(B3) Concrete Poetry: Initial Ideas & Formalising Brief

Reaching out to poet:

Sent Myles (@itsamemyleo) a message to check if using his poems was okay with him for the project. Also wanted to open a dialogue incase I wanted any further things from him for the project since the direction is going into a more performance based route. 

Message sent:

Reply: 

Very positive, and happy to help if there is anything else I needed for the project.

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> Now I need to think about the brief and clarifying what I'm aiming to do and what the outcome is. 

Mindmapping Thoughts for Brief

Formalising Brief:

Brief:

How can we forge new ways of experiencing poetry that are more engaging?

-   An investigation into the impact of visual alterations when applied to text.

 

To design and present poetry that engages the audience in a new way, using techniques from concrete poetry and surrounding research. 

The definition of Concrete Poetry: ‘Poetry in which the meaning or effect is conveyed partly or wholly by visual means, using patterns of words or letters and other typographical devices.’

Background/Considerations:

-   Audience: Creatives, people interested in poetry or who want to get into poetry. -   Consider the relationship between the poet and the poem, taking inspiration from not only the words but when and how they’re said. -   '…concrete poetry deals with the relation between the visible form and the intellectual substance of words.' (Poets.org, 2005)

-   The brief will allow me to experiment with type in a manner that isn’t restrictive, I personally find type an intimidating medium to work with so will be using this brief to forge a new relationship and way of working with text in my practice.

Deliverables:

A visual representation of poetry exploring themes of performance and concrete type.

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Initial Ideas:

Poems:

1. ‘A thing about arms’:

I think it’d be good if your arm just kept growing because you could leave it behind, like a breadcrumb road throughout your life arming its way through all the places you’ve left and can now pull yourself back to just this long stretch of gradually aging flesh, in places that hold both your memories… and also now your long arm.

You and your long arm, “There they are!” - They’d say

Just keep it growing it could go so far a long arm, down into the sea to help a panicked diver to the surface, up into space to help an astronaut who lost their way.

If your arm kept growing long however far apart we got our hands could still hold on.

(this one is spoken on a video on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/CJwlYbYA3tx/)

2. ‘I stole a game of scrabble’:

I stole a game of scrabble

On the dashboard was the letter e

I added it to car

To know you care

The letter s

Was down the backseat

Cos i scare easy

And when i rearrange them after finding the letter d

It felt sacred 

To drive away from anything

We were gone

The letter g

Fell off over speed bumps.

(this one is typed up on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-ueAS5gC56/)

Animating to demonstrate the speech from the text:

Simple, effective, could be pushed further.

- Is this the right poem to use? The original already had slight alterations to the text to make it more interesting to read.

Could the arm poem be better as it has more visuals connected to it but also can respond to the way the poem is spoken to arrange it?

Should go through the poem and edit the text to how it sounds, then work with this (see below).

^ Annotating the text relating to speech.

Try translating this to a visual (wanting to keep the closeness between performance art and concrete poetry in mind through the development of poem aesthetic). 

Was listening to the poem and representing visually the differences in speech.
Feel as though this way of presenting the text in a new and interesting way, but also one that represents how the poet would talk through their own work. 

Experimenting more with different ways of presenting the sounds through the text.

Adding in different weights to show different ways of speech.

• Bold for lengthened speech
• Italic for exaggerated speech

- feel it does work but would work better if the audio was attached, but does this defeat the purpose? 

- The underscores present a break more than a stretch, could try different technique. 

Moved the underscored text up to present a sense of extension rather than a break. Feel as though this is more successful but what would work better is if the line came out of the middle of the letter that was extended.

- Wanting to avoid manipulating the letterforms for now but think there could be a different way of displaying the idea of an extension than this. 

Also moved the exaggerated letters up in a word where this sound was emphasised. 

Adding in compressed text and spread out text to display the speed at which the words were said.

- This works for a static presentation of the text but there may be other ways to do this with a dynamic representation of the text that involved movement.

Here the text is simplified back but images were introduced in place of text.

- Think this has potential but would like a more experimental use of imagery to be tested.

From experiments so far:
> Want to break the text up and see how effective these could be.

> Start introducing more imagery, need to think more about how this could happen.
> Should look into fluxus and how principles from this could influence the visuals.

> Need to let go and be more experimental!