During his two year tenure, your new Hampshire Poet - Damian Kelly-Basher - will be writing a series of blog posts for us sharing what he has been up to, telling us his poetic plans for the future, and inviting you to get involved in poetry in Hampshire. Read on to find out what's happening in Damian's world!
In this blog, Damian looks at Concrete Poetry.
Concrete Poetry describes written poetry that is shaped to represent the poem’s subject. The subject can be physical (an object or event) or not (an emotion or idea).
From the start of the 1900s experimental poets, like Futurists and Dadaists, moved words and lines around the page to challenge the rules for written poetry.
From the 1950s onwards poets used ‘new’ tech, like typewriters or photocopiers, to make word combinations work as visual art. But poets had played with the shape of poems from the time of the Ancient Greeks and Romans.
Here’s an example from 1633 in the shape of angels’ wings:
Shaping the text can also give an extra visual clue to the poem’s message or it can represent an image that alters the meaning of the written poem.
My concrete poem example (below) describes common mental disorders that affect 1 in 6 adults and 1 in 4 children. I squashed the letters in the first word to show low mood and jumbled the letters to represent confusion, in the second.
Writing Exercise:
Take a blank page. Write a poem that shapes the words into patterns that represent a subject.
Have fun. Writing is about having fun with words.
Damian Kelly-Basher is Hampshire Poet Laureate 2024-26. The appointment of the Hampshire Poet takes place every two years and is jointly led by Winchester Poetry Festival and Hampshire Cultural Trust. The position of Hampshire Poet provides the opportunity for a Hampshire-based poet to undertake commissions, lead workshops and give readings and talks throughout the county, as well as acting as an advocate for poetry and poets.
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