Hello everyone! Welcome to our inaugural issue of Mad Moments, swallow::tale’s semi-regular feature on short-form Mad creativity. Our first author is Jay Besemer. Jay is a prolific poet and artist with a really exciting body of work; I was fortunate to get the chance to read and blurb his forthcoming long-essay, On Being Half-Imaginary, a stunning hybrid work of autotheory/criticism that I can’t wait to see in the world. Today, I get to share four of his new hybrid poems with the whole swallow::tale fam. I’ll also include a preview of my awesome interview with Jay, which will be available in full to paying members –– thank you again, so much, for helping us keep Mad Moments a paid opportunity.
If you’re a Mad creator and want to be considered for publication in Mad Moments, email your submission to cavar@swallowtale.icu. To get an idea of what we like, check out our bookstore.
Now, onto Jay’s work! All images have alt text, a basic accessibility measure for blind/low-vision readers.
Poet and artist Jay Besemer is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Men & Sleep (Meekling Press, forthcoming 2023) the double chapbook Wounded Buildings/Simple Machines (Another New Calligraphy 2022) and Theories of Performance (The Lettered Streets Press, 2020). He is also the author of a long-form hybrid essay, On Being Half-Imaginary (Beir Bua Press, forthcoming 2024). He was a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Transgender Poetry, and a finalist for the 2017 Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature. Jay was included in the groundbreaking anthology Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. Find him online at www.jaybesemer.net and on Twitter @divinetailor.
A Conversation with Jay Besemer
Cavar: You mentioned in your email to me that the images in/of/as these poems –– simple, shapely blocks and silhouettes, oftentimes repeating –– were built in an app called Freeform. Is this your first experience using a creative app to build work? What has your learning experience been experimenting with this platform, or others?
Jay: funny you should ask this. using the app is a vast departure from my usual processes, & i am surprised af that i am having so much fun with it. generally i draft or collage by hand, with direct ink-on-page or xacto-blade/glue or paint in books, because something in my neurological alignment makes that necessary. but i think its unlikeness to the way i usually work makes the freeform work more like play. it reminds me of colorforms in daycare. do they still have those? colorful vinyl shapes you could "draw" with, that stuck to each other or a plastic board through molecular adhesion. they were probably toxic. anyway using the app is like playing with colorforms combined with layout software. or it is like the old macpaint app, a bit, a "lite" version.
originally i tried out the app thinking it would be good for making concept maps, which i use to help me think through things visually & also in revision & sometimes drafting. but i don't draft with or in concept maps, so while i might use an app like "scapple" to get a feel for what's happening in a book project, i don't make a book originating in that app. freeform unexpectedly revealed its potential as a simple collaging tool where i was looking for a different mode of concept mapping. freeform will work well for that too, certainly, but i stopped trying to use it that way when i found out how much fun it is to use for the kind of thing i sent you!
but in video work i do edit with an app from raw digital video, so strictly speaking the freeforms are not my first fully digitally-composed pieces.
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