roadmap

Are you lost? Already? Are you sure you wouldn't rather try to wander without these hints? This is a textual map, there are no diagrams here.

Let me summarise: Juliet Ann Martin's cycle of poems, oooxxxooo, plays with opposites: between nature and machine as well as between the noughts and crosses of children's games.

The poems are tied together around a hub of twelve "yes" and "no!" answers. Each answer is linked to a poem, a sequence or a fragment of text arranged in visual patterns as well as hypertextual patterns. Some are long, others are short and often cryptic statements.

oooxxxooo is a tightly woven and well-focussed piece of work. (If you decide this is a review rather than a reading this paragraph is probably the evaluative bit.) The image-texts all explore the relationship between humans and machines and humans and nature. The links between the image-texts strengthen this concentration, by quickly and forcefully reinforcing the answers: "yes" and "no!". Some of the individual texts excel in their combination of words and image, but others are weaker - but in the context, as parts of a consistent idea, parts of a game, oooxxxooo is a fascinating work.