Colleen Thibaudeau featured in Women in Concrete Poetry 1959-1979

“Bell” by Colleen Thibaudeau (1965)

Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979, a new collection from visual arts publisher Primary Information, includes Colleen Thibaudeau’s concrete poems from her 1965 book Lozenges: Poems in the Shapes of Things

Inspired by Italian artist Mirella Bentivoglio’s exhibition of visual and concrete poetry by women at the 1978 Venice Biennale, editors Alex Balgiu and Mónica de la Torre have brought together 50 writers and artists from 17 countries to trace women’s use of this form during the period.

Women in Concrete Poetry 1959-1979 brings together a range of graphic, textual, and photographic approaches to poetic works: https://primaryinformation.org/product/women-in-concrete-poetry-1959-1979/

Thibaudeau’s earlier work used free verse forms, and an interest in concrete poetry came perhaps from her French literature studies and poet Guillaume Apollinaire’s (1880-1918) Calligrammes:

The Calligrammes are an idealisation of free verse poetry and typographical precision in an era when typography is reaching a brilliant end to its career, at the dawn of the new means of reproduction that are the cinema and the phonograph. [Apollinaire in a letter to André Billy, 1916] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calligrammes

Conceived as a small format book, Lozenges: Poems in the Shapes of Things draws on everyday themes and objects from children’s lives – bell, ball, hockey stick, balloon – and invites readers old and young to discover the picture the words make.

“Balloon” by Colleen Thibaudeau (1965)

View the original Lozenges poems here: https://colleenthibaudeau.com/2013/11/26/lozenges-poems-in-the-shapes-of-things/

Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979 is available from PrimaryInformation.org
https://primaryinformation.org/product/women-in-concrete-poetry-1959-1979/