Posted by Colin Herd on 2025-10-28
Over the last decade, concrete and visual poetries have enjoyed a renaissance of critical attention and creative activity, in Britain and Ireland and internationally. Over this period, new creative, critical, and socio-political contexts have emerged for the study and practice of concrete and visual poetries. These include eco-poetics and post-humanism, object-oriented ontology and new materialism, AI and digital technologies, comparative and global modernisms, postcolonial literary studies, and more. There is also a lively scene of contemporary post-concrete and visual poetries in the UK and further afield. This has been powered by innovative small presses working with new possibilities of online circulation, self-publication, and physical and digital construction.
Recent critical monographs have cast new light on various aspects of the historical concrete poetry movement, and on interrelated fields such as intermedia and text art, experimental prose, sound poetry, and book art. See for example Fiona Beckett, Contemporary Visual Poetry: Women Writing thePosthuman (Routledge, 2025), Natalie Ferris, Abstraction in Post-War British Literature 1945-1980 (Oxford UP, 2022), Jamie Hilder, Designed Words for a Designed World: The International Concrete Poetry Movement, 1955-1971 (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2016), Rebecca Kosick, Material Poetics in Hemispheric America: Words and Objects 1950-2010 (Edinburgh UP, 2022), Eric Schmaltz, Borderblur Poetics: Intermedia and Avant-Gardism in Canada, 1963-1988(U of Calgary P, 2023), Paul Stephens, Absence of Clutter: Minimal Writing as Art and Literature (MIT Press, 2020), and Greg Thomas, Border Blurs: Concrete Poetry in England and Scotland (Liverpool UP, 2019).
Meanwhile, various anthologies have explored the heyday of visual and concrete poetries during the 1950s-70s, such as Nancy Perloff’s (ed.) Concrete Poetry: A 21st Century Anthology (Reaktion, 2021). Others have introduced lesser-known or understudied aspects of the movement; see for example Alex Balgiu and Mónica de la Torre, Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979 (Primary Information, 2020). Anthologies of contemporary post-concrete and visual poetries such as Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry (edited by Amanda Earl, Timglaset, 2021) and To Feel The Earth as One's Skin: An Anthology of Indigenous Visual Poetry (edited by Lara Felsing, Marama Salsano, and Astra Papachristodoulou, Poem Atlas, 2024), show the richness and range of contemporary literary and artistic scenes with roots in concrete and visual poetries.
Important individual figures within the historical concrete poetry movement have been the subject of dedicated volumes and exhibitions. These include a number of centenary exhibitions across Europe for Ian Hamilton Finlay and the related, multi-author volume Fragments, edited by Pia Maria Simig (ACC Art Books, 2025), as well as the twinned exhibitions Breaking Lines at Estorick, London in 2025, foregrounding the work of Dom Sylvester Houédard. Other notable monographs and edited volumes include Derek Beaulieu and Gregory Betts (eds.) Some Lines of Poetry: From the Notebooks of bpNichol (CoachHouse, 2024), Bronaċ Ferran, The Smell of Ink and Soil: The Story of [Edition] Hansjorg Mayer (Walther und Franz Koenig, 2017), Greg Thomas and Julie Johnstone (eds.), A Home in Space: Selected Visual Concrete, Visual and Sound Poetry of Edwin Morgan (Reaktion, forthcoming 2026), NH Pritchard, The Matrix: Poems 1960s-1970 (Primary Information; Ugly Duckling, 2021), and Susan Solt (ed.), Collected Poems of Mary Ellen Solt (Primary Information, 2024).
In the context of this exciting, still expanding field of activity, we invite 250-300 word proposals for 5,000-7,000-word articles for inclusion in a special issue of The Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry, edited by Colin Herd and Greg Thomas, touching on any aspect of concrete and visual poetries with a British and/or Irish connection.
Possible topics for consideration in relation to concrete and visual poetries include, but are not limited to:
· Notable scenes, themes, movements, individual artists/writers
· Comparative studies across nations/regions/timeframes
· Eco-poetics/eco-criticism
· Post-humanism, cybernetics, information theory
· Digital poetics/AI
· New materialism/object-oriented ontology
· Sound poetry and performance
· Book arts and intermedia arts
· Revisionist histories
Send abstracts by 10th January to concreteandvisualpoetriesATgmailDOTcom