Experimental literature by Dr. A. V. Koshy

Dr. A. V. Koshy

Dr. Koshy A. V. is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English at the College for Arts and Humanities for Girls, Jazan University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

His available works are:

1. Figs by KAY (Self-published collection of poetry) 2.2 Phases: 50 Poems with Gorakhnath Gangane (poetry) {available on blurb.com)  3. Soul Resuscitation/Allusions to  Simplicity with Angel Meredith (poetry) (available on lulu.com) 4. Wrighteings: In Media Res with A.V. Varghese (a monograph of essays) published by LLAP Germany (available on amazon) 5.The Art of Poetry (Available on Flipkart and www.authorspress.com) 6. Samuel Beckett's English Poetry: Transcending the Roots of Resistance (Available on flipkart and www.authorspress.com) 7. A Treatise on Poetry for Beginners (avaialble on createspace and amazon and smashwords in ebook and kindle and print formats). He is a Pushcart Poetry Prize nominee (2012).

Experimental literature by Dr. A. V. Koshy

While this is a very broad term I would like to talk of it from the point of view of asemic writing and movements, artists and works of art connected with it.

What exactly is asemic writing? It is writing that basically tries to have no meaning and to reach this place of letting only the reader make sense of it fully the writer often has to resort to doing away with language, meaning the  letters of the alphabet. However asemic writing is not something that has no aesthetic element attached to it which is often brought through the visual element. Now quite an old form of experimentation having begun in 1997 where the word was first used by Jim Leftwich and Tim Gaze who were visual poets. However now Leftwich prefers “pansemic”.  Travis Jeppesen, an American writer and artist, also finds  the term asemic problematic. However we can broadly say that both in having a lineage and becoming a world wide art phenomenon asemic writing matters. Its main qualities seem to be “abstract calligraphy, wordless writing, and verbal writing damaged beyond the point of legibility.”1

More interesting that asemic writing is the whole set of connections that circle it in the past and simultaneously and in its history till today. Though it can be traced back to China and Japan, modern precursors whom we find more interesting are Lawrence Sterne who introduced asemic lines in his famous novel Tristram Shandy (1759). Other great artists who have dabbled in it and are noteworthy for us include Henri Michaux, Man Ray, Wassily Kandinsky and Roland Barthes with his Contre-écritures.

Asemic writing is connected to false writing systems like that of Tolkien who invents a language for the elves in his Lord of the Rings and other books that is then given meaning to by him. This has been tried out by artists inventing false ideograms, hieroglyphs, pictograms etc., but systemic in the output, though of no meaning, with the intention being that meaning should be filled in, if one wants to.

Asemic writing has been connected to nature, apophenia, artist’s books, logograms, glossolalia, scat singing, letter abstracts, lettrisme by letterists as part of hypergraphy, visual poetry, sound poetry, concrete poetry, mumble rap, architectural ingredient, design ingredient, personal spirit writing, anti-writing, abstract calligraphic graffiti, sigils etc.

It is primarily a Western world phenomenon having followers in America, Canada, and Europe etc., which does not mean it has no value.

The ability of asemic writing and of modes of experimentation connected to it like Vispo (visual poetry) to succeed is more about the interaction between itself and the reader or viewer as to whether it has an energy that the one at the receiving end feels and feels in being in a participatory creative flow in asking himself what the work means to him and ascribing meaning to it and making it thus his own.

Edward Lucie Smith was a forerunner in England. On fb Volodymyr Bilyk  and the group Asemic writing: The new post-literate which has in it members like Michael Jacobson keep the asemic flag flying high. The need to unmean is as strong as the need to mean so experimental writing in the form of the asemic or pansemic or its associates will not die out but has come to stay or remain with us.