Concrete poetry firmly took root during the 1960s when many artists were seeking to liberate the word from its shackles of the semantic sentence and enable forms of expression that would breathe new life into what many considered a quaint tradition. A truly international movement, concrete poetry was, however, a rather underground affair, to the extent that we have only just begun to unearth its existence more than sixty years later.
I came across this rather strangely named movement whilst perched up in the hills of Provence one sweltering summer in 2012, listening to a plethora of typography and literary fanatics during a week-long seminar. It was, however, only some years later that I took up interest and began to learn more about these poetic oddities. What had drawn me to these particular visuals, and why have I dedicated a whole series of personal works in line with this lingering interest in concrete poetry?
When we read words, we automatically recognise their form as letter shapes, yet we are not conscious of this form. Rather, when we read, we read concepts — meaning. This is quite a curious, albeit perhaps slight and minor detail for the everyday person. Texts are all around us and we read all the time. However, as someone who has been working within the field of graphic design and in close contact with another curious breed — typographers — certain things have come to my attention.
The written language is meant for the page, and it is here we construct meaning, letter after letter, word after word, line after line. Despite a certain freedom to play with the layout of text within the space of the page, convention imposes a simple rule of thumb with a linear structure guided by a certain direction. We read from top to bottom and either from left to right or from right to left, depending on the language. For meaning to arise, words must follow this rule along with their own semantic structures. But what kind of meaning are we talking about?
"Concrete poetry does not entertain. It holds the possibility of fascination, and fascination is a form of concentration, that is of concentration which includes perception of the material as well as apperception of its meaning." Max Bense, Rot 21.
I'd argue that meaning does not arise solely from conventional means. We do not need language – the ones we speak, write, and read — to construct meaning. Meaning can derive from all sorts of phenomena. The fact that we, however, associate some visual form as language only reinforces the illusory link and the idea that we can only derive meaning within some conventional system.
The reason I present this to you is because I'm currently excavating an area of my thoughts that are rooted in my art practice and for which I'm looking to learn more. More about what? Well, a messy process, to be quite honest. The process of making art that seeks to express something other than visual beauty. Art that has become an expression of my thinking a little outside the box and searching for other meanings.
My artistic work plays on the margins of conventional language use. I'm looking to engage with language in new ways and not always within the context of communicating something clearly. Rather, it is to be purposefully open. The series of artworks, Cosmic Poems, took shape from these ideas of the concrete, playing with the rules of structure and form. Other works have followed, and with them, my readings on the subject and topics that gravitate around the outer realms of art and language have come to inform a process for which I want to shed light on.
I've come to realise that the boundaries of text and image have become increasingly blurred within my practice. This blurring raises fundamental questions about how we process visual language: at what point do we transition from reading semantic content to perceiving pure form? When does text become image and what distinctions can be made between writing and drawing for example? These questions have become central to my exploration of concrete poetry's revolutionary approach to meaning-making, leading me to investigate the very foundations of written communication.
• Concrete Poetry I. Max Bense. Rot 21
• Concrete Poems Just Are. Eye Magazine
• Twenty things you must know about concrete & visual poetry. Type Room
• Concrete Poetry. A World View. Mary Ellen Solt.