Artist's Book by Cheryl Penn (Durban, South Africa)

[De Villo Sloan]

Cover of Meta Poetry (a this and that guide to this and that Volume 1) by Cheryl Penn (Durban, South Africa)

Note: IUOMA members please excuse the technical nature of the commentary on Cheryl's book. Asemic Front 2 is a mail art project, but it's followed by a lot of asemic writers and visual poets. Cheryl Penn is well-known to many for her mail art and related book arts projects. - DVS

 

 

(March 8, 2019) - Cheryl Penn's Meta Poetry is an artist's book (or chapbook) of 16 color images released in a (micro-)edition of 10 books signed by the artist. I feel very fortunate indeed to obtain a hard copy and hope the book will be available online or in further editions for the many who will benefit from seeing it. (More information is provided at the end of the blog. I will resist the temptation to simply reproduce the entire collection in deference to the writer and publisher.)

 

Meta Poetry is a collection of asemic poems by Penn. In this era, asemic writing/art is growing in popularity; its sub-genres - still largely undefined - are beginning to emerge, not without heated debates. Penn's book provides invaluable practical and conceptual directions for asemic poetry.

One point that seems to have achieved a consensus in the asemic community is that asemic writing is (or is a form of) visual poetry. Thus the notion of "asemic poetics" becomes even more complex than if we were addressing a new type of textual writing making a claim to the written poetic tradition. (Let us set aside sound poetry and spoken asemics on this occasion.) In Meta Poetry Cheryl Penn provides intriguing possibilities that beg further expansion and exploration by others. Hoping not to overstate my point I will venture a rephrase: Meta Poetry is an important collection of asemic poems.
 

 

 

 

 Contents of Meta Poetry by Cheryl Penn

 

 

Asemic writing is widely considered a post-avant cultural pursuit, so some might be surprised or perplexed by the fact that the basis of composition and organization in Meta Poetry is the historical continuum of poetic form itself. Penn's work in the collection is a synthesis of literary tradition and the iconoclastic avant garde. As a result, we are left to wonder if the opposition between the two is not a false dichotomy since she is able to achieve such unity and harmony. The title Meta Poetry is well-chosen because the book is a meditation on form, asemic writing can be viewed as meta-language and the pieces investigate lyric poetry's range and limits of emotional expression.

 

She presents  an asemic-vispo history of poetic form (English language-based) from sonnets to organic structures. Penn is building upon the concept that "the verse that print bred" as Charles Olson wrote has recognizable shapes on the page. For example, we can recognize the visual form of haiku or sonnet without reading it; that recognition sparks subjective responses. When the space of language in these forms-shapes is inhabited by the expressive calligraphy of asemic writing, we have a new kind of reading and a new kind of poetry. Thus Meta Poetry is a merging of a highly self-reflective "shape poetry" or "pattern poetry" with asemics. In the hands of an artist-writer as gifted as Cheryl Penn, the result is a tremendous achievement and experience for the reader.

 

 

 

 

 

 [Asemic] "Sonnet" (left) by Cheryl Penn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 "Rorschach Plot" by Cheryl Penn (organic form)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 "Visual Poetry" by Cheryl Penn