SurVision Magazine
An
international online magazine that
publishes Surrealist poetry
in English.
Issue Thirteen
SHARON KERNOT
‽
Halt! Who goes there?
Is that you Interrobang?
You exclamaquest! You exclarotive!
You quizding!
Arrest him! Ask questions later.
Interrogate that interrobang!
You call those questions?
Those questions are not questions!
You should know better!
Don't you know better?
Turn the spotlight on! Blind him!
Grind him down! Bruise the paper!
Press that glyph into the flesh
of the page like a fist!
Query? Bang! Query? Bang!
Two in a row and you'll have plosives
exploding in the air sending out spit bubbles.
What the‽ What? The!
You may well ask.
Composed with typographic nicknames for the interrobang, the exclamation mark and question mark.
Etaoin Shrdlu
Etaoin was a newspaper man
clicking away
in those hot metal days appearing
in galley after galley of type.
He was a man of metal
a man of letters
a polyglot and a pedant –
the proofreaders' friend.
I picture him in a bowler hat
his suit buttons gaping at the middle
wandering staunchly through
Fleet Street and the like.
He was notorious, infamous.
Some would run him down
cast him as a bag slug but
he was a favourite among compositors,
often despised by publishers.
His appearance in the newspaper
baffled many readers.
Etaoin o Etaoin! There he is again!
He's missed by those inky compositors.
His retirement evoked galley rattles
around the world
in those dying hot metal days, but
there has been a revival of the Linotype
and those letterpress ways
and there he is – dear Etaoin oh Etaoin!
tipping his hat at us again.
Etaoin Shrdlu: the letters on type-casting machine keyboards (such as Linotype and Intertype) were arranged by letter frequency, so e-t-a-o-i-n s-h-r-d-l-u were the lowercase keys in the first two vertical columns on the left side of the keyboard. When operators made a mistake in composing, they would often finish the line by running a finger down the first two columns of the keyboard and then start over. Occasionally the faulty line of hot-metal type would be overlooked and printed erroneously. (Wikipedia)
Sharon Kernot is from Australia. Her poems and short stories appear in Best Australian Poems, Mascara Literary Journal, Australian Love Stories, Meniscus Journal, Island Magazine, the Australian Poetry Journal, Southerly, Aesthetica, and Verandah Literary Journal. Her debut novel, Underground Road, was shortlisted in the Adelaide Festival of Literature Awards and published by Wakefield Press in 2013. Her YA verse novel, The Art of Taxidermy, was shortlisted for the 2017 Text Prize and published by Text in 2018.
