The Multiverse Awaits: An Interview with Irene Koronas

Paronomasia by Irene Koronas

I am happy to present this conversation with Irene Koronas. Irene is the author of numerous collections of xperimental writing. As well as being Managing Editor of X-Peri, a stream for high experimentalism, Irene is an accomplished visual artist with a keen eye for the marvelous. We had the chance to discuss her past & present work, specifically: the evolution of holyrit (which is forthcoming from BlazeVOX [books]) and where it stands in her Grammation Series, among other topics.

DCW: I’m interested in knowing more about the process of evolution this work has undergone. How long have you been working on your Grammaton Series? When did you know you were on to something with your initial ideas? How did your work evolve to this current form?

IK: The Grammaton Series began with Codify (Editions du Cygne, 2017). Although I had been publishing collections of experimental writing (asemics, vispo and conceptualism) for over 20 years in the form of full-length collections, chapbooks, handmade & digital books, it was Codify that illuminated the evanescent techniques of advanced amalgamation. To “codify” is to reduce or arrange into a code. Codify extolls the virtues of a digital remix culture, best exemplified by a staccato posthumanism whose praxis places the psychopathology of identity into a mausoleum worthy of the Mount Auburn Cemetery.

With Codify, the divine unit of measurement, the Grammaton, was unleashed, leading to ninth iota (The Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2018), declivities (BlazeVOX, 2018) and now to holyrit, the fourth volume in the Grammaton Series. As Codify created the codices for a postlanguage Grammaton, ninth iota employed the logos and apeiron of Greek Mythology to create a posthuman pharmakon, replete with canonic semaphores. Its title, ninth iota, conveys simultaneously the nine muses in Greek Mythology and iota, the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the New Testament: “until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law.” (Mt 5:18) Measurement is once again extolled—the Grammaton. With declivities, from the Latin declivitat-, declivitas, from declivis sloping down, from de- + clivus slope, hill; akin to Latin clinare, the Mount Athos heights of ninth iota slope downward toward a divine stasis of hybridized forms. These Grammatons take the form of Quetzalcoatl, onyx, Louise Bourgeois, décolleté, hagmira, lascaux, pap test and syriac codex 708, among others. The post-narrative bricolage of declivities syphons its agonic core from an infinite array of meanings, in potentiâ. Currently, with holyrit, Volume IV of the Grammaton Series, the Greek Ἰησοῦς (Iesous) or Jesus the Greek Χριστός (Christos), serves as the ancient triumph of faith in God. However resolute, holyrit spins a wicked title back on itself with sardonica. “Rit” may be an abbreviation for ritardando (gradually decreasing in tempo). “Rit” may refer to the Middle English ritten (“to cut, score, slit, tear”). “Rit” may be a play on Writ, Holy Writ, or Rit Dye. Whichever suits, a devotional ethos is paired with a wide reach of narrative strains.    

            It became clear to me that the evolution of my work prior to Codify was comprised of a hyper-layered, non-linearity, who narrative defied the traditional rules of grammar and prosody. This augmented narrative, prior to the Grammaton Series, however semiotically complex, still maintained an indirect relationship to my personal identity (self portrait drawn from many, Ibbetson Street Press, 2007 Pentakomo Cyprus, Červená Barva Press, 2010). With the Grammaton Series, I teleported out of identity’s stale lyric on a vessel constructed by thousands of Grammatons through the Einstein-Rosen Bridge, to land in postlanguage’s xperimentalism, with an “x.” (In other word, I met Daniel Y. Harris.)            

DCW: There is a flowing music your work accentuates. It is undeniably fun to read aloud. Is this something you aim for while writing? What does your writing process look like?

IK: Musicality is, indeed, a key ingredient. In fact, I hear an amalgam of iambic pentamenter and double dactyls, mixed with slam beats and the divine liturgy of a Greek Psaltis. Of course, John Cage’s 4’33” (“Four minutes, thirty-three seconds”) is within tonal proximity but the true nature of sound occurs innately in my mind’s eye. Here’s an example from “elias:” opus 110 in a flat touch, kitsch’s ride/on ingres paper. praise putter rat. Assonance meets dissonance meets alliteration meets the blank. With the blank, void loaded with black matter, open to currents, the writing process ensues. I write longhand in collections of notebooks, while reading dozens of books simultaneously. I transfer my notebooks to my computer. For holyrit, at present, that list of books includes: Daniel Matt’s, The Zohar Volume 1, Yersusalmi’s Zakhor, Fine’s Physician of the Soul, AR Ammons, The Complete Poems, Ernst Haekel’s Art Forms in Nature, Salvador Dali’s Diary of a Genius, Borges, Collected Fiction, Haddon’s Head-Hunters, Thompson’s On Growth and Form, Gilot’s and Lake’s Life with Picasso, A Kierkegaard Anthology, The Diaries of Paul Klee, Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Gardener’s Louise Bourgeois, Ulmer’s Heuristics, Blanchot’s The Space of Literature, Elder Sophrony’s I Know a Man in Christ, Hieromonk Isaac’s Elder Paisios of Mount Athos, The Orthodox Study Bible and Sophocleus’ Icons of Cyprus. In a few months, the list will change.

Codify by Irene Koronas

DCW: I’m wondering about your interest in mathematics. And music. And iconography. And art in general. And I imagine you study quite a bit. How do you find (or create) the threads that connect this wide array of interests to each other? Where do your studies take you these days?

IK: Mathematics—in Codify each piece in the 129 page collection is arranged by non-sequential numbers. The first piece is “115.” The last piece is “47.” “24” precedes “1” and “103” follows “24.” In the Grammaton, a string of bits is random, such as (log₂ n) and π. The decimal digits of π constitute an infinite sequence and never repeat in a cyclical fashion. Codify maintains the same equivalency.

ninth iota, as mentioned earlier, is itself máthēma. In the piece “orestes,” his paramour/tack hood/pious sequel/ “is” bound by 0, as in the piece “hesiod,” (begot)/overbold/cyprus 35° 10’ 0”N/33° 22’ 0” E. In “hesiod 2,” the piece concludes with a mathematical epiphany: (1912) pp vii kinematic perspective/(1954, 1968) p3 2006 197ff note 64/3836 holds nearer 120 than 150/2011 p309 n29 9780199292011 use (albeit mid and erratic)/2010 p7 9780199803033 (1987) 0-8014-1874-7 (1985) volume1/(2007) black well universe (1981) from homer to often.

declivities reaches a divine calculous informed by geomorphology. declivities slopes with 47 ½ by 23 ¾ inch/emblem, or by hecatomb toss/eight spikes, augmented in hook helixes/in skinny/charcoal, linked via issuance pluck/60x60. Geomorphology meets Lurianic kabbalah via zero in 0 on page 116 of declivities: digits fell spot/on zero seats/one vicesimal/one zip cycle /fraction/tohu v’ bohu. Finally, if a quantum resolution is possible within untarded variability, dodecathlons 12 pod/pene revvi/an outcast uzz. This entomologic uzz releases a winged Grammaton, and holyrit is launched with 3:12-20’s 6:4 untie/(17:28) short/corrupt tray. This is best rendered as the P versus NP problem garment secretases/nuclear table 4/1.13 1.14 1.15 1.17-18/1.18 70, 21262, 90, 104 39,/44, 46 134 1003 104; 128/1.29-34 11, 39, 40, 45, 219/224 1.29 37, 39, 40, 45, 19.

Iconography—my literary work (poetics, asemics, haptics, ergodics, conceptualists & postdataist), comprised of ten volumes of xperimental poetics divided between “The Grammaton Series,” “Collections” and “Collaboratives” and hundreds of handmade, digital and chapbooks, is most passionately informed by a lifetime’s devotion to the creation of visual art—a multivariate visual art titled “Sauvage Art.” Its ethos is an amalgam of L’Amour Fou, Neoprimitivism, Scifi, Film Noir, Posthumanism, Classical Orthodox Iconography, German Expressionism, French Surrealism and Neodadism, illuminating the vast complexity and humor of male/female relationships. Mediums include: painting, collage, bricolage, découpage and mixed-media assemblage.

Irene Koronas Website

Irene Koronas, Sauvage Art

DCW: Creating a new poesis for the 21st century is quite a tall order. And I think no one is as capable of accomplishing this as you and your cohorts. How do you measure success in this pursuit? What plans do you have for your writing, your Grammaton Series, and/or xperimentalism in general? 

IK: A New Poesis—the experimentalist poesis with an “e” can be generally codified as Dadaism, Modernism, Imagism, Surrealism, Pataphysics, Fluxus, Oulipo, Absurdism, Postmodernism, Deconstructionism, Language, Digital, Flarf, Haptics, Ergodics, Asemics, Epigenetics, Concretism, Conceptualism and Uncreative Writing. A great resource for experimentalism is UBU Web.

            Xperimentalism with an “X” is at the forefront of the new poesis. X-Peri, the journal co-founded by Daniel Y. Harris and me, has the tagline: X-Peri: A Stream for High Experimentalism. “High” is the holy grail in our tagline. “High” is the rubicon, the anticyclone, the GHRH, the infra, the supra, the erikoinen as boson, fermion, gluon, lepton, photon & quark, extracts the “X” in xperimentalism by X = k x(1 - x). Advanced, high experimentalism is pure rarity, the rarefied zone of individual talent, uncoerced by the vox populi of a given epoch. It is by virtue of this rarefied talent that we will employ the Grammaton to measure our success. The new poesis will be partly syncretic in that will syphon the best of experimentalism with an “e,” and partly ferociously original in the creation of a lingua franca based on the posthuman ethos of the algorithm, or the “x” of xperimentalism.

            A further measurement indicator of the success of this new poesis will be gaged by the number of literary blogs, digital magazines and collections who are and will be devoted strictly to advancing high xperimentalism. Lastly, as regards my Grammaton Series, the multiverse post holyrit awaits its écriture.