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visual poetry plus

the latest of my pamphlets of visual poetry - mo thunder - is out now from www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk. these are public texts photographed and then cut-up complete with decaying typographies. these  culture-jams subvert those messages insisting we buy into narratives i dont recognise.  it was shortlisted for the michael marks pamphlet awards in 2011. it is a follow-up to all cut up published by tonerworks, 2009 (now sold out).  2010 also saw the publication of my full-colour vispo pamphlet this is visual poetry by sean burn (http://thisisvisualpoetry.com).

vispo sequences have been widely distributed and exhibited at alington house durham, buddle arts centre, bradford university, carriageworks leeds, cesta (czech republic), dash (disability arts shropshire), david baptiste chirot blogspot, fire, across cumbria for the annual art invasion (fred), hans sachs house stuttgart, kent libraries, moria poetry, nos obros otros, otoliths, temporary arts space halifax, shout festival (birmingham) as projections, streetcake, south tyneside college, teetotum thessaloniki, the text and venereal kittens

sequences have been turned into slideshows including

- fontbuildbookknownradicals.  160 x 5 wordcards exhibited in germany, canada and usa as mail-art.  now viewable at http://vimeo.com/13302885

- megalph - for victims of the greek financial crisis.       http://vimeo.com/13302634

- spill-speil-heal &/or anneal : on the mexican gulf oil ecocide. http://vimeo.com/13301191

- scorchardone word poems by hand.  http://vimeo.com/13302070

- staunch - 68 one word poems. http://vimeo.com/13301730

john moore williams (the bleed) said of staunch this deluge of language is oft cast negatively, as a violent, chaotic force in opposition to the quiet moment of attention many a visual poem tries to bring the reader to. some, however, see it as a source for content, a vast well from which the moment of attention may be drawn by nothing more than a simple editorial act of excision. sliced out from the storm, a few drops of rain form into a message wholly distinct from their original attention, becoming a poem we might otherwise have missed.

pillfoxedoutboxed is a critical interrogation of the pseudo-science of psychiatry via vispo and pillbox assemblage. it is accompanied by a soundwork. (coming down off the mountain - available as mp3 file at http://audioboo.fm/boos/166835).  this work gazes into blindspots of the medical model / abnormalcy theory, revealing more poetic truths. living with psychosis can also exhilarate and this work captures some of that 'otherness'. launched at the carriageworks in leeds (2009), it has been shown at northern stage, newcastle, the new art gallery walsall (2010) and the gallery of wonder, newcastle university.