Now You See It: Visual Poetry and the Space of the Page

Abstract

Despite its marginal status on an experimental wing of the literary world, ‘concrete’ or ‘visual’ poetry, work that emphasizes the materiality of language and the visual elements of the poem, has been an important presence in avant-garde movements throughout the twentieth century. The possibilities of digital technologies and the Internet as ways of constructing and distributing work have increased interest. Visual poetry is, of course, more concerned with space than linear poetry, with the way in which the material of the poem is distributed within its chosen medium, the space within which the text exists and, particularly where the work’s performance is outside the pages of a book, the spatial context in which it finds itself. The space that is between the words in some visual poetry is not, therefore, necessarily the space of the page within the context of the book or magazine. In the ‘Poetry Plastique’ exhibition, for example, in 2001, text appears written in the sky by David Antin, John Cage’s work consists of letters printed on plexiglass, while Michael Snow produces a film made up of words (see Sanders and Bernstein 2001). More recently the development of ‘web art’, distributed via the Internet, has drawn on the practices of visual and concrete poetry (see <http://www.ubuweb.com> for example).