7.4 Visual Poetry and Experimental Forms

Visual Poetry and Experimental Forms

Visual poetry and experimental forms push the boundaries of traditional poetry by blending words with visual elements. These approaches challenge what poetry can be and encourage you to see language as more than just something you read in neat lines down a page.

From concrete poetry to digital and interactive works, these forms explore the intersection of text and image. They invite readers to engage with poetry on multiple levels, creating experiences that go beyond simply reading words on a page.

Visual Poetry

Concrete and Shape Poetry

Concrete poetry arranges words, letters, or symbols on the page so the visual layout itself becomes part of the meaning. Instead of just saying something, the poem shows it through how the text is positioned.

Shape poetry is a related form where the text takes on the physical outline of the poem's subject. A love poem might be arranged in the shape of a heart, or a poem about a tree might taper upward like a trunk and branches.

• Both forms emphasize that how text appears on the page can convey meaning just as powerfully as the words themselves
• The concrete poetry movement gained momentum in the 1950s, led by the Brazilian Noigandres group and Swiss-Bolivian poet Eugen Gomringer
• Earlier examples actually predate the movement by centuries: George Herbert's "Easter Wings" (1633) shaped its stanzas like wings, and Lewis Carroll's "The Mouse's Tale" (1865) arranged text in a long, winding tail shape

Note that Herbert and Carroll wrote long before the term "concrete poetry" existed. They're considered precursors, not part of the 1950s movement itself.

Calligrams

A calligram is a type of visual poetry in which the text itself forms a picture related to the poem's content. The word was coined by French poet Guillaume Apollinaire in the early 20th century, and his collection Calligrammes (1918) remains the most famous example of the form.

• In Apollinaire's "Il Pleut" (It's Raining), the words literally stream down the page like falling rain
• His "Cœur, Couronne et Miroir" (Heart, Crown and Mirror) arranges text into the shapes named in the title
• Calligrams often use repeated words or phrases in patterns to build the desired image
• Later poets like John Hollander (whose Types of Shape is a well-known collection) and Emmett Williams continued experimenting with the form

The key difference between calligrams and shape poetry more broadly is that calligrams tend to be more intricate, with the image and text tightly integrated rather than simply filling an outline.

Found and Erasure Poetry

Found Poetry

Found poetry takes existing texts and reframes them as poetry. You might pull language from newspaper articles, instruction manuals, signs, or even spam emails, then rearrange the spacing, line breaks, or context to reveal something poetic in everyday language.

• This form challenges traditional notions of authorship: the poet becomes a curator or editor rather than a creator from scratch
• Surrealist artists in the 1920s experimented with found text as a way of subverting conventional language
• Kenneth Goldsmith's The Day transcribes an entire issue of The New York Times as poetry, questioning what counts as a "poetic" text
• Christian Bök's The Xenotext Experiment pushes the concept even further, encoding poetry into the DNA of a bacterium

When you try found poetry yourself, the creative act is in selection and arrangement. You're training your eye to notice rhythm, imagery, and meaning hiding in plain sight.

Erasure and Blackout Poetry

Erasure poetry creates a new poem by erasing, crossing out, or obscuring words from an existing text, leaving behind only selected words that form a new meaning.

Blackout poetry is a specific type of erasure poetry where you use a marker to black out everything except the words you want to keep. The visual contrast between the blacked-out page and the remaining words becomes part of the poem's effect.

• Both forms create something new from a pre-existing text, and they often end up subverting or critiquing the original source
• Poet Mary Ruefle has published several books of erasure poetry, including A Little White Shadow, where she works over pages of a 19th-century book
• Austin Kleon's Newspaper Blackout series popularized blackout poetry for a wide audience and is a great starting point if you want to try the form

These are especially accessible forms to experiment with. All you need is a printed page and a marker.

Digital and Interactive Poetry

Digital Poetry

Digital poetry uses digital media and technology to create, display, or perform poetry. It goes beyond simply putting a poem on a screen; it incorporates elements like hyperlinks, animation, audio, and video that couldn't exist on a printed page.

• These works challenge the traditional linearity of reading. You might encounter a poem where words move, dissolve, or respond to your cursor
• Brian Kim Stefans' "The Dreamlife of Letters" animates text fragments so they dance and rearrange across the screen
• Nick Montfort's "Taroko Gorge" uses code to generate an endlessly flowing nature poem, different each time you load it

Digital poetry raises interesting questions: if a poem is generated by an algorithm, who is the author? If the text keeps changing, what is the poem?

Interactive Poetry

Interactive poetry takes digital poetry a step further by requiring active participation from the reader. You might click, type, drag, or make choices that shape what the poem becomes.

• These works often use hyperlinks, user input, or randomization to create a unique experience for each reader
• The line between reader and author blurs, since your choices help co-create the poem's meaning
• Jim Andrews' "Stir Fry Texts" lets you manipulate and remix text on screen
• Amaranth Borsuk, Jesper Juul, and Nick Montfort's "The Deletionist" is a bookmarklet that transforms any webpage into erasure poetry, merging the found poetry and digital poetry traditions

Interactive poetry is worth experiencing firsthand if you can. Reading about it only gets you so far; the whole point is that the form comes alive through your participation.