As a part of projecteducate, the literature gallery moderators will be posting news articles regarding the literature community and gallery here on deviantART as well as literature in general, covering various topics that we feel deserve more exposure. This article will go over two rather misunderstood genres of poetry here on dA: visual and concrete.


Visual poetry is a genre of poetry where the poem itself is placed within an image (or is functioning as part of the image), helping to strengthen the value and meaning of both the image and the poem itself. A common misconception of visual poetry is that any poem can be placed on any image and that makes the work visual poetry. However, the main strength of a good visual poem is that interaction of the image and the text, where one is reliant on the other in order to function best.



Another use of the visual poetry galleries here on deviantART that users have really jumped on as of late is found poetry. Found poetry is taking pre-published texts (be it a book, magazine, poster, or something else) and making new works out of them by various means of removing or hiding the unimportant text, or else of highlighting the words meant to be in the found poem. The visual aspect of doing this allows users to show what's been made of the original text, while also incorporating an aesthetic aspect to the process itself.




Concrete poetry (also know as shape poetry) is a type of visual poetry that relies on the arrangement or placement of words on a page in order to form a visual image for the reader that strengthens the meaning and content of the work itself. For once, Wikipedia has offered something useful in the form of George Herbert's concrete poem, Easter Wings. As can be seen in the image, the stanzas have been placed so that each one resembles a set of wings.



Because of its reliance solely on the text to form the visual image, this has become a less popular form of writing in the recent past, and particularly here on deviantART, there is a pretty significant lack of proper understanding as to what concrete poetry is, so much so that in browsing through the newest in the concrete poetry subcategory of the General Poetry category, there wasn't one proper example of concrete poetry to be found.

That said, we have a challenge for you. We want you to write a concrete poem, upload it in the concrete poetry category, and note GaioumonBatou with a link to your poem by 8 pm GMT on Saturday, January 15th. One winner will be chosen by the literature GMs, and will receive 100 points.

Minor update: we've noticed that the concrete poetry categories are not currently allowing submissions. We're going to try to get that settled, and in the meanwhile please submit your work to Visual Poetry. :]

(If you're looking for a prompt for visual poetry, HammeredPoetry has a good one going on right now... )

Good luck, and stay tuned for the next article!