Visual Poetry
Overview
The term ‘visual poetry' is more general and thus more rightly to be used to describe a history ‘which is as old as writing itself'. Its is difficult to establish exactly when visual Poetry was first introduced, but most poetry written dates back to 4th and 3rd century BC and can be found in Greek manuscripts where memorial texts in the shape of urns as well as other more fanciful visual forms established a tradition of patters poetry which continues to the present day. (Druker, J. 1998).
Nevertheless the exploration of Visual Poetry is not limited only to shaped poems or works whose arrangement makes a simple iconic image form. In the early 20th century there is a wide range of avant-garde, Dada and Futurist poets whose experiments relate to the Visual Poetry. Furthermore, at the end of the 20th century a wide range of completely developed and very complex work was produced where verbal and visual distinctions are difficult to maintain. (Druker, J. 1998)
Source: Concrete Poetry: An International Anthology
Nowadays, the Visual Poetry appears increasingly in mass media commercial design and electronic technology as it does to the tradition of literary forms.
According to Druker, J. some of the work experiments in Visual Poetry made in the early 20th century happen in several locations:
Russia - represent mainly by the works of Russian futurist Wassily Kamensky
Paris - most notably in the calligrammatic works of Guillaume Apollinaire and poster-poem works of Pierre Albert-Birot
Italy - represented mostly with the typographic work "Words of Liberty" by Filippo Marinetti and other Italian Futurists such as Carlo Carra and Ardengo Soffici with their collage works.
And at the end there are the Dada contributions to the avant-garde exploration of Visual Poetry.
Visual Poetry also is a basis of the different movement such as Futurism, Dada , Concrete Poetry , Surrealism, Fluxus, Typographic Poetry, and involved in all kind of the modern art through different technology (computer, xerox) which we use today.
More about Visual Poetry could be found in the following links:
BBC Online's Arts poetry section (Accessed 18/09/07)
Bohn, W. (1993) Apollinaire, Visual Poetry, and Art Criticism. Bucknell University Press.
Bohn, W. (1986) The Aesthetics of Visual Poetry 1914-1928. Cambridge University Press.
Brazilian Visual Poetry (Accessed 18/09/07)
Brazilian Digital Art and Poetry
on the Web
compiled by Jorge Luiz Antonio (Accessed 18/09/07)
Computer languages and visual poetry (Accessed 18/09/07)
Contemporary visual poetry from leading conceptual artist (Accessed 18/09/07)
Drucker J. (1994) The Visible Word, Experimental Typography and Modern Art, 1909-1923. London: University of Chicago Press.
Early Visual Poetry (Accessed 18/09/07)
Poems That Go - Unites words, design, music, and animation to celebrate poetry through technology. Includes poetic works and critical essays. (Accessed 18/09/07)
Prat A. (2009) Eloqüencies. Tabelaria Edicions
Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry (Accessed 18/09/07)
Vispo ~ Langu(im)age: experimental visual poetry (Accessed 18/09/07)
Visual Poetry - Poesia visual by Toni Prat (Accessed 02/04/09)
Vispoets.com - Social network for Visual Poets
UbuWeb - Features visual, concrete, and sound poetry. (Accessed 18/09/07)
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