Bill Marsh


Bill Marsh lives in San Diego with his partner and collaborator Octavia Davis and his two kids Zazil and Maya. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Communication at U.C. San Diego but spends most of his time editing Zazil and writing and organizing for Factory School and the San Diego Poetry Guild. He has published flash work in Beehive, Cauldron & Net, and Riding the Meridian, as well as text poetry, reviews, and essays in several print and online journals. His web work can be viewed and heard at b_theater.

"Tools Built by Anonymous Ancestors" builds on a series of poems written in the last month of 2002, in the early stages of the Bush administration's build-up toward war in Iraq. Using a composition technique I call "editation," I generated these poems from a variety of sources (text, image, and sound) compiled from a web search using the search words "tools built by anonymous ancestors," a phrase itself taken from Charles Goodwin's "Seeing in Depth."

On each tool board, the user has the option to "open source." Clicking this button will bring up a source code layer. In this "open source" domain, source-text materials are revealed and concealed based on the user's manipulation of framed objects. As with any poem, there is rarely a perfectly clear view of either "source" or "output," and my hope is that neither prevails in the reading of the poems.


Bill Marsh
08.07.03