Definining Concrete Poetry

via marginalia:

According to the wikipedia’s definition, concrete poetry is poetry in which the typographical arrangement of words is as important in conveying the intended effect as the conventional elements of the poem, such as meaning of words, rhythm, rhyme and so on.

A Review of a Review of Digital Poetry

David Han via Future Cinemas:

Poetry-films have a long history, dating back to the earliest avant-garde films. In Poetry-Films and Film Poems, William C. Wees writes: “… a number of avant-garde film and video makers have created a synthesis of poetry and film that generates associations, connotations and metaphors neither the verbal nor the visual text would produce on its own.”

Visual Poetry in Textbooks

via Bob Grumman's po-X-cetera:

I have personal news to report today: two days ago I got an e.mail from a representative of a college textbook called, Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing, Sixth Edition, by Laurie G. Kirszner & Stephen R. Mandell, and published by Wasworth College Publishers, asking for permission to reprint the poem below, my "Mathemaku No. 10."

Colorful Altered Book Pages

via Sara Nicole's A Little Nonsense:

This is a Picasa collage of some pages from my altered book, which began in the spring as a project for a class on collage and visual poetry. I have been working on it in my spare time since, and I'm considering producing and selling posters of the pages. So, for my research, please tell me, would you buy one? And what would you be willing to pay?

An Exhibition of Brazilian Visual Poetry

via O Mundo de Claudia:

Here is the site for the online Brazilian Visual Poetry Exhibition.

This one is by Bené Fonteles (it says "discover the other"):

Description of a Reading of Description

via Chris Rizzo's In Place of In Place of Chairs:

I did have the opportunity to take a night off last night to read with Geof Huth at the Red Square. Another intriguing performance (perhaps perfromance?) by Geof who, along with a visual aid (chapbook form) presented poetries, from a poetry of silent inscription to a poetry of sounded description.

The Copy Art Visual Poems of Bob Cobbing

via Reed Altemus' Tonerworks

The late Bob Cobbing was one of the great visual poets in any language probably the greatest English language visual poet ever. At the end of his career he made extensive use of photocopiers using them as the cheap alternative press as well as a platform for experimental visual poetry and copy art. This is one of his book works in its entirety.

Loiez Deniel's Butterfly

via The-Hold

Loiez Deniel joined the vlogosphere recently and has pretty much blown us all away with his visual poetry.

Frottage and David-Baptiste Chirot

via Dan Waber's minimalist concrete poetry

Others have written about his work with more eloquence than I
am capable of, he gives a wicked interview, and he's got his own blog
chock full of visual poetry and two essays well worth the reading--UNREADABILITY On the Road from Alexia to Zaum, and, Necessity is the Motherfucker of Invention--so I'll just step
out of the way and do what I feel most comfortable doing, serving up some choice
examples.

Asemic Writing from Luna Park Magazine

via The Art of Books & Small Press Publications

The list of names that collaborated to the zine dazzles me. Anyway I scanned the back cover, so you can see for yourself.

The Logogrammes and Logoglaces of Christian Dotrement

via The Art of Books & Small Press Publications

Even the logogrammes were quite ephemeral. He often realized these "on the road", while traveling, locked them in lockers at rail way stations and just left them behind.

Reworking Ronald Johnson

via neverhappened.org

This is a rework of Ronald Johnson's eyelevel. Johnson was an American Concrete Poet who worked out of the Bay area in San Francisco in the 60's. Concrete Poets were concerned with not just syntax and grammar but more the constellation of words with a spatial syntax, The basis for reworking this piece was to make a sound work painting, or a painting you 'hear' rather than see or read.

Asemic Magazine

via The Art of Books & Small Press Publications

Another zine production of Tim Gaze in Australia.

This is issue 2,1.

Irrationalist Writings

via The Art of Books & Small Press Publications

Another zine production by Tim Gaze.

A collection of what he calls "Irrationalist Writings"

Gazing at Tim

via The Art of Books & Small Press Publications

Tim Gaze is an artistic millipede, keen on experimental writing, automatic drawings, very fond of Cobra and Outsider art, interested in languages he drove this so far he even learnt Dutch. He also produces many magazines as you will discover in the next pages.

Remembering UNI/vers(;)

via The Art of Books & Small Print Publications

This is the magazine of Guillermo Deisler, Chilean ex-patriot visual poet and graphic artist: worktaken from his assembling of the same name. He died in 1995. His UNI/vers(;) assemblings werealways wonderful to receive witha strong avant-garde feel and the loss is lamented still.

Oh, Yes, My Interview!

via Tom Beckett's e-x-c-h-a-n-g-e-v-a-l-u-e-s

Like many visual poets, I often dream that I am Joseph Cornell and when I wake up each morning I am surprised that I haven’t created any elegant wooden boxes filled with the surrealism of the sidewalk. Instead, I discover that I have created objects encrusted with words.

The Grace of Derek Beaulieu

via Dan Waber's minimalist concrete poetry

I think the first time I saw derek beaulieu's work was at phu online, but that was a while ago (probably doing a search on "concrete poetry" + "submission guidelines"), and I know I've chanced across other things since then. What caught me most recently was a couple of pieces that were posted at bentspoon. I saw those and thought, "I'd really like to see some more of his work." And thanks to the magic of modern technology, not only do I get to see some more, I get to spread it around, too.

The Visual Poetry of John M. Bennett

via Dan Waber's minimalist concrete poetry:

On more than one occasion I have summarized my impressions of the work of John M. Bennett with the single question:

What's not to love?

The more I see, hear,and feel of John's work the more faith I have in that question. And there is something profoundly appropriate about the fact that the most accurate statement I can formulate in response to his work is, in fact, a question.

The Minimalist Poetry of endwar

via Dan Waber's minimalist concrete poetry:

Another result of that conversation was a suggestion by Geof that I get ahold of endwar (aka Andrew Russ), because he's done some things that seemed to Geof to be right up this alley. At that time I knew of his work only in the narrowest of terms (we both have pieces in Infinity Poetry show that was put on by Harvard's Dudley Literary Society), and knew the person of him only through a handful of posts he'd made to the spidertangle listserv (which is not to suggest that he's only posted a handful of times, but that, coincidentally, I have specifically put aside for later use and review a selection of his posts that I found to be of particular interest to me.

The Visual Poetry of J. Michael Mollohan

via Dan Waber's minimalist concrete poetry:

In a perfect world, I'd be able to continue bringing fresh content to this space through the simple mechanism of posting lovely, elegant, haunting, paradigm-shifting, perception expanding minimalist concrete poems submitted by others and I'll have the much hoped for luxury of not needing to comment too much on the whats, the whys, and the explication of a tentative poetics. I'll be able to make, over time, a sort of Poincaré map around the concept. Work like the following 19 poems by J. Michael Mollohan goes a long way towards helping me realize that goal.

A Creed and a Meditation

via Sherry Chandler:

If you’ve been reading here for a while, you know I have a sort of ongoing struggle with the relationship between poetry and image, as in “the plastic arts.” I tend to think of poetry as essentially a heard art form that takes place over time, whether it be the time the mouth takes to form the words or the time the eye takes to read over the line. But there is no escaping the fact that most of us do not experience most poetry aurally. We experience it as an artifact on a page.

Maybe an Exaggeration Here Somewhere

via Richard Lopez's Really Bad Movies:

also, Hazel McClure got the goods here and genius --yes genius-- visual poet....

I Only Get Called Huff Once

via Mackenzie Carignan's We Who Love to Be Astonished:

And yes, I am resistant to saying that an inkspot on a page is a "poem" because it is making a comment about text and visual representation at the same time, but at least I understand that this interpretation exists and that there is actually a theory behind it.

dbqp & pdqb

via DIY Publishing:

Visual poet Geof Huth creates mini editions (and sometimes single copies) of handmade books, leaflets, pamphlets and other printed matter for his presses dbqp & pdqb. And they are available for miraculous prices--many less than $1!

An Announcement for Sleeping Fish

via The New Lakes:

& also a special selection of Mexican Visual poetry including Juan Diaz Infante, Federico Martinez, Damian Walsdorf, Katnira Bello, and Victor Sulser, with an introduction by Brian Whitener

Review of Spore 2.0

via Tom Beckett's Shadows Within Shadows:

As a poet-health inspector I should be expected to have a particular take on spores. During the course of a normal work day, if any of my work days can be said to be "normal," spores--in terms of the microbiology of food--are often approached as a problem. But let's not go there.

Keeping Visual Poetry from the Slopes of Parnassus

via Kasey Mohammad's lime tree:

Mike then writes, "[T]here are also limits to the power of intention and self-consciousness. The difference between a sonnet and some other kind of poem is more like the difference between a still life and a landscape than like the difference between some group or words being or not being a poem. I can call my painting of daisies in a vase on a table 'Landscape With Cows' and it doesn't make it a landscape, not even a bad landscape. At a coarser scale, I can call that painting a poem, even reproduce it in a book of poems, and it won't be a poem; nor would calling a poem a painting make it a painting. And I already know that I've just banished a fair amount of 'visual poetry' from the slopes of Parnassus. I'm comfortable with that."

La Chimera, from Italy

via The Art of Books and Small Press Publications:

In this issue Visual poetry, graphics, text and poetry by Anela Aliotis, Luigi Giordano, Christian Burgaud, Eliana Petrizzi, Carla Bertola, Roberto Lombardi, Mariateresa Schiavino, Claudio Forziati, Valdor and others. Also translations of poems by Jack Hirschman, David Stone and a text by Samuel Beckett

Writing with Weeds

via Sherry Chandler:

Here’s Written Weed. Each page of this book is a collage that Dutch artist Marian Bijlenga has made from the parts of one particular kind of plant. Thumbnails are here. Click on the thumnail for a larger image.

A Note on an Announcement of an Anthology in Preparation

via Crag Hill's poetry scorecard:

In a recent blog entry, Ron Silliman mentioned "the ghetto of concretism" while speaking on the evolution of visual poetry over the past half-century. prPrimeau reacted to this idea by spending a few days examining mid-century concrete poetry, which led him to conceive the idea for a small anthology of retro concrete poetry. Geof Huth agreed to co-edit the book, and today we are excited to announce the first call for submissions for The Ghetto of Concretism.

Signalism (Half-)Revealed

via The Art of Books and Small Print Publications:

Nrs 28-29-30 of SIGNAL, International review for Signalist research.

A Great Anthology of Visual Poetry

via The Art of Books and Small Print Publications:

Isn't it remarkable that the most stunning book on Vispo in the 90s was published in Russia?

A Visual Poem by Nathaniel

via Nathaniel's Journal

I did this piece of visual poetry nearly a year ago in November 2004.
(This is the second version that followed it up in December 2004.)
Emotions related to meeting someone whom I fell for very quickly.
Sadly, it was over quicker than it began.

A Nice List of Visual Poetry

via Bluewyvern's Blue Tea:

Brazilian Visual Poetry is a wild, wonderful connection of visual poems that combine words, fonts, arrangement, image, and color in a great blend of poetry and art.