Outposts, Poetry Bradford, Poetry Nottingham, Sepia, Weyfarers, Remark, Underground Voices, Raw Edge, Iota, Breakfast All Day, Lexicon, The Third Half, Konfluence, Fire, Poetry Monthly, Psychopoetica, First Time, Never Bury Poetry, Inclement and Pennine Platform.
Poetry in many Ezines including:Zygote in..., High Horse, Snakeskin, Poetry Kit, Birmingham Words, Lit Kos, Underground Voices, The Hold, Straight From The Fridge, Laura Hird Showcase, Winamop, Shampoo, Can We Have Our Ball Back, Smokebox, Tryst, Dirt, Bolts Of Silk, Word Riot, Thieves Jargon, 3rd Muse, Orange Room Review, Pemmican etc...
'The Lowest Level and other poems' Print Chapbook http://www.whiteleafpress.co.uk/
'All Of This And Nothing' Online Chapbook http://lilylitreview.com/chapbooks.html