Blotter
About this book
Oli Hazzard's Blotter consists of five sequences, each constructed using a different process. In 'Graig Syfyrddin' notes on hillwalking in the Welsh marches – the poet's former home – alternate with found text taken from an online walking forum. 'Blotter' is a shepherd's calendar of sonnets composed of Russian spambot script – a mix of lifestyle advice, gaming tips, authoritarian propaganda, bucolic fragments and apocalyptic messages. 'Within Habit' is a series of prose poems collaged from numerous sources. 'March and May' comprises parallel columns of verse. 'Or As' is a family of 81 seventeen-syllable poems, each one an erasure of the corresponding page in a different book the poet was writing alongside Blotter.
The poems are preoccupied, above all, with the passage of time, and how that passage can be differently registered or disturbed: the working day, the distorted seasons, the timestamp of a text message, the jottings of a daybook, the formal structure of a shepherd's calendar, the double exposure of a photograph, the reverse-flow of a Twitter feed. The title, Blotter, connects these concerns, suggesting at once a police blotter, a journal, a thing for drying wet spots, and, in its painterly connotation, a way of rendering the world in a manner that is vague, blurred, or out of focus.
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Information
OR AS
| [7] | |
| This is unsurprising. | It’s not surprising |
| The limitation of scope | The scope limitation |
| Comprehensive. | full |
| [14] | |
| My goal is not to suggest | My goal is not to suggest |
| an imaginative construct | an imaginative construct |
| discuss | disgust |
| [16] | |
| it’s important to note | It’s important to consider |
| to sense | To feel |
| balance | Balance |
| as tense | As stressed |
| prematurity | badness |
| [20] | |
| an unusual phenomenon | An exceptional occurrence |
| men | Me |
| not remembering | Not remembering |
| the discussion | What you said |
| [22... |
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Contents
- Graig Syfyrddin, or Edmund’s Tump
- March and May
- Within Habit
- Or As
- Blotter
- Acknowledgements
- also by oli hazzard
- Copyright