PROCESS NOTES
While researching forms into which I could shape my three-poem sequence, “Illemniscate,” I stumbled on the 1611 King James Bible. The first poem in the sequence is patterned after the ornate typography found therein, and is made to look like an ampersand, albeit with less scribal flourish. The second and third poems of the sequence borrow their layouts from headpieces found in that bible’s title pages. More biblical emulation follows with “Turncheek,” which is typeset in two columns. “Kouros in a Cheval Mirror,” what Seamus Heaney might call a “verse paragraph,” takes inspiration from the structure of the prose poems in his book, Stations. And finally, the text of “Untitled” exists at the gutter and margins of the page, literally typifying its subject’s condition. Adobe Illustrator and InDesign were used in the creation of these works.
TupeloQ33FolioZach Bartles was raised in the Shenandoah Valley of West Virginia. His work appears or is forthcoming in Appalachian and Northwest Reviews, Tupelo Quarterly, Ekstasis, Relief, The Way Back to Ourselves, Calf, and Ribbons, among others. He was a finalist for the 2024 Brink Literary Journal Award for Hybrid Writing, shortlisted for The Masters Review’s 2024 Featured Flash Contest, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He lives in East Texas with his wife and daughter.