On Visual Poetry

A visual poem is one that must be seen to be fully understood, where the verbal and visual draw strength from each other to produce greater meaning. As such, visual poetry invites us to consider not just the typographic elements of verse—the shape of letters, the spaces between words, the overall composition of a page—but also the poetic potential of images.

In our workshop on visual poetry we followed a progression of ever more acutely visual forms, from technopaegnia (a tradition of “shaped poems,” of which George Hebert’s “Easter Wings” is an oft-cited example) to asemic writing, where the semantic function of language is removed entirely, as in works by mIEKAL aND or Rosaire Appel. Defining a collage-centric lineage of intermedia practices from Dada to Lettrism to Situationism and Fluxus, we lingered on specific works with roots in those traditions: the “typewriter poems” of Dom Sylvester Houédard, Sarah J. Sloat’s diagrammatic erasures augmented by collage, the swirling “tangle of language” in Ava Hofmann’s “[A woman wandered into a thicket],” the typographic abstraction of Andrew Topel’s “Black on White on Black,” and Tony Fitzpatrick’s multimedia collages, with their densely layered personal and social iconographies. We also discussed several visual artists who employ text, among them Ray Johnson and Deb Sokolow, whose work, while not necessarily poetic in intent, nevertheless contains some gnomic inscrutability that seems to tune our awareness to the frequency of poetry.

As with any practice that operates across arbitrary borders of medium and technique, the possibilities offered by visual poetry can make a blank page extra intimidating. The following prompts were inspired by questions from workshop participants, and each represents a potential starting point for exploring the intersection of words and images.

Prompt 1: Diagram a sequence

1. Choose a diagram you find visually interesting. Instruction manuals and science textbooks are an excellent source.
2. Remove or cover all the labels and captions.
3. Now consider something you wish would happen. What are the steps between here and there? What does the end result look like? 
4. Describe each on a sheet of paper. Be as florid as you like.
5. Cut out each “step” and assign it a position on the diagram. Don’t think too hard about this part.

For inspiration, see Nance Van Winckel’s Book of No Ledgeor Flat-Pack by Anney Bolgiano.

Prompt 2: Visualizing voices

1. Start a collection of interesting words or phrases cut out of newspapers and magazines.
2. Choose one of these at random (draw from a hat, or close your eyes and pick one up). Paste it down in the center of a piece of paper.
3. Now choose the cutout that feels most like a response. Where does it belong in relation to the first? Does it agree? Disagree? How would that look visually—is it close or far away? Intersecting? Overlapping? Think about the different voices implied by differences in typography. Is the reply louder? Quieter? Paste it in place.
4. Repeat, with the phrase that seems to respond to what you just pasted down. Keep repeating.

For inspiration, see the work of Douglas Kearney.

Prompt 3: Finding images in letters

1. Start a collection of large text: newspaper and magazine headlines, chapter titles. 
2. Cut out individual letters or words. 
3. Now choose some of the most interesting letterforms and slice them further, vertically and/or horizontally.
4. Put several of these into your hands, a bag, or a hat, and shake them up. Drop them onto a blank sheet of paper. 
5. Glue a few of these down where they landed. Now begin filling in the gaps, finding points of connection. Try to think of these as purely visual objects.

For inspiration, see the work of Geof Huth and Cecil Touchon.

Prompt 4: Score an event

1. Choose a situation that involves a series of repeating events or gestures. This could be a sporting event, the traffic passing by your window, the sounds you hear in a cafe.
2. Observe for a few moments in order to choose 6 to 16 “events” that are likely to recur. Design a mark or symbol to represent each event. For example, if you are watching traffic, create symbols for cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles. Consider how you can represent the direction a vehicle is traveling, its color or sound.
3. Decide on a time frame you’ll observe and divide a sheet of paper into units. For our traffic example, we could sample ten minutes by drawing ten lines on a sheet of paper.
4. Observe, using your system of symbols to record events as they occur.

For inspiration, see the drawings of Lee Walton or Rosaire Appel’s “Unsettled Scores.”

Prompt 5: Simple asemic writing

1. Coat the palm or side of your dominant hand with ink, paint, or graphite.
2. Now hold an imaginary pencil and write about a memory you don’t want to forget. Aim for five minutes, replenishing the ink or graphite at the end of each stanza or sentence.