Vispo: Pessimism / How To Create A Visual Poem

Pessimism, RTomens, 2025

I'm not pessimistic by nature but...

...looking at the world one way...

...it's hard not to be pessimistic.

Then again, as I said to a friend the other day, we now look at the world through the online medium and potentially one can be dragged down a dark rabbit hole of doom! Whereas, pre-PC, we perhaps read a newspaper and not even the news, just the Sports pages, or the Arts (having only glanced at the headlines on the front page). We could choose because it was all contained within one manageable package and not the open-ended internet to which there is no end, no closure.

To avoid too much online news I make visual poetry. I would say it keeps me sane, but sometimes the act of creation can spark a kind of craziness. Mostly, though, it does keep me sane, except for the other day, when I started to lose my mind as it triggered my fingers on the keys of the typewriter. I was typing with no purpose. I was creating unsatisfactory work! Lots of it!

How could I get back on the right track?

Take a long break.

Think again.

Someone recently asked how I created the lines of text in a piece of work. I explained that a wide carriage typewriter was necessary to turn the A4 paper, thus getting the required angles. That was easy to answer. Someone once asked how visual poetry was made. Hmm...how could I answer that? I recall shrugging with a stupid grin on my face. 

Most people, understandably, don't even know what visual poetry is, never mind how it's made. That, dear reader, is why I have not got rich or made a living from visual poetry.

Any tool can be used to make visual poetry, from the humble pencil to software. Here I should say what visual poetry actually is, but that's almost as tricky as saying what Art is so I won't attempt a definitive answer, except to say that in my book visual poetry must feature letters or words. Don't laugh; I've seen quite a bit that doesn't, but is called visual poetry and even gets featured in books. 

All text can be deconstructed and all letters can be singular marks as opposed to forming words. Words can be played with, rearranged to make non and new sense. Visual poetry is ultimately playing with language and the components of language. I consider some of William Burroughs cut-ups to be a form of visual poetry. 

Recently I've been experimenting with a looser style involving marks made by pen or carbon, random lines and squiggles (see above). I've been making messier pieces. Not that I have ever been one for formal precision. This approach challenges the idea that a piece must be visually 'appealing'. Geometry, shapes, some colour, some bold forms all increase the chances of a piece appealing to the viewer. They help to create an impact. Since everyone is rapidly scrolling as opposed to standing in a gallery, to gain attention a piece of visual poetry needs to be eye-catching. If, that is, you want to maximise the chances of being properly seen and appreciated. But we know where that goes. 

Pandering to what one thinks the viewer wants is a trap I try to avoid. Why? Because life's too short (and getting shorter for me) to be worrying about what might get more 'likes', retweets etc. If I don't do what I want now, when will I? If I'm not free to do as I like now, when will I be free?

I didn't answer the question in the post header. I intended to before realising I had nothing to say about how to create a visual poem. 

Sorry 'bout that.

TTFN

Vispo: The Time Travel Business

The Time Travel Business, RTomens, 2025

We're all in the time travel business, aren't we?

Looking back and forward.

Some of us have a lot more to look back on than years to come...

Vispo: Oh No Not Again! and It Ain't Watcha Do / Painting and visual poetry - the use of paint and type

RTomens, 2025

 Purchase in the shop

Is there a dichotomy between paint and type? Anything can be used in a mixed media piece but rarely do typed letters and paint meet. Perhaps they are not supposed to co-inhabit a space. It was never destined to be in the history of art. They argue with each other and paint has the upper hand, being flexible regarding the size of the brush stroke and tending towards the stronger, bolder mark. Type is type. A comparatively puny mark unless overtyping is applied, which requires at least three layers to match, say, one thin line of paint.

I reached for the acrylic paint a few days ago, wanting a change regarding marks made on paper that I would type over. I commonly use carbon for mark-making since it is more akin to type and less obtrusive.  The paint marks are random, expressive; mindful of typing to be done. But it's easy to get carried away with paint. It cries out to be spread around. Sometimes there really is too much paint for my liking. Screw that up, chuck it in the bin. I have made pieces in which the 'marks', shapes, blocks of colour, usually black, dominate the page, allowing only a little room for type, but I think they confuse people. They see neither a 'proper' painting nor a visual poem. 

Oh No Not Again was created from another piece that was copied, altered, printed in layers and typed on again. Here is it's 'mother', originally called It Ain't Watcha Do.

RTomens, 2025

Purchase in the shop

The drag marks made by the brush immediately suggested vapor trails or, perhaps, comets? Fireworks? I filled the trails with letters, but as you can see, they are almost invisible. This is a good example of the battle between type and paint. To try to draw the viewers attention to the fact that there is type on the page, I added red type too. I found myself trying to fill the spaces between the trails, but the poor old Olympia struggled to make itself 'heard'. Paint was shouting too loudly.

I'm not displeased with either the original or its offspring. The offspring is possibly more dynamic, definitely more colourful, but the original tells another story, one of the battle between paint and type.

TTFN!

How To Write Poetry 2 / Book: To Ease My Troubled Mind - Ted Kessler / Thee Headcoats / Faversham boat yard

RTomens, 2025

'Decide what your poem is about'

Mine are often (not always) about nothing. But then...

are they really poems?

No.

*

When I worked in the bookshop I'd play Thee Headcoats and other Medway bands' music regularly. It seemed to suit the place, the place being a bit ramshackle, rough, raw around the edges. I found this book in the local charity shop the other day...

That sparked a fresh wave of Medway Sound listening again. 

Chatham is a Medway town. It's the only town I've ever visited that actually made me depressed. 

Rochester is good.

Gillingham is great for a walk where the River Medway opens up.

Heading East from the Medway towns you come to Faversham and a fantastic boat yard.

It's the kind of place I'd like to live...in a shack...alongside the creek...

...away from all the big city crap...with men who while away the days patching up their boats...get a bulldog and learn to play the banjo...drive an old Jeep...I can dream of the alternate lifestyle...

Sonic Boom magazine cover art

 

My piece, Back To Reality, is the cover for the July issue of Sonic Boom. Read it here.

How To Write Poetry (1) / Heavy Metal addiction

How To Write Poetry 1, RTomens, 2025

Too much?

Are the drawn lines too thick? Do they overwhelm the typing?

I started a series called How To Write Poetry, based on the AI answer from a Google search. Perhaps I'll make enough of them to create a book. Imagining having done that, I then like to imagine some poor soul buying the book thinking they will learn how to write poetry. As long as they didn't buy it directly from me, otherwise they'd want their money back.

I'm not saying it's impossible for a How To text on writing poetry to succeed in helping to create the next ------  ------ (insert a great poet) but what does that even matter so long as whoever starts writing enjoys it? Don't be a snob! As long as I don't have to read the results...

How To Write Visual Poetry? Perhaps I should have asked that - damn! You can. See what 'it' says. 'It' knowing everything. AI can write Visual Poetry, I'm sure. Hold on, isn't half the fancy digital Text Art I see on X written by some kind of programming anyway? You know, the whizzy, pulsating, shimmering stuff you see. I blame Kenneth Goldsmith. 

So I printed part of the answer on paper that had already been treated then proceeded to type, first the vertical bank of lines running through it, then the double-typed angular lines and some wavy lines at the bottom. It wasn't enough. 

That noise you heard was me thinking (sounds like the rusty cogs of a knackered machine slowly turning). 

Pens! Yes, grab a pen and draw - that's what it needs. I picked out the Pentel N850 permanent marker and started. Minutes later I thought 'Fuck, that's too thick!'. But having started, what could I do? Abandon it? I very rarely abandon work. Carry on. Use some red. It was starting to look a right mess. 

Help! 

There's no-one to help you but yourself!

Spaces filled in on the right-hand side...yes...leaving holes through which some type is visible; I'm sure you noticed. 

How's it looking? Unusually, I couldn't tell. Is it total crap? OK? Good? 

Finally, black down the left-hand side to frame the typed section.

Put it to one side.

Get on with important stuff, such as listening to Venom...

As well as being addicted to typing Visual Poetry, I'm now addicted to Metal. It's never been fashionable. Never 'cool'. Now I like the fact that's it's neither. It was always there, since the 80s, being ignored by me. Gradually though, over the last year or so, I've been seduced by it (Metallica first, then Pantera and others). A few weeks back I bought A History of Heavy Metal by Andrew O'Neill in a charity shop. That did it. It's a humorous take but for a novice like me, informative too regarding bands I'd never heard of before. After all these years of listening to music, it's great to start enjoying a new (old) genre.

TTFN 

My latest booklet: Back To Earth / My Trumpet, Miles Davis and The Art Rut

Back To Earth...back to reality? Heaven forbid, reality being so...(insert appropriate text according to outlook).

24 pages of art so relatively slim by my usual standards but as you know, it's all about the quality, not the width. And it's full of quality visualisations from the typewriter - it is! I'm blowing my own trumpet because no-one else is going to, are they? Or are they? Perhaps out there in the online universe someone is, at this very moment, blowing my trumpet for me. Heh-heh. I tried blowing an actual trumpet once. You can imagine how painful it sounded. I've nothing but admiration for anyone...no, not just anyone, anyone who blows a trumpet in a style I enjoy. Like Miles Davis, of course, but you know what he did, he started playing fast and smart Be-Bop in the commonly recognised hip style of the day, but never one to rest on his laurels, two decades later he could be heard yelping, squealing and barping (not a real word, is it?) along with his cutting edge crew of musos moulded to his own sound/vision. 

Dare I say (yes I do) that I have an affinity with Miles Davis with respect to my typewriting? Pretentious? Perhaps, but I thought it, now I'm committing it to the screen. I mean, like him, I'm always looking for new ways to say something with my visual poetry. I'm not saying one should always 'make it new', just that I like to move on and around themes, ideas, methods. I revisit some, expand others, test new ones and so on. We all know the Art Rut. An artist hits on a style then does it over and over again. I don't care. Carry on. It's not always to the detriment of the work. It creates a familiar style and as with, say, Warhol prints, if you like that style, it's good.

I suspect people like the familiar. Yes, in the sense of finding the avant-garde difficult, but also familiarity with an artists's style because it's instantly recognisable therefore somehow comforting...reassuring. The problem with an artist varying what they do is that the viewer, liking one style, may not like another and therefore gets grumpy, disappointed. Oh well...

All that said, I've been told I have a recognisable style. I can't second guess how others view all my work. I was, however, just a little disappointed, thinking 'Oh no, I'm predictable!' I can't tell when I'm making all those marks on all that paper...I don't get an overview, just something like one when, as happened recently, a collector visited and I had to go through the boxes, choosing a selection. Then I look back and sometimes think 'Damn, that was a good one!' If a piece really strikes me as great, I might think 'I should do more like that'. Sometimes I try but, you know what? You can't go back. In my case, perhaps the typewriter used broke forever and has been chucked away. But more...profoundly(?), it seems to be impossible to actually do it again because I've changed, somehow. 

Anyway, here's my latest booklet, inspired by science-fiction, all quotes coming from old sci-fi mags. If you'd like a copy, it costs £10 and is in the shop. 

TTFN!

Vispo: Who's To Judge? / Crime and Dissonance Ennio Morricone comp

 

Who's To Judge?, RTomens, 2025

I am the judge.

Dense lines in the corner, but first the circles/globes on 'poles'. Initially empty save for the words, then filled with black lines and finally coloured in red ink.

You can be the judge.

*

Twenty years ago, when it was released, I was initiated into the other side of Ennio Morricone courtesy of the compilation, Crime And Dissonance. Previous to that, like many, I only knew his classic spag Western soundtracks. That's what he'll be remembered for more than anything else. Naturally. Squint Eastwood's sharp shooting Man With No Name was bound to continue reaching a wider audience than the many Italian horror and crime films bearing the maestro's sonic touch. Crime And Dissonance covers all the ground Morricone would explore, much of it genre-twisting, from modern classical to 'jazzy', 'avant-garde', even groovy Pop moods. Essential.

Vispo: Zig Zag Wanderer

Zig Zag Wanderer, RTomens 2025

Buy it here

Captain Beefheart, right?

I did zig zag and wonder where to go next with this one having initially created the zig zag lines. Later, I added the inked straight lines, just a few, which turned into a lot. Then I left it, unpublished, for a few days. I kept looking at it, not totally satisfied. This morning I added even more inked lines. Perhaps I got carried away. Whatever, I was happier with the result, so I sent it out into the world.

Have a look in the shop. It's only money, not even cash, just a number in your balance. You won't miss it but you will own an original piece of visual poetry! 

Three Vispo Pieces / How Much Art? - SSD

 

Wait And See, RTomens, 2025

Buy it here

Nothing Means Anything Anymore, RTomens, 2025

Buy it here

Anti, Anti, Anti, RTomens, 2025

Buy it here