29 August 2005: I have an announcement to pass on, although I suspect all twelve of my readers have already seen it:
In a recent blog entry, Ron Silliman mentioned "the ghetto of concretism" while
speaking on the evolution of visual poetry over the past half-century. prPrimeau
reacted to this idea by spending a few days examining mid-century concrete poetry,
which led him to conceive the idea for a small anthology of retro concrete poetry.
Geof Huth agreed to co-edit the book, and today we are excited to announce the first
call for submissions for The Ghetto of Concretism.
For the purposes of this anthology, we are working with two working definitions of
"concrete poetry":
Concrete poetry is a form of vispo typified by the manipulation of words and
letters/numerals as they lie on the page, concrete poems rely on unconventional
typographical presentations to convey their meanings. Concrete poets design their
pieces using only letters, numerals, punctuation marks, and a fine eye for
space.
In general, concrete poetry is a visually simple form of visual poetry in which the
letter is the unit of composition. Words may (and usually do) exist, but it is the
interplay of letters through those words & their shapes and reverberations that make
these pieces work.
Send submissions [email protected]. We prefer unpublished work;
submitting more than a single piece at a time is fine. If your work is not digital and
you don't have a scanner, contact either of us for our snail mail addresses. Feel free to
spread the word on your blogs, listservs, &c.
Best,
PR Primeau & Geof Huth,
[email protected]
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The main reason I posted the above is that it ignited a so far very minor squabble at
Spidertangle, the Internet discussion site many doing visual and related poetries
congregate at. The title bothered two or three persons. For once, it's a squabble I have no hotly partisan interest in. I mention
it here only because it got me thinking about the way so many visual poets of the
past twenty years or so, up to the present, have looked down on concrete poetry. I
suddenly saw that they are repeating the contempt of the mid-20th-century champions of free verse
for formal verse. One can represent both them and the freeversers as a New Wave, breaking away from too rigid constraints, who think those doing poetry an old way have fascistic leanings, in one
way or another. A major difference is that there don't seem to be any fanatical
defenders of pure concrete poetry around the way there are still people who believe
poetry must be metrical to count as poetry. The only defenders of concrete poetry are visual poets who merely feel it's worth doing, not that everyone should do it.
As for me, I do consider concrete poetry limited compared to . . . well, the kind of poetry I'm currently doing, poetry with atextual material in it. But I think it can do valuable things no other poetry can, just as formal verse can. I didn't think I could submit anything to the anthology, though I like the idea of it. I've done quite a few poems I'd call concrete, but none not published, or recent, that I can think of. Then I thought of one. I hope to get it done tomorrow.
I wonder if posting it here will mean that it had been published. . . .
COMMENTS
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