Designed Words for a Designed World: The International Concrete Poetry Movement, 1955-1971

Sometimes image, sometimes word, and often both or neither, concrete poetry emerged out of an era of groundbreaking social and technological developments. Television, nuclear weapons, radio transistors, space travel, and colour photography all combined to drastically alter the representation of the world in the period following the Second World War.

While never fully embraced as poetry or as visual art, and often criticized for an aesthetic that veers too close to commercial design, concrete...