Gary Barwin’s visual poetry commentary and interviews on Jacket2 visited my Gibber recently. We discussed poethics, countermapping, and Barthes’ Pleasure of the Text. Deep gratitude for Gary’s engagement, questions, insight. An excerpt:

GB: In Gibber, you explore how language names/claims the land, how it ‘marks’ it. But, you seem to say that, through a lively, engaged and aware reading, we can unpack the assumptions of language and consider how it can or cannot become part of the ecosystem and/or biosemantic lang/dscape. You explore how the landscape can be read as its own text as opposed to how we read the landscape through our preconceptions, through the conceptual (textual) frame work of our naming, our categorization. Thinking about Barthes’ Pleasure of the Text, would you say that we might imagine the environment a ‘writerly’ text as opposed to a ‘readerly’ one?

ar: I thought about Barthes’ Pleasure of the Text, and looked at Gibber gestures through Pleasure’slens. Marveled at this potential revision: “That is the pleasure of the text: value shifted to the sumptuous rank of the” signified.

What does it help us to fashion an ecosystem (or any ecosystem components) as a text, or to fashion an ecosystem (or any…) as a writer of its own text? What does it help us to imagine an ecosystem (or…) as a collaborator? Each analogy roots the relational seed of interconnection; it pursues hope that we can sense our way into healthier relationship with all that surrounds, sustains, confounds.

Look again: is language an only / a lonely sense for conceiving the world? What sensory components build the linguistic? Listen well. Gibber may be more about conversation than text. Or if text, then text as representing, archiving, recreating the conversation. The conversation between (human and other-than-human) bodies.

A transdisciplinary series developed by 2012 Queensland Poet-in-Residence a rawlings, Gibber (http://arawlings.is/gibber/) explores the language of ‘here’ and the language nurtured within the state’s bioregions.

Gibber includes:

• “Gibberbird,” a twenty-page poetry suite 
• “Land,” a digital poem
• “#gibberese,” archive of a collaborative online event with twenty-five writers in Australia, Canada, and USA
• “Vialence,” photographic documentation of site-specific performances that found my signifier vials in collaboration with multiple Queensland environments
• “Gibberland,” photographic documentation of Queensland place names juxtaposed with different environments
• “Signif,” animal-referent clichés juxtaposed with their signified
• Sound poems recorded in multiple Queensland environments: north, south, beside
• Photographic documentation of multiple environmental readings: bubble, sand, trace, bark, ground, flora, kite
• “Museum of Sound,” three essays reflecting on the ethics that informed the creation of Gibber
• “Museum of Land,” texts on having conversations with landscapes, plus a map of Gibber’s source
• “Asemic Writing,” a statement on ecosystems and their inhabitants as authors of asemic writing

Gibber can be viewed in its entirety online here: http://arawlings.is/gibber/

Gibber is supported by the generosity of Arts Queensland, the State Library of Queensland, Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, and the Queensland Poetry Festival.

Eclipse draws many to Queensland. 

“Queensland Poetry Festival is currently inviting proposals from poets, spoken word artists, and performers interested in being part of the 17th annual festival, spoken in one strange word.”

During the 2012 Queensland poetry residency, Brisbane-based poet and dedicated community organizer Graham Nunn interviewed me about Gibber, the project in development during my June to September stay in Australia. The interview offers insight into the poethics informing Gibber. Cordite Poetry Review has now published this generous interview online. 

Dutch literary journal SAMPLEKANON has a new issue on asemic writing. Excerpts from Gibber and an artistic statement from me have just been published in this issue!

Jill Jones reflects on the 2012 Queensland Poetry Festival. It was a pleasure and thrill to meet kindred Jill during the festival, and she recaps well our exchange as well as a generous insight into the Gibber performance we debuted.