Play fragment
NOTES's itch.io pageBio
So... I am Xo, I mostly make these poems/web pages that focus on being aggressive or hostile to the reader, the goal being to change the act of reading (sometimes to "interactivity" not always) in a way. But I also like writing in itself.
In antoher world with another name I also write critique, focusing on music and mainly videogames, I'd love to start writing about poetry and literature too.
Synopsis
This is the first work that I've made that focuses on grouping poems (in this case "fragments") as a whole. When I first made it I said that "This website is a reflection on fragmentation and the discontinuity in different forms and that was because of this fragmentation and not despite it that humans were able to find new perceptions and beliefs about themselves. But it's also the case that one of my dreams has always been to make a poem that works as a sort of solar system, with different "poetic sentences" having their own unity but also depending or conveying a bigger global unity, creating tensions and complementary between the different parts. The whole thing staggering between its apparent (and not so apparent) chaotic form, and the underlying unity. I don't think NOTES manages to actually make this real, but it's one of the things that motivated me to do it.
2019 was also the year where I realized I wasn't sure of a lot of things regarding my gender identity, it was a pretty strange and uncomfortable year. It is my belief that NOTES is entangled with these problems I had all along the year. I never address these concerns directly, but I hope it can be felt as a ghost behind the lines of some of these passages, because at the end I don't think my writings are only about this ""big""abstract themes, they're also very personal to me.
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"NOTES" by Xochitl is a submission of a somewhat interactive website consisting of fragments compiled in a poetic way. Most of the poems are in Spanish, so I deeply encourage you to put them through a translator if you don't know Spanish to enjoy the flashing scroll-able collage that Xo has put together as this site. It's amazing, I really love it, and I'm so glad something this visually and digitally unique was submitted. If you are a micro-press interested in printing translations I would love for you and Xo to connect through this jam to print a small bilingual chapbook either of this or of their future work. I definitely recommend you read the whole synopsis on the submissions page because I think the thought process behind it is just absolutely amazing. "I mostly make these poems/web pages that focus on being aggressive or hostile to the reader, the goal being to change the act of reading (sometimes to "interactivity" not always) in a way." & "This website is a reflection on fragmentation and the discontinuity in different forms and that was because of this fragmentation and not despite it that humans were able to find new perceptions and beliefs about themselves. But it's also the case that one of my dreams has always been to make a poem that works as a sort of solar system, with different "poetic sentences" having their own unity but also depending or conveying a bigger global unity, creating tensions and complementary between the different parts." are sections of it that really stood out to me.
Xo's poetry and fragments address a lot of (understandably) angering or frustrating dynamics and issues that often get passed up for being 'too harsh' or 'too negative'. In their own words, the fragment 'Seeker of Death' is "about imperialism through culture devouring other cultures in a search for immortality/self perpetuation." Take a morning, afternoon, or evening to compare this website side by side with even simple translations (which won't be perfect, but I think this project deserves to be read in full) and let that early internet design of NOTES inspire you.
"Como quisiera poder verme a mi mismo. / "How I wish I could see myself.
Pero no puedo ver ni a las cosas, / But I can't see things, these eternal
estos eternos lentes de / sunglasses hide two black pearls,
sol ocultan dos perlas negras, / that lie on white tables,
que yacen sobre mesas blancas, / raised by the organic machinery
alzadas por la maquinaria / of the terrible dizziness.
orgánica del terrible mareo. / Going back to the child
Volver al niño no es un ideal" / is not an ideal"
caveat: i don’t speak spanish, so that limits my ability to fully get this as a work. however, the visual design is really fucking cool and something i haven’t seen before; the fragments and the effort involved in trying to read the poems/look at the drawings seems to reflect trying to decipher ourselves/other people. of the poems in english, i liked “Look! A seeker of eternal death” the most; because i’m from the united states, i think everything is about the united states, but i also felt like it had to do with colonialism/imperialism/the lessons former colonies learned from their colonizers.
wow Thanks a lot for checking it out and everything! I like your interpretation of the layout of the website, for me it really was about trying to know myself better as the poems were made through all of 2019 and it was a year where I changed A LOT , so seeing that you got that similar feel too makes me really happy :)))
I actually was considering making a full translation in English and maybe other languages in time for the end of the jam (although I don't know if my English level is high enough for such a task). And yeah Seeker of eternal death is one of my favorites, at least for me it is about imperialism through culture devouring other cultures in a search for immortality/self perpetuation.