Die Afrikaanse poësie vir kykers

Abstract

Afrikaans poetry for viewers The purpose of this article is to create an awareness of the visual or socalled physiognomic aspects of poetry in Afrikaans. Several examples of Afrikaans poems with a visual presence are given. Visuality in poetry is not a new phenomenon. It is of course linked to the emergence of concrete poetry which was formally named thus by Eugen Gomringer and Decio Pignatari in 1955. A fully-fledged and complete volume of concrete or visual poetry in Afrikaans was created by Willem Boshoff during the seventies and published in 1980. The physiognomically striking Afrikaans poems can be classified and studied according to the physical size of the visual element responsible for the overall impact of the poem. Several forms of these elements and their impact on the relevant poems are discussed in this article, which is based on an exploration of more than 500 volumes of poetry, in order to get an overview on visuality in Afrikaans poetry from the beginning of this century until 1989.