Jerome Berglund​

Mouthwash#

Artist’s Statmeent#

It’s quite exhilarating to get one’s hands dirty delving into the analog and putting pencil, ballpoint and marker to paper as they did with regularity in times of yore, considering how accustomed we have grown to paperless approaches in our digital age there is certainly something difficult to define but substantial lost in the translation and omission, if service of the planet makes the surrender justified and very reasonable.

This piece sprung from a series of explorations I’ve undertaken into the string or gunsaku poem, where short verses or stanzas which can function independently together coalesce around a common theme to in unison create a mosaic of sorts when viewed from an omniscient standpoint, upon squinting something gradually takes shape as though emerging with dimensionality in bass relief from a magic eye poster. It’s interesting how form dictates reception, style constructs experience, the same words depending on structure, line breaks, enjambment can function chimerically, have a protean character to shift and ripple across a wide variety of micropoetic styles whether senryu, waka, cherita, gembun, and the same precise verbiage might be presented as tanshi, free verse, or with some finessing be harnessed as classical styles, even get marshaled into feet of iambic hexameter.

When one breaks free of the prototypical x and y-axes and enters realms of visual or concrete poetry proverbial skies are the limit, there is no end to the possibilities at your disposal. The electronic information era brings many ill tidings and bad juju for authors and artists, but technical capabilities at laymen’s fingertips present some rare silver lining. As software improves one can only guess as the exciting developments our future holds for writers as immersive VR and 3d printing usher a halcyon creative day where our grandest imaginings may be accessible at fingertips and words can conceivably be realized in new unique fashions on pages, screens, and out across z space immersively (say, across daily experience in augmented reality via smart glasses – when they’re not being used to dox people through facial recognition in real time) and immediately the scope of which our ancestors could not have dreamed of or fathom.

It’s quite encouraging to reside on the cusp of that bright future, ride the crest of a wave into something hazy and unprecedented. These fledgling grasps are but a crude beginning and hinting, the real fun is soon to come!

About the Artist#

Jerome Berglund has worked as everything from dishwasher to paralegal, night watchman to assembler of heart valves. Many haiku, haiga, and haibun have been published or are forthcoming online and in print, most recently in bottle rockets, Frogpond, Kingfisher, and Presence. His first full-length collections of poetry were released by Setu and Mōtus Audāx, and a mixed media chapbook showcasing his fine art photography is now available from Yavanika.