Visual Poetry

  • The Blue

    Janie Braverman, From The Blue. 2026.

  • You are the one thing that matters

    My contribution to Erased Land, the 2025 Blackout Poetry Project, The Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College.

    You can see other erasures from the project here.

    Source material: The Family Reunion, a play by T. S. Eliot.

    conscious breathing
    ordinary breathing
     
    consider
    How little I know
     
    Only this –
    You are   
     
    the one thing that matters

  • Nusquam Ire

    Janie Braverman, Nusquam Ire. Digital text alteration and drawing, 2025.

    living rivers     lakes
    freshwater habitat
    ponds     streams     bogs     wetlands

    dragonflies     fish     crabs     others
    at risk of extinction
    pollution     dams     water extraction

    climate change     other disruptions
    acting together
    every river modified

    dams     deforestation     wildfires
    illegal mining     illegal fires
    waves of ash in the river

    mercury in the water
    everything wrong and
    there’s nowhere to go

    SOURCE TEXT
    Christina Larson, “New Research Shows a Quarter of Freshwater Animals Are Threatened with Extinction.” Associated Press, 8 January 2025.

  • The Great Resurfacing: experiments and drafts

    The Great Resurfacing: experiments and drafts

    Pens, markers, and washi tape experiments
    Pens, markers, and washi tape experiments
    The Great Resurfacing - a visual poem
    Pens, markers, and washi tape experiments - Working Draft
    Pens, markers, and washi tape experiments - Working Draft

  • Hon We

    Hon     We

    “Hon     We” is a trio of poems created by erasure from “Hon or We have both traveled from the other side of some hill, one side of which we may wish we could forget,” a poem by Anis Mojgani (the same poem that X. P. Callahan used for “Erasure: Love Me,” which combines digital text alteration and collage). In the case of “Hon     We,” Microsoft Word text colors and watercolor brush pens were used for the alterations, with a nod to Jennifer Sperry Steinorth’s Her Read: A Graphic Poem (Texas A&M University Press, 2021).

    Typed words on paper with sections marked out with green marker. "Hon We both Love in a monsoon from a century of be ing hopeful"
    Typed words on paper with sections marked out with teal marker. "Hon We travel we forget terrible thunder blue face s even an angry mule"
    Typed words on paper with sections marked out with purple marker. "Hon We the other we Love when a n imp love When a swallow best heart is A small sun & bright"

  • Blue October

    Bright blue winter glove on pavement.

    Smurf hand
    catching leaves as if snowflakes
    pitted asphalt ready for winter