Poetry Visualized

I just found out about a new website called Poetry Visualized, which is offering a place for poets and other artists to show off their work as either audio, text, or text and film (video, music, etc.). They plan on gathering the pieces into a feature-length film to take to festivals next year and doing an online visual festival this year.

It seems very new, so who knows whether they will or won't become a good forum for poets and other artists. I'm for anything that allows writers to stretch their wings and experiment with other disciplines, and same for other artists experimenting with words. The only red flag for me is their definition of Visual Poetry, which I don't find accurate. They're defining it as mostly a graphic and film medium in the modern sense.

BUT, the term is somewhat interchangeable with Concrete Poetry, which is more text-based than Visual. Concrete Poetry began, technically, with the Greeks and continued on through time, including George Herbert's shaped poetry (Easter Wings, for example), Mallarme, e.e. cummings, etc. It was revived by Brazilian poets in the 1950s and given the CP term then. It began with text and painting, collage, and photography (static images) and sound, then included motion.

Sorry for the mini-lecture, I'm always a little suspicious when there's no nod to history/tradition. Most art forms don't just appear out of nowhere! Perhaps that's the formalist in me.... :) I couldn't find a mention about rights or permission, so if you decide to participate, check that out first. It's apparently run by attorney Rod Underhill, who was cofounder of MP3.com.

For the all-time best resource for Concrete/Visual Poetry - go to www.ubuweb.com

Link to Poetry Visualized: www.poetryvisualized.com

I wouldn't be a good advocate for Baltimore poets or Write Here, Write Now if I didn't toot our horn and say that we had a Visual Poetry class in spring of 2007, which included a gallery show at Creative Alliance, and are turning poems into visual pieces (paintings, collage, mixed media), then animations/video right now, a class I planned last summer, but a form I've been working in for ten years. So we're ahead of the curve here in Bmore!