Long Form is a book-length prose poem inspired by the writing style(s) of John Ashbery, Robert Walser’s ingenious interiority and the various writings by Paul Klee on the nature of drawing, (or as he once called it): “a line going for a walk.”

Long Form is about the relationship of poesis to the process of birthing an image through illustration in a metaphysical sense. It is also about the parallels in linguistic illustration to visual illustration.

The paintings, photos and drawings on the cover, were originally positioned alongside and between poems as a way to complement the rhythm of the language. The placement of the images, i.e. sequentially, was decided upon arbitrarily. Many of the drawings are minimalist, opaque and not fully developed. in an effort to call back to a major theme of the book: poesis’ relationship to illustration. They speak of color/form rather than of a manifested time/place. You can consider their theses individually and as a collection, as a whole.

There is no strongly intentioned beginning or end to any of the “poems.” Where you feel a beginning and end becomes it where it begins and ends.

And if you find a protagonist stationed in the world there isn’t one. A pronoun is a buttery vehicle; a phantasmagoric device used to move an equally phantasmagoric image and nothing more.

Nadia John (they/them) is an artist, arts administrator and member of the editorial collective, Sixty Inches from Center. The interests which inform their work can be found between the intersections of narratology, potentialities and psycholinguistics. They are currently working on a curatorial and artistic project, inspired by the lyrical and musical structure of the album Apple Venus Volume 1 (1999) by XTC and the concept of the “eternal return.”

4.25 × 8.5 in.
208pp

979-8-9853894-8-7

$18 + $4 shipping