…is a juxtaposition of visual and other art forms, like poetry, performance, typography and storytelling.
“visual poetry works in an intersection between the visual arts and poetic texts.” Says Sarah Jane Crowson
From what I understand, (and to be honest the whole genre is a bit obscure and broad, like poetry itself), the movement originated in the 1920s where poets and artists got together to bend some boundaries. Typography, concrete poetry, asemic writing, sound poetry and digital poetry are some of the sub-categories of Vispo.
Contemporary visual poetry usually includes collage and/or text, and personally I think that these elements create a visual poem when they induce a non-traditional feeling about the subject, and/or add a further descriptive element to the visual experience.
One of my first visual poems was a typographical effort that I printed on a torn out page of an old book, tore that and then photographed it, so my finished work is the actual photographed image.
I also made some visual poem paintings where I included actual poems that I wrote in the paintings.
The Third Oblivion
90x90cm, 2014
Left.
Returned.
A third time indignant trace of
Torn paper bones that
Ached and sighed caught in the rip
Listing the silence
Today…
I’m exploring a smaller (down-sizing) concept of vispo, tiny, some are card sized, poems to conserve and recycle materials. Little reminder poems of how we got here, how things have changed and are changing, and to tribute the joy and pleasure in creating things out of not much, because you don’t need much to create beautiful and interesting things.
