Post by vin; androgyne in NOTES comments

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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.

Xo4 years ago

Hey! Thanks a lot for organizing this jam and all the effort you're putting into this. As a person that is usually very far from any creative community, mostly because I am shy and in my university nobody that I know seems to really care about poetry or net.art, and also because I don't have many Spanish speaking friends that like poetry (and 95% of my stuff is in that language) I've been pretty alone in here, haha! So now seeing nice people trying to really engage with my stuff (even if the language barrier is still there), well, it's really cool!

Thanks for the comment too :) !! I gave myself the task to at least make a rough (with my limited english) translation but I have to admit that it it's not really easy :c

vin; androgyne4 years ago(+1)

Tbh, while I don't speak spanish I do speak english, and if it would be helpful you could tell me "this is the sentiment this roughly translates to in english" and I can help write the english side of the poems! From what I can tell your english reads perfectly from everything you've written so far! I would love to work together. While I don't have an official micro-press I'd be happy to translate and design a chapbook with and for you if you'd be interested!

vin; androgyne4 years ago(+1)

oh also, if you have further poetic works you'd like to work on, write, create, or from other works you'd want to include or make for something like that i would also be down to help translate those for a chapbook. i know how to design for print and i think translations are the future of poetry so yeah, it would be really cool! if not though that is totally okay

Xo4 years ago (1 edit)

I don't know much about micro-presses and stuff (I must admit, the links you put on the jam were my first exposure to all of this, I normally just assumed that neocities where I could put my stuff in a way that was far from the popular writing platform game of meritocracy and that always took the form of long winded analysis, usually apolitical, and yeah coming from white occidental men for white occidental men and in a very 'academic' form (since I also write critique besides poetry)), but the fact of having 'notes' or other stuff have a form that can be read and spread in different ways and to different people seems really cool. With a friend we've been planning on putting stuff in our university that mostly just has this horrible propaganda pushing students to be entrepreneurs and really shady stuff, like just very flat representations of what otherwise is a really cruel state of affairs we see our friends at a pretty young age just exploit themselves for this entrepreneur ideal, and and Idk... our university is also just very stale... we wanted to also put poetry and stuff like that in the classrooms or in the city we live in, for those people I guess. And that means getting out of the internet and acting on the physical world so, I think that would be cool to make on a chapbook. But I also guess it is somewhat expensive to print? In any case, what I meant is that I see value in my stuff taking multiple forms because I think that although the virtual spaces like here or neocites are very cool I would like to touch these other people that don't know this very niche spaces. And so I see value in my work taking either a physical form or not just interactive/web based form, and also, of course, being isolated because of my language or other stuff really feels like shit. So yeah, it would be great to do stuff together, (and you helping me with the translations is also a big help) if you want to and have the time and specially like doing it of course!

Edit: I'm also interested and what you say about translation being the future of poetry. Most of my influences were only possible to be part of my life through translations of others that put so much time in translating. But I don't know if you meant something different? Anyways I won't bother you with that x)

Xo4 years ago

I wanted to add since I just started talking about my life like that (sorry):we also had ideas of inciting people to do this poetry, or illustrations, or whatever they wanted for themselves and or put it out there too, not only in publishing professionally but really just for fun, but I must admit we've failed a lot xD mostly because we don't really know how to talk and engage with others I guess...

vin; androgyne4 years ago

I totally understand what you mean! That's definitely the goal of this whole thing, but I think towards the end I wanna make a small book about 'Organizing Around Creative Work' and how I plan and structure stuff like this, and options for physical and digital distribution of information and encouragement. While printing books can be a bit expensive, a good way to do it is to either a) use free school printers if possible and b) use preorders to secure batch orders of physical copes via a third party printing company. If you have the preorder at 10, 7, or 5 dollars for something that only costs 3 dollars to make, you can put the extra money towards shipping and have free copies for distribution and for those who cannot afford to buy a copy. Another great way to ensure distribution is to have a digital .pdf available for free with the encouragement towards people to print out the document themself wherever they are on plain paper and distribute plain/cheaper versions that way. Other good ideas are making larger poster size poems atop an illustration and wheat pasting them across a city or a campus. Basically there are a lot of small options like that that can be viable if you find a way to get some small amount of funding or a way to lowkey 'steal' other peoples ink and paper! If you're interested in working together on something like this we should exchange contact info or messaging apps! My email is vincenthemself@gmail.com. We can go from there! [My note about translations being the future is that I think English supremacy in poetry success and language is a problem, and that translations are a great first step to start challenging that]

Xo4 years ago

That would be so fantastic! for the translation and the chapbook! I was mostly planning on doing a english version of the same website. But I like intermediality or like, works taking different shapes and not just being one thing.

I don't know much about designing chapbooks (I'm supposed to be learning InDesign actually but I have to admit I am very slow with this stuff), but speciallyy I'd also love to see 'notes' take a different form than the one it has now, and it would be very exiting to work with someone else on a translation, reinterpretation/recreation of it!

itch.io

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