VOIR DIRE is Nico Vassilakis' seventh book of poetry. With this volume, Vassilakis continues to carry us along toward the metaphysical unmooring of language material or put otherwise, how staring at writing itself can induce a transformative experience so as to alter the very act of seeing. This collection unfolds with engaging reading text and goes straight through to the psychology of seeing text anew. The very nature of visual interpretation of language is tinkered with. This book of writing is deliberate with its drifts in form and content, but attempts to loosely resolve the unifying theory that the contents of an alphabet are of higher import than the words they create. VOIR DIRE unravels in three sections, the book travels from appropriation to the politics and investigations of seeing to a manifesto, of sorts, extolling the sovereignty of letters. The journey moves the reader from a gathering of words through to one word and into a singular letter - a focused point. Vassilakis advances us further into considering how poetry and its ingredients can be understood visually and how visual poetry can be encountered with a critical eye.


Nico Vassilakis is a poet who writes and draws language that focuses on the visual jettisoning of letters from their word position. He has published books of poetry and text/art including Disparate Magnets (BlazeVOX), Alphabet Noir (c_L Books), Moments Notice (Luna Bisonte), Diesel Hand (Chax Press), Text Loses Time (ManyPenny) and Diptychs (Otolith). He co-edited The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998-2008 (Fantagraphics) and was a curator of several international visual/concrete poetry exhibitions. He currently lives in Greenville, IL with his wife and animals.