Poemoji?

Those are poemojis by Dante Tercero.

WHY THIS ENTRY AND WHAT POEMOJIS ARE?

That day, that day was Friday and I had a guest from Zacatecas, A book keeper called Lourdes¹ who loves writing and who also has done a bit of poemojing.

Which, as you can see, is a sort of graphic poetry done using emojis. It was started by a young transgender writer called Dante Tercero; who was granted a National Trust for Fine arts and Culture (we in Mexico used to know it as FONCA) scholarship in 2016, given to creative young people.

Such a project, published by the publishing house Tiempo que resta, was warmly received by… the youth. Nonetheless, there is always the hater who claims: “This isn’t art” so it was not accepted by the artsy peacocks high priests with nothing but conservative ways….

Lourdes, my guest, thought the emojis are already too visible and present in daily life to ignore as communicative devices. Since such a reason was enough to try it herself and become a poemojist, she created some. Unfortunately her poemojis are a mix of more Spanish than English and… I found it impossible to translate them since the emojis have to be read in Spanish. Nonetheless, I’ll introduce them here in order for you to become aware poemojis do exist.

LOURDES’ POEMOJI IN POEMOJIS AND LETTERS

My castle has sank down!

Whether he dislikes,

Even if I want not;

No one wins against tide.

How long I’m to wait so

He is waited upon by my hand scratching his arms,

He is longed by my kiss licking his lips,

Fire over his legs waits for him to come.

And baby blue chained to my hands!

POEMOJIS ARE… POEMS MADE WITH EMOJIS

And so, those are the poemojis. A crazy invention? Not art? I only know they’re not viable for the sole reason of adding confusion to the already confusing art of reading things and figuring out what an author meant. However, art is not only about understanding, it is also about creating new ways to generate feelings. Maybe it is me who is already old.

Have you tried new ways to expressing? Pasto kalo.

1. I asked her to lend me some of hers in order to show off this new type of writing poetry in a non symbiotic collaboration since I’m just show casing this new thing in spite of finding it a very difficult way to communicate. Graphic communication designer in me says it adds trouble to the already difficult trouble of communication. ↩︎