[slideshow_deploy id=’32451′]
Born from post-war socio-political shifts, visual poetry has been a movement of dramatic rise and quick decline in popularity. With the relatively new availability of written word through digital mediums, combined with modern image manipulation and self-publishing techniques, a new lease of life has been give breathed into to this important strand of visual expression. To celebrate this, The New Concrete – Visual Poetry in the 21st Century, edited by poets Victoria Bean and Chris McCabe, sets about to chronicle this resurgence from a poetic standpoint.
Whether it’s 2D, installation art or sculpture, the graphic involvement of concrete poetry facilitates an interesting dissolve between linguistic barriers in its own right, allowing rich layers to be constructed by the artist and be engaged by the viewer on a multitude of planes.
Featuring mostly one piece, or sometimes two per artist, The New Concrete covers a vast swathe of this vibrant genre, skipping across the seemingly limitless confines. Highlights include the post-situational work of Scottish artist Robert Montgomery in All Palaces (2012) and the 2D graphically bold linguistic poetry of Collin Sackett’s Essayes (2000) without forgetting the seminal work of Augusto de Campos to name but a few.
The New Concrete ties together the consistencies of the genre such as form and content, language and articulation, where the stand-alone graphic element of each poem often precedes the very action of reading. Chronicled and celebrated,
Bean and McCabe have successfully and interestingly narrated the resurgence of visual poetry and taken us on a precise visual journey too.
by Stephanie Clair
[amazon asin=1853323284&text=The New Concrete: Visual Poetry in the 21st Century] is published by Hayward Publishing and available now.