#judith copithorne

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Vowels

Poema visual de Judith Copithorne, 1967

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Judith Copithorne, Albion's rose blooms to calypso beat, Ganglia Press, Toronto, 1985, Edition of 100 [issued as grOnk Final Series #4] [room 3o2 books, Ottawa]

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From: Judith Copithorne, Prism, 2005 (UbuWeb pdf here)

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From: Judith Copithorne, Prism, 2005 (UbuWeb pdf here)

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Judith Copithorne, August 5, 1939 / 2019

(image: Judith Copithorne, Prism, 2005, UbuWeb (pdf here))

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Student work – Poems with no words in 'em

Last day of my vis po class today. Gonna miss these guys, I am. Not often a group comes together so clear real and kind. Mean to post over the next week or two some of their later works, which have been bright and entrusting as ever.

The exercise:

Either compose a poem with no words in it, or compose a poem that is one continuous line (once the pen tip touches the paper, it doesn’t leave the…

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A few responses to the inscription exercise I gave my students last week. They didn’t go quite so well as the first (erasure à la A Humument) and I have a few guesses why.

One is, the model Phillips offers is so accessibly bountiful, it’s hard not to find some practice in there to spring forward oneself from. In comparison, Copithorne proposes a terrifying dexterity, such fluidity with which line becomes letter becomes line, how could I do anything remotely like it, I ain’t an artist like that.

(Admittedly this is one of her most astonishingly ornate ones.)

‘Nother is, the myriad possible inflections to ordinary inscription – Moorish calligraphy, graffiti in sodium-lit underpasses, Chinese wild grass cursive – weren’t immediately present to them. There as links on our course site but those don’t seem to have been touched, not much. Whose slip up that is, mine, theirs, I amn’t sure, and no big deal.

And a third, simplest and maybe mostest is, handwriting is deep habit, hard to break out of without contrivance. To convey your usual script to an altered script, one not just transferred but translated, is to translate yourself, your hand, your character – two metonyms for “script” never more telling.

Well without further ado here are a few that struck me. One, polylingual, showing the influence of its maker’s explorations in medieval practices of manuscript illumination. As well as, in the errant vegetal forms, maybe a visitation from Wm. Blake.

One in which charactery seems to have seen itself in sequin mirrors, doubled and distorted and half disintegrated, seeding a landscape of chimeric forms part Euclid part pencil crayon dream.

And this, crowblack lines perfect arcs and rudiments of script.

I scanned it in two versions. One, as above, and one with the plastic bag the student wrapped it in so the charcoal wouldn’t smudge its neighbouring papers. It came out pretty cool.

Nothing like a little distortion to see you through – chance, directed. (Click on it, and again, see it big, the textures. Do!)

Said I was going to fold in a bit of talk about my own work. Doesn’t seem like much beside what these guys are doing. But I will. Tomorrow, I think, as the battery’s fading, and the light, and my mind, and din calls.

Student work – Inscription A few responses to the inscription exercise I gave my students last week. They didn't go quite so well as the first (erasure à la…

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Exercise – Inscription

The second exercise to my visual poetry group. Who keep doing wonderfully – our conversations together, their serious play, astound me. I wish I had leisure to write how much fun it was to talk with them today about Grenier’s Sentences and Cage’s 4:33 and Olson’s “high-energy construct” and Duchamp’s readymades.

Back. On. Track. An exercise cued by Judith Copithorne’s Runes, rather more obscure…

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