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25 November 2004. At his blog entry for 22 November 2004, Geof Huth ended with a list of his ideas and ideas he's gotten from other visual poets for promoting what he calls visual poetry and I call visio-textual art. Of this list, he says, "We still have a long way to go, but this is a start. If you have any further ideas, please send these to me." Here's the list, followed by my response to it:
Create a Visual Poetry Publishing Cooperative Develop a Library of Accessible Visual Poetry Devise Visual Poetry Flash Mobs Edit and Publish Anthologies of Visual Poetry Enter Via Archeology (Paleography) Film and Distribute Visual Poetry Documentaries Hold Visual Poetry Workshops Learn to Create Visual Poetry Digitally Live Visual Poetry Masquerade as a Visual Artist. Work with Visual Artists Name a Visual Poet Laureate Organize Visual Poetry Symposia Participate in Guerrilla Vispo Activities Promote Museum Shows Dedicated to Visual Poetry Update the Concept of Poetry Use Mailart to Promote Visual Poetry"My many other ideas include assassinating the idiots who run most college English Departments, and the publishers and mass media executives and their workers who think professors at a bigtime university like Harvard necessarily know anything about their fields, and no one else should be consulted. Of the ideas on your list, Geof, the one that immediately strikes me as having by far the best potential is Name A Visual Poet Laureate. The Mass Media loves that kind of stuff. Visual poetry would get great publicity, and the laureate would very likely get to do presentations or visiorations all over the place.
"To make sure of the publicity, I propose a hundred of us donate $100 apiece to a pot (and I can't afford that, having just borrowed $5000 on a credit card for hurricane expenses, but would send it, anyway). Perhaps we could then get a few sponsors to throw in some money. In any case, we'd be able to give the laureate enough money to legitimize him in the eyes of the morons.
"I don't like the sound of "visual poet laureate," nor the fact that we'd be representing the country in bestowing the honor if it were named that, so propose we give instead an award called the d.a.levy award for visual poetry. That way, we publicize levy and his visual poetry, and visual poetry in general. The award would be given once in five or ten years.
"We should call ourselves something like 'The American Council on the Higher Arts,' or the like.
"Who should we give the prize to? Two possibilities: some intelligent good-looking actor or actress able to pose as a visual poet (with the help of specimen poems we supplied); or a real visual poet randomly selected from the names of twenty to fifty most of us think have been doing good work for ten years or more.
"Who should 'we' be? I'd be willing to leave that up to Geof. All the contributors to Score, Xtant, Kaldron, etc. who want to join in on this would be a good start.
"When the papers stop writing about our winner, I'll assassinate him. More publicity! Yow!"
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