 |
| Acts 11 from the New Testament |
Photoshop has become a pain in the ass, constantly upgrading and making it difficult to work with. Since Adobe is forcing me to relearn everything anyway, I've been learning how to make visual poems in Illustrator, which I have been told by fellow visual poets is a good tool for such. Since the summer I have been making little visual poems, of one letter or one word, going back almost to my early days of working with MS Paint in 2005 or so, when i focused on an individual letter or word. But I've finally gotten to the point where I can work with whole blocks of text again, so I made the next visual poem in the Vispo Bible: Acts 11 from the New Testament. I began Acts in February of this year, just before the pandemic. Many other things distracted me, but mostly it was the annoyance of Photoshop's constant upgrades that slowed my progress. I feel now that I can resume work on Acts and hope to have it completed by the end of this year, all being well.
For those interested, or perhaps keeping track, I've said that the Vispo Bible is a life's work. I began it in 2015. Here's the progress so far:
This year I have also taken a side trip, going through the Bible for passages about women, both named and unnamed, and started a new section of the Vispo Bible called So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed. You can see examples here on the Pi Review whose editor kindly published the visual poems, along with poems on the women of the Bible.
I have plans to look thematically at various subjects in the Bible and recently made this piece entitled Leviathan, but made in Photoshop in the summer:
 |
| Job 41: 31 He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment. |
I haven't been submitting new chapbook manuscripts for the Vispo Bible. I want So Many Silenced, So Many Unnamed to be a trade book in full colour. I don't expect it to be ready for some time, but if you have any ideas on who might publish it, I'd love to hear them.
