Asemic Front 2 Top Ten Faves of 2025

From "decompositions" by Jim Leftwich (2004) 

(AF2 Archive)

1. "The State of Asemia 2025 according to Jim Leftwich" Published @ AF2 January 30, 2025 (Jim's last post on AF2 - prophetic)

https://asemicfront2.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-state-of-asemia-2025-according.html

"untitled" by Rosaire Appel (New York City) (January 2025)

 (Image courtesy of the artist)

2. "AF2 gallery: Recent asemics and vispo by Rosaire Appel (New York City)" (Published @ AF2 February 3, 2025) 

https://asemicfront2.blogspot.com/2025/02/af2-gallery-recent-asemics-visual.html

From WRITTEN IN The Zero One by Hannah Weiner. 

Published by Pete Spence at Post-Neo 

(original 1985) (AF2 Archive)

3. "AF2 commentary: Hannah Weiner at the intersection of asemic writing and poetry." (A re-assessment of WRITTEN IN The Zero One by Hannah Weiner published by Pete Spence at Post-Neo in Australia.)

https://asemicfront2.blogspot.com/2025/05/af2-commentary-hannah-weiner-at.html

Collaboration by Sarah Ridgely (USA) and Christian Bok 

(Canada) (June 2025) (Image courtesy of the artists) 

4. "Intermedia collaboration by Sarah Ridgely (USA) and Christian Bok (Canada): Algorithmically generated asemics in 'Fifty Days of Illium' [performed in UK]." Published @ AF2 June 2025.

https://asemicfront2.blogspot.com/2025/06/intermedia-collaboration-by-sarah.html

From PANSEMIC TEXTSTORM by Miekal And (USA) 

(2025) (Image courtesy of the artist)

5. "AI-semics and Human creativity: Selections from PANSEMIC TEXTSTORM by Miekal And (USA)" (Published @ AF2 September 2025)

https://asemicfront2.blogspot.com/2025/09/ai-semics-human-creativity-selections.html

"Eco-asemics (2) (found forest material)" by Brigitte Tye 

(Seengen, Switzerland) (August 2025) 

(Image courtesy of the artist)

6 "Eco-asemics & other recent asemic art by Brigitte Tye" (Published @ AF2 August 16, 2025)

https://asemicfront2.blogspot.com/2025/08/asemic-front-2-gallery-eco-asemics.html

                               

                               "The high pressure of humanity" by Geof Huth 

                                   (March 2025) (Image courtesy of the artist)

7 "Asemantic (asemic) calligraphy by Geof Huth (North Carolina, USA)" (Published @AF2 March 31, 2025)

https://asemicfront2.blogspot.com/2025/03/asemantic-asemic-calligraphy-by-geof.html

Cover of Visual Poetry by John McConnochie 

(Queensland, Australia) (Pete Spence's BlackHill Pres) 

(2025) (AF2 Archive)

8 "AF2 review: Visual Poetry by John McConnochie (Australia) (BlackHill Press)" 

(Published @ AF2 May 22, 2025)

Asemic Front 2: AF2 Review: "Visual Poetry" by John McConnochie (Australia) (BlackHill Press)

        

"Asemic writing [1]" by Monica Gorgoteanu (Romania)

 (2025) (Image courtesy 0f the artist)

9 "AF2 gallery: Selected asemic writing by Monica Gorgoteanu (Romania) (Published @ AF2 July 3, 2025)

https://asemicfront2.blogspot.com/2025/07/asemic-front-2-gallery-selected-asemic.html

Vispo by Nick Piombino (New York City) (2025)

 (Image courtesy of the artist)

10 'The Spectacle' and other recent vispo by Nick Piombino (New York City) (Published @ AF2 June 29, 2025)

https://asemicfront2.blogspot.com/2025/06/asemic-front-2-spectacle-other-recent.html

Analysis: Asemic Cartography - Selections from "Mapping Terra Nullius" by John R. McConnochie (Australia)

From Mapping Terra Nullius by John R. McConnochie (Queensland, Australia) 

(November 2025) (Image Courtesy of the Artist)

Asemic Cartography - Selections from Mapping Terra Nullius 

by John R. McConnochie

by De Villo Sloan

Among the many promising sub-genres of asemics evolving globally, I want to spotlight asemic texts rooted in cartography, both its practical and conceptual aspects.

A current master of asemic cartography is Australian visual poet John McConnochie. In this post, I share excerpts from Mapping Terra Nullius, a vispo series McConnochie has published online, although currently uncollected and fragmentary.

I noted in a recent review of digital, AI-assisted asemics by Miekal And that some of the most important asemic work being published today is digital and mutating beyond the classic printed book formula. 

From Mapping Terra Nullius by John McConnochie (October 2025) 

(Image Courtesy of the Artist)

“Terra nullius” is a widely used Latin term translating to, “no one’s land.” McConnochie, an artist whose work often carries distinct ideological messages, makes subtle allusions to European colonization and systemic violations of the rights of indigenous peoples.

For me John McConnochie’s maps reference the Romanticized, pseudo-rational, often confused, attempts to chart and claim the world during the Age of Discovery. Mapping Terra Nullius provides remarkable deconstructions of colonization myths.     

From Mapping Terra Nullius by John McConnochie (October 2025)

(Image Courtesy of the Artist)

Beyond the ideological level of his work, McConnochie explores the unique symbol systems and rules of composition embedded in cartography. Asemics reduce the logic and narratives of cartography into incomprehensible, non-existent worlds. Nameless, enchanted places connect us to the mystery and imagination that is at the root of our fascination with maps.

In previous essays, I have emphasized my belief that visual poetry – including asemic writing – must necessarily incorporate the abstract principles of “textuality” in order to deliver a composition that reaches meaningfully into the poetic realm.  

Maps – as found material and resonant symbol systems – currently serve as inspiration for our innovative visual poets. I encourage you to explore this fascinating area.

 

-     - De Villo Sloan

November 28, 2025

Elbridge, New York, USA

From Mapping Terra Nullius by John McConnochie (October 2025) 

(Image Courtesy of the Artist)

From Mapping Terra Nullius by John McConnochie (September 2025) 

(Image Courtesy of the Artist)

AF2 Review: Poetry as Opiate of the Masses: "COPIUM" by Nada Gordon (above/ground press, Canada)

 

Cover of COPIUM by Nada Gordon (above/ground press) 

(Ottawa, Canada) (2025)

Poetry as Opiate of the Masses: A review of COPIUM by Nada Gordon (above/ground press, Canada)

 

COPIUM by Nada Gordon

Ottawa, Canada: above/ground press, August 2025

24 pages; stapled

 

Review by De Villo Sloan

 

Rob Mclennan has added another literary gem to the list of recent chapbooks issued by above/ground press in Ottawa, Canada, with the publication of COPIUM by Nada Gordon.

COPIUM is a single lyric poem composed of elegant tercets that encode opulent imagery like ornate beadwork. Through associations, wordplay, unexpected juxtapositions, and explorations of poetic discourse, Gordon creates a unique and engaging record of what in Modernity is known as “the stream of consciousness.”

Her narrative melds objective and subjective realities; she skillfully provides multiple perspectives on daily life. The book includes images by Gordon in collaboration with MidJourney AI.

COPIUM succeeds on its Flarfy juxtapositions, irony, popcult references, and occasional absurdist incoherence. She has developed a postavant poetic line that extends Modernist fragmentation into new realms, which I believe is an accomplishment of great significance.

From COPIUM by Nada Gordon (above/ground press) 

(Ottawa, Canada) (2025)

Nada Gordon has a rare ability to create poetic forms that permit (if they do not encourage) multiple but equally illuminating interpretations. In COPIUM, I unexpectedly found a lyric poem of outstanding beauty and insight. The third and fourth stanzas of the poem provide a good example of how its self-reflexivity contributes to the poem’s genesis:

Peacock fanning out…

swans entwining necks

as co-beings

 

feathering extremities

like kelp, flowers, hands

in a diamond brain (brine) of lost time.

 

For me, the pleasure of reading COPIUM is found in its self-reflective reverie, (consciously) aesthetic escapism, and its meta-poetical commentary. Gordon gives me the sublime experience of decayed opulence described to perfection with imagery by Charles Baudelaire in The Flowers of Evil. I find myself returning to the text for the pleasure of its aesthetic decadence for the same reasons I return to Baudelaire and Poe. 

COPIUM is also a fascinating compendium of English language nouns and adjectives that are useful in both scientific and artistic discourse. Here is an example from COPIUM by Nada Gordon showing her use of particulars:

 

           Caves of gems, and a pomegranate gem

           as a giant war demon.

           Mendelssohn infuses a dark city

 

           With the idea of ‘charging’

           (being recharged) –

           rogue elephants

 

           the tusk, the tree

           the metals, the mortals,

           breath and gourds and reeds.

 

           what are:

           ‘words’ ‘texts’ ‘friends’

           ‘membranes’ ‘borders’ ‘organs’

 

‘           countries’ ‘Jews’ ‘food’

‘           animals’ ‘cities’ ‘books’

           ‘cells’ ‘Gaza’ ‘gauze’

 

Paradoxically, however, looking beyond traces of conceptual writing, Gordon’s lyric is built on the solid foundation of, “No ideas but in things.” In fact, a close linguistic analysis of the various catalogs woven into COPIUM would likely produce interesting results.

A worldview present in Gordon’s writing is that language is an inevitable intermediary in human communication, expression and – of course - poetry. COPIUM is a lush sea of imagery and a (sometimes) mechanistic interrogation of language. Nada Gordon often approaches the edge of meaning: the same terrain as asemic writers. She brings COPIUM into the realm of visual and concrete poetry:

 

    Owls

    Opals

    Opossums

 

    and a lunar pOnd

    the loss of pherOmOne pOwer

    in the OdORless digital world

 

    The letter O:

    Just lOOk at it!

    Ketamina LOy.

Nada Gordon's COPIUM is a multi-faceted composition that invites readers to engage with the text often, revealing multiple perspectives and interpretations. She is one of our most important poetic voices. above/ground press has done extraordinary work producing this edition. If you only purchase one chapbook in 2025, order COPIUM by Nada Gordon. 

From COPIUM by Nada Gordon (above/ground press) 

(Ottawa, Canada) (2025)

De Villo Sloan is a concrete poet living in Upstate NY. He writes about postavant lit & culture and is director of the Winifred & De Villo Sloan, Jr. Charitable Fund.

Asemic Front 2 Gallery: Eco-Asemics & Other Recent Asemic Art by Brigitte Tye (Seengen, Switzerland)

"Asemic Kisses" by Brigitte Tye (Seengen, Switzerland) (lip stick, parallel pens 

& golden pen on paper) (August 2025) (Image courtesy of the artist)

"Eco-asemics (1)" by Brigitte Tye (found forest material) (August 2025) 

(Image courtesy of the artist)

"Eco-asemics (2)" by Brigitte Tye (found forest material) (August 2025)

(Image courtesy of the artist)

"The Language of Flowers" by Brigitte Tye (July 2025)

(Image courtesy of the artist)

"Depending on the Light" by Brigitte Tye (July 2025)

(Image courtesy of the artist)

"Dancing the Pen" (parallel pen & ink on paper) by Brigitte Tye 

(August 2025) (Image courtesy of the artist)

"Somebody is watching you... unplanned" " by Brigitte Tye 

(July 2025) (Image courtesy of the artist)

AF2 Gallery: "The Seagull's Alphabet" & Other Recent Eco-Asemics & Object Poems by Geof Huth (New York City)

 

"The Seagull's Alphabet" by Geof Huth (New York City) (August 2025)

 (Image courtesy of the poet)

"The Seagull's Alphabet" & Other Recent Eco-Asemics 

& Object Poems by Geof Huth

by De Villo Sloan

These days writing about esoteric abstractions such as metasmics and patasemics makes it easy for me to forget my first serious asemic theory to receive attention in our broader community was my writing about eco-asemics:

https://asemicfront2.blogspot.com/2024/08/af2-commentary-eco-asemics-revised-by.html

When Peter Schwenger was doing the research for his book Asemic: The Art of Writing (2019), he contacted me about some of my blog posts where Nancy Bell Scott (Maine, USA) and I had traded tree bark as mail art and called it asemic. Both she and I had been involved in some extensive online discussions about identifying asemic symbols in nature as well as in found material generated by humans. 

https://www.amazon.com/Asemic-Art-Writing-Peter-Schwenger/dp/1517906970?&tag=us2025tag13-20

I deeply appreciate that Peter Schwenger found Nancy and I interesting and - in turn - that we could help him frame his thinking for what has become a classic book. When Nancy and I were trading Birch bark, I know we weren't thinking too seriously about conceptual art or the roots of language: (But the asemic seed was planted.) We were, honestly, having some fun and enjoying the creative freedom mail art allows. Nancy Bell Scott is a singular talent who significantly contributed to the growth of the asemic movement. 

Thus, I always try to represent eco-asemic visual poets on the blog. I have tremendous admiration for the poets who find their true visions in nature. Veteran visual poet Geof Huth is - as far as I'm concerned along with many other AF2 readers - doing spectacular work with eco-asemics, object poetry and the exciting synthesis taking place between the two.

- De Villo Sloan

Elbridge, New York, USA

August 8, 2025

"Shull 451: and may change and alter the same" by Geof Huth 

(July 2025) (Image courtesy of the poet)

"The See-E" by Geof Huth (July 2025) 

(Image courtesy of the poet)

"Woud 49: AT a/ti" by Geof Huth (July 2025) 

(Image courtesy of the poet)

"Untitled" by Geof Huth (July 2025) 

(Image courtesy of the poet)

"Shull 456: fhall be velted in" by Geof Huth (August 2025)  

(Image courtesy of the poet)

"perfon, who fhall throw any carcafe" by Geof Huth  

(July 2025) (Image courtesy of the poet)

De Villo Sloan is a concrete poet living in Upstate, New York. He writes frequently about postavant art & culture. He is director of the Winifred & De Villo Sloan, Jr., Charitable Fund.