LEXICON / POLAROID

diction / depiction / est. 2009

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hold

NEWS: LP4: The Dance Issue is being postponed! It is still in the works, and will happen one day, and you will know when that is. Until then!

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LP4 / LEXICON POLAROID ISSUE 4 / THE DANCE ISSUE

(above : dance / poetry / perception / text / light / film / undoing / doing )

The reading period for the fourth issue of Lexicon Polaroid is now open. The first two issues of LP took poetry and interpreted it as illustration. The third issue turned poetry into video. Issue 3.5 did the very same thing.

(above: "Embers" by Keith Fenter, based on the poem "Steamboat Willy" by Noland Chaliha, from LP3)

The fourth issue of LP will be making a jump further into the physical inspiration that comes from poetry.

(above: Hank Peterson, a dancer for LP4, being a poem)

For LP4, we will be taking the work of eight poets and handing it over to dancers and choreographers to turn into movement. As always, the poems will remain anonymous to the dancers, and the dancers will have several weeks to read and work with the poems. The next issue will be presented as a printed journal along with a dance performance to in Portland, Oregon in April 2015.

The guidelines for poetry submissions are simple:

Send up to 5 poems of reasonable length to [email protected]. Poetry submissions are due by October 31, 2014.

Dancers have been selected, but I am reading poetry submissions now! If you've been featured in LP before, please hold off for a couple issues Know we ain’t into schmaltz. Send your best. Be heartbreaking.

Move it,

Michael Harper

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INTENTIONS

Intentions / Zosia Wiatr // film by B Timon // from LP3.5

To believe in singularity is to believe in the self: the self in a vast park, the self in a poem, the reactionary self. To believe in discontinuity is to believe in the self in relation to others. The runway points in almost all directions, with local variations as options.

The definition of commitment is in flux, but still worth pursuing, if it means comme passion or comme quelque chose de rose. In the chrysalis, the caterpillar ceases to exist. Every day, we are taxed. Every day, margins are written in. Every day, you, and then every day

after you. A circle of my sphere was discharged—

this afternoon, I call to it, call it back.

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I CONFRONT

MONAD / Lindsay Allison Ruoff

  I don’t want a man unless

he’s perfect in Miami

begin my unpaid mediumship

as the television

thinking I could be your

new moon

we were always

the worst window

but a decent wave

we wane

we are the same

in the middle of the ocean

float with the vigilance of

administrators of poverty

super-saturation

is a goal

LET’S HURL THE ROAR

READY

for your birthday I

give you my right to vote

good bye, dudes,

I’m a raw fish

good bye

  a year of no dreams/ Lindsay Allison Ruoff

  hands of snakes

shaking hands

with snakes

  I confront:

having a

woman’s heart

  the fat brown

squirrels playing

on the gaudy

Russian tombs

  sun up to sun down

  “you don’t have

to get over it

  you don’t have

to do anything”

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DECIDUOUS LIFE

WE ARE A VISTA / Hajara Quinn // film by Roland Wu // from LP3.5

A window is only as strong

as its weakest view.

My eyes go on importing

more than they export.

Windchimes in the month of March.

Windchimes in June.

This is the view I’m

indentured to.

  PRETERNATURALLY SPEAKING / Hajara Quinn // film by Roland Wu

Ontologically I was a drumroll

even if empirically and categorically

I was a caterpillar in the grass.

I led a plush and deciduous life

existentially speaking

while you led an ethically fraught one.

Aesthetically you were never confessional

but technically you were on your knees

and basically I was the wall of sound.

Metaphysically, though not

ostentatiously, I was hung up on

the Grand Canyon.

Perfunctorily we were an excerpt

from a longer work

but we never did learn

how to effectively use one another

in a sentence.

When it came to definitions

you were resolute.

When it came to atomic weight

I was a birthstone.

Theoretically I was spinning out

into the world in the fingers of the future

whose golden spindle I was,

but in practice I was still only a drumroll.

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Longitude

Longitude / Zosia Wiatr // film by B Timon // from LP3.5

  Measurement expressed in either digresser by some corresponding difference in time.

Longitude longitude                                                                                  longitude

  Longing longing                                                                                 longing          I

  longing

the trick

is how to wriggle out of it

without killing it.

  It is improbable that any one person would have an obliquity in the direction of many others. 7 billion hearts and myriad obliquities.

Longitude acts differently on bodies that are not the earth, of which you are one.

  If the earth were perfectly spherical and homogeneous, we would still cry when listing the cities we made love in by order of latitude, beginning in the west and heading east, if that’s where we settled finally.

How many cities, only a few. Never in a villa, but once by an inlet.

  I don’t know where you are. I don’t know if you are alive. I expect to love you for an aeon, approximately.

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ISSUE 3.5 / MORE VIDEO

Long awaited, and it is now right here. You can view & read the latest, tiny issue of Lexicon Polaroid entirely online.

Go here to read LP3.5: MORE VIDEO.

Each film in this issue is based on a different poem or set of poems. The filmmakers didn't know the poets, not even their names, while reading, interpreting, & creating these videos. As always, what's come of these six poems is different & similar to the heart of where it started. Read, watch, & enjoy.

In this issue: Zosia Wiatr, Lindsay Allison Ruoff, Hajara Quinn, B Timon, Liz Mehl, Sara Woods, & Roland Wu.

We'll have a reading & screening in Portland this month. Keep yr eyes peeled for details on the party.

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LP3.5 / MORE VIDEO

The next issue of Lexicon Polaroid will soon be ready to burn yr retinas. Keep your eyes to the screen this September for new poems from Zosia Wiatr, Lindsay Allison Ruoff, and Hajara Quinn, with videos by Roland Wu, B Timon, Liz Mehl & Sara Woods. A release party / screening / dance party will be involved. In the meantime, rewatch the videos from Issue 3 and think about yr feelings.

<3,

Michael

P.S. - The reading period for issue 4 will soon be open!

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SOON: LP3.5, LP4, LPmore

In the Spring of 2015, the fourth issue of Lexicon Polaroid will exist. More details will come about our first DANCE issue towards the end of summer. What does the beginning of summer hold for us, then?

LP3.5: MORE FILM

A small, hand-picked selection of poems by three Portland poets will be turned into films by three fantastic filmmakers. Just like LP3, LP3.5 will let video makers do anything they wish with the poems they've been given as prompts. A screening & reading & hootenanny will occur in July, celebrating the release of this tiny issue.

For those of you who did not get a copy of Issue 3, there are many left. Buy a copy at Powell's City of Books, on Amazon, or directly from us here.

Buy Lexicon Polaroid Issue 3 from Powell's: http://ow.ly/wNgAF

Buy Lexicon Polaroid Issue 3 on Amazon: http://ow.ly/wNgX8

Buy it directly from us: http://ow.ly/wNh7W

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HERE COME THE AMAZONS

Issue 3 of LP is now available from that big bastard, Amazon.com. And because it's National Give A Shit About Poetry Month, LP3 will be on sale for $10 all month long.

GO HERE TO PURCHASE POETRY ON THE INTERNET.

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The handsome piece of velcro pictured above is Alexander Moore. He’ll feel you out and up, and he’ll make you feel up and at ‘em & down-and-out, and he’s a sack of feelings & he gives them freely. Despite what he might tell you, he is full of love.

Alex has a poem in the latest Dum Dum Zine. You can read it here, and you should also read his poem, “Here’s Looking at You, Kid,” in Lexicon Polaroid #3, which inspired this video.

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A few polaroids from the release party for Lexicon Polaroid Issue 3 at Reading Frenzy. Pick up a copy of LP3 here, or here at Powell's City of Books, or at Reading Frenzy.

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LOOKING INTO THE LIGHT

Tonight in Portland, Lexicon Polaroid Issue 3 contributor, Sam Pirnak, exhibits paintings & video at In Other Words. Come to everyone's favourite feminist bookstore tonight for the show.

Looking into the Light is a joyful collection of paintings on glass and a video installation, "Alighting",exploring color, reflective surfaces and black light. (the video was inspired by the poem "It's about time" by Lea Banks and created for the literary journal LEXICON POLAROID #3). The perfect antidote to Portland's grey skies, the fluorescent + iridescent paint burst into color under blacklight.

If you're in Portland, come hear music & poetry, & glow with Sam & the rest of us. More info at the Facebook event page.

Read "It's about time," which inspired the video above, in LP3. Find a copy of Lexicon Polaroid #3 at Powell's, Reading Frenzy, or order a copy here.

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STOP TELLING WOMEN TO SMILE

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Lexicon Polaroid contributor, Noland Chaliha, has designed this wonderful shirt, which you can purchase. All of the proceeds go to Raphael House in Portland, Oregon. As a journal that celebrates women writers & artists, & agrees that they can smile if they want to or not, we think you should support Snoot Shirts, support Raphael House, & support women, god damn it.

Buy a Stop Telling Women To Smile shirt from Snoot Shirts here.

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BREATHING

THANK YOU to everyone who came out to the reviving release party of Lexicon Polaroid #3 last Thursday. It was amazing! Thank you Chloe & Reading Frenzy for being a fantastic host for this literary kegger. Thank you to Kelly, Caleb, Natalie, Noland, & Parker for your amazing readings & poetry. Thank you to all of the other video artists who made it out last night & contributed to the issue. Thank you again to Ristretto Roasters, SE Wine Collective, and Lompoc Beer for keep us up & drunk. You are all beautiful & I love you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

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If you missed the big shindig, you can still order a copy of Lexicon Polaroid #3 here, or pick up a copy at Reading Frenzy. LP3 is available at Powell's City of Books, St. John's Booksellers, and Portland Button Works.

There will also be a small screening of all the films (with sound & seating), announcement to come soon.

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Wondering where all the videos are? Go here.

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The reading period for Issue 4 will open in the future. Check back for more information on LP4: THE DANCE ISSUE.

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LP3

The release party for Lexicon Polaroid issue 3 is this Thursday at Reading Frenzy from 6:30-9:00pm. Reserve or order a copy here & check out the Facebook event if you're in Portland.

All 13 films will be screening all night, as well as readings from Kelly Schirmann, Noland Chaliha, Natalie Briggs, Parker Tettleton, & Caleb Walter Reed.

Below, watch Growth by Stephen Hutchison, based on two poems by Caleb Walter Reed. Read "sandwich, seventeen days" just below the video.

"sandwich, seventeen days"

Colors vast as lipids

glowed on the bread crust

like an ice cream case.

Harlequin, jaundice, even nipple pink.

The dinosaur sheen on its furred top

was as glorious.

How dazzling, the abandoned square

and its new little city.

Free wine will be offered by SE Wine Collective, free beer from Lompoc Brewing, & free coffee from Ristretto Roasters. The party starts at 6:30, with readings at 7:15 & films on loop all night. LP3 will be available from Reading Frenzy that night for $14. See you Thursday!

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LEXICON POLAROID ISSUE 3

The third issue of Lexicon Polaroid is finally here! You can order a copy of our first video issue here, or pick up a copy at our release party, happening at Reading Frenzy in Portland, Oregon.

For those of you who may have missed it: What is LP? Lexicon Polaroid is a literary journal, started in 2009, that sews visual art and poetry together by the threads of personal interpretation. Pit the mutability of language against the comprehension of the reader, and end up with some creature wet with meaning, crossed between diction and depiction. What the hell does that mean? LP publishes poems alongside their visual interpretations. Until publication, the poets don’t know the artists who interpret their poems, and the artists don’t even know the names of the poets. The crude poem becomes the fodder for visual creation. It is an experiment with elliptical tendencies of poetry and the art that it can inspire.

(from Pop Culture by Big Pauper, based on a poem by JNC White)

The first two issues of LP have featured poems and illustrations. The current issue is our first video issue. In the book, poems appear alongside stills of videos they've inspired, along with QRCs to instantly watch each film here online. The book is 38 pages of new poetry paired with 45 minutes of video; 7x8.5in, perfect bound, and printed as a limited run of 200 copies in Portland, Oregon. The release date for LP3 is March 1, 2014. The cover price will be $11.00. Get a copy of the journal here.

(from A Fable by Haikal Aziz, based on a poem by Art Heifetz)

The poets featured in this issue include: Kelly Schirmann, Parker Tettleton, Noland Chaliha, Natalie Briggs, JNC White, Caleb Walter Reed, Madeleine Pope, Johnny Day, Raul Alvarez, J. Bradley, Alexander Moore, Lea Banks, and Art Heifetz

 With films by: Big Pauper, Zoe Bullock, Sam Pirnak, Niko Kwiatkowski, Warren Mattox, Nathaniel Young, Blake  Mason, Stephanie Fenter, Keith Fenter, Amanda Newcomb, Rowan Wren, Stephen Hutchison, and Haikal Aziz

(from Steamboat Willy by Keith Fenter, based on a poem by Noland Chaliha)

(from Night Terror by Niko Kwiatkowski, based on a poem by Raul Alvarez)

The release party for LP3 is happening Thursday, March 13, 2014, from 6:30-9:00pm. We will be screening the films from the issue, as well as featuring readings from local poet heartthrobs Kelly Schirmann, Parker Tettleton, Noland Chaliha, Natalie Briggs, and Caleb Walter Reed. The event is in the brand new location of Reading Frenzy on Mississippi Ave. in Portland, Oregon, sponsored by Lompoc Brewing & SE Wine Collective & Ristretto Roasters (i.e. free beer & free wine & free coffee). The journal will be available for purchase at the event! The event is free & open to the public. Take a look at the Facebook event here.

One million thanks to our host & all of our generous sponsors: