Related to concrete poetry, visual poetry is poetry rendered graphically. Sometimes only having a slight resemblance to a traditionally written poem that follows grammar and syntax conventions, visual poetry uses words and letter shapes as visual icons rather than linguistic units. Typography, color, shape, media, and other visual elements are presented as the primary bearers of intent and meaning. As Andrew Venell defines it in his learning prompt,
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.
Geof Huth, in his introduction for the “Visual Poetry Today” portfolio that appeared in the November 2008 issue of Poetry magazine, observes that classical technopaegnia of ancient Greek poems and the pattern poetry of the 16th century are early predecessors of contemporary visual poetry. A notable example of early pattern poetry is the wing-shaped “Easter Wings” by 17th-century English poet George Herbert.
A basic distinction between pattern poetry and visual poetry is that the former can be read aloud and still retain its meaning. In this way, pattern poetry is like concrete poetry, in which the poem takes an image-based shape but is still readable in a more traditional manner. This is often not the case for contemporary visual poetry.
Jessica Smith, in her introduction to Volta’s Evening Will Come: A Monthly Journal of PoeticsWomen of Visual Poetry Issue, notes:
To be a “visual poem” is to remind the reader that the way the words are arranged on the page (and their legibility, color, etc.) is a medial part of the message in every poem and cannot be separated from aurality and meaning. As in music, the poem on the page can operate as a score in myriad ways and need not indicate a traditional lyric performance. By highlighting and problematizing (making decorative, illegible or difficult) the optic elements of poetry, visual poetry reminds us that the eye and ear are inseparable when we parse written language.
For examples of contemporary visual poetry, see Dan Taulapapa McMullin’s “Fake Hula for Alien Tiki” and “Coconut Milk”; Miekal And’s “mi'kmaq book of the dead”; Ava Hofmann’s “[A woman wandered into a thicket]”; Volta’s Evening Will Come: A Monthly Journal of Poetics Women of Visual Poetry Issue (ed. Jessica Smith, 2013); and The Last Vispo Anthology: Visual Poetry 1998–2008 (ed. Nico Vassilakis and Crag Hill, Fantagraphics, 2012).