Collab by Kristine Snodgrass & De Villo Sloan
June 22, 2020 -- The Asemic Front project is thrilled to announce the publication of Whistle, a collaborative book of visual poetry, asemic writing and collage by Kristine Snodgrass and De Villo Sloan. This is the first full-length book published in the Asemic Front Series.
Whistle includes over 50 large-format, full-color compositions and in-depth essays on the process by both Snodgrass and Sloan. The book is available through Amazon.
Whistle is the result of an extended collaboration between Snodgrass and Sloan conducted during March and April of 2020. Snodgrass (in Florida) and Sloan (in New York State) exchanged drafts both digitally and via snail mail during the challenging and uncertain weeks of the pandemic lockdown in the USA.
Whistle will doubtless be viewed in the context of the global creative outpouring that occurred during the 2020 pandemic. However, Whistle readers will also discover a thoughtful dialogue in images and text about gender, sexuality, violence and power.
“We discussed our conscious modalities of gender at work,” said Kristine Snodgrass. “We agreed there was something to be worked out. This led me to tour the pieces we did with a closer eye: for signs of power, gender dynamics, sexuality. I think all of this remains unresolved. But that is the place where we invite readers to join in the process.”
De Villo Sloan explains, “I engaged in Whistle at a time when I was making a lot of concrete poetry with an old, electric typewriter. I typed over work by mail art friends with thick layers of type then returned it to them and posted the results online.
“I charged into the Kristine collabs with type-over fervor; but as soon as I began my usual process, I had an intuitive pang that this was a wrong approach and that with no prompting from Kristine. Thus, you will see my type-overs in Whistle; and you will also see the type-overs evolve into forms that allow for dialog.”
Poet Michael Rothenberg writes about Whistle: “Cats, fish, faces, roosters, and orchids make a sudden appearance in the asemic veil, and then return to fatal abstraction and illumination. Whistle is the vehicle, instrument, lip, lung and death rattle exhale, where collaboration becomes one emanation.”
Kristine Snodgrass is a poet, curator, Co-Director of Anhinga Press and Associate Professor at Florida A&M University. She has published books, chapbooks and her writing has appeared in numerous literary journals. Kristine has participated in successful poetry collaboration projects, including work with her mentor Maureen Seaton. Recently, she has applied her considerable talents to the postavant areas of visual poetry and asemic writing.
De Villo Sloan currently focuses his energy on concrete poetry, asemic writing and writing reviews and theory in these areas. He earned a Ph.D. in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo where he studied with Robert Creeley. His writing has appeared in numerous literary journals. Last year the second installment of his “Neo-Concrete Series” was published as issue #71 of Miekal And’s Xerolage.
Asemic Front is an ongoing project, rooted in the international mail art community, that encourages the creation and sharing of asemic writing, visual poetry, concrete poetry and – especially – collaboration in these genres.
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