'Palimpsest'(Extracts)

Blackbox Manifold is an open-access online journal hosted by Sheffield University. Its “slant towards innovative poetry that has prose, narrative, or sequences in its sights” and “aim to present new juxtapositions of voice while using the Web’s fluid solidity to cast around for as wide and varied a readership as possible” make this an important forum for linguistically and visually innovative poets and writers. Its open-access delivery allows for a wide, international readership.
The journal is edited by Alex Houen and Adam Piette. Alex Houen teaches English Literature at the University of Cambridge (http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/people/Houen/Alex/). Adam Piette is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of Sheffield (http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/english/staff/piette).
The work I have presented here is boldly visual, though rooted in language and process. The trails of language that from vignettes in and around the main bodies of text represent the trace of process and the linguistic centres of gravity in the piece (like its ‘key’ to use a musical analogy). Additionally, these excerpts are based on my own translations and transliterations of Y Mabinogi and reflect a consideration of Welsh identity, language and culture in the postmodern poetic arena.
Rae Armantrout (Pulitzer Prize, 2010) Alison Brackenbury (Singing in the Dark . Carcanet, 2008) and Bob Perelman (19 books of poems, including: Iflife (NY: Roof Books, 2006); Playing Bodies, in collaboration with painter Francie Shaw (NY: Granary Books, 2004); and Ten to One: Selected Poems (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1999) are published in the same issue as me. Nathaniel Mackey (National Book Award, 2006) appears in the previous issue. This is a significant platform for the presentation of postmodern writing.