Top Secret Calligraphy

Published in a hand-bound edition of 50 copies.

These asemic, visual poems invent a form of calligraphy out of the strike-throughs used to cross out the word “CONFIDENTIAL” from the pages of NASA’s voice transcription document of the Apollo 11 moon mission. This calligraphy exemplifies the creation of a new text through the re-censorship of a declassified transcript.

The author becomes the new censor of the text, obliterating all trace of the word that the strike-throughs attempt to obscure and negate. This erasure frees the strike-throughs from their original context, and accentuates their abstract forms. The lines become a lost language, ushering explorers of textual space through the vacuum of meaning.

Ken Hunt’s work appears in Sphere Literary Magazine: International Journal of Student Writing; in The Gauntlet, the University of Calgary’s student newspaper; and in various chapbooks. For three years, Ken served as editor of NōD Magazine, the University of Calgary English department’s publication of undergraduate prose, poetry, and visual art. In 2010, Ken co-founded The Scribe and Muse, a University of Calgary club that promotes writing and literacy, offering a free peer-editing service to students across all faculties. Ken lives in Calgary.