The ‘Poetry Beyond Text’ project formed part of the wider AHRC programme, ‘Beyond Text: Performances, Sounds, Images, Objects’ (2007-12), which involved over 40 individual projects and aimed to ‘create a collaborative, multi-disciplinary research community’.

In a culture marked by rapidly diversifying forms of visual and textual presentation, the interaction of textual and graphic forms is crucial to the development of critical, creative and scientific thought. The ‘Poetry Beyond Text’ project began from the premise that ‘beyond’ does not simply imply transcendence, nor the non-textual. Rather, it implies an exploration of the dynamic relations (at the level of creation and reception) between poetry as text and other elements of poetic works. These other elements include visual images which may be combined with poems (such as photographs, prints, drawings), but also the visual and material properties of poetry itself: the shape of the words on the page (especially in Concrete and Visual Poetry); the feel and structure of the book or other material form (notably in Artists’ Books); the code and intermedial processes of poetry in digital media; the temporal and material aspects of time-based poetic works, including Text Film and Digital Poetry. In another sense, ‘beyond’ also implies the cognitive processes and constraints which enable and frame our responses to poetry, as well as the imaginative and creative processes involved in its making and its reflective interpretation.

As part of the Poetry Beyond Text project, I co-curated an exhibition and series of events at the Scottish Poetry LIbrary in Edinburgh. The exhibition ran from 14th of May to the 15th of July 2011.

Several events took place in conjunction with the exhibition, including readings, talks and workshops:

DERYN REES-JONES + MARION SMITH: 7PM Wednesday 18.05.11

Deryn Rees-Jones’ most recent collection of poems is Falls & Finds (Shoestring, 2008) and Seren has published three collections of her poems, including Quiver (2005). In 2010 she was given a Cholmondeley Award for achievement in poetry. Marion Smith was elected to the Royal Scottish Academy in 1998. Now based in Fife, she has worked at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop, at Glasgow Sculpture Studios and at Glasgow School of Art, and has exhibited in the UK, Scandinavia and Japan. Deryn and Marion discussed their collaboration, Vivam (2011), which took place as part of the Poetry Beyond Text project.

VISUAL POETRY WORKSHOP: 6.30 – 8.30PM Tuesday 24.05.11

Visual poetry is an experimental genre that uses not just words, but also properties such as space, colour, line, and typography to create meaning. Championed by two of Scotland’s most celebrated poets, Ian Hamilton Finlay and Edwin Morgan, it challenges us to ask what poetry is and how different styles of textual presentation change our readings. In this hands-on workshop, which draws on the new Archive of Reading housed at the SPL, we explored visual poetry, looking at how individual works are constructed and considering what happens when we read such poems, before having a go at creating our own visual poems.

VISUAL POETRY WORKSHOP: 2-4 PM Friday 03.06.11, Dumfries

as above

JIM CARRUTH, MICHAEL WAIGHT AND MURRAY ROBERTSON: 7PM Wednesday 07.06.11

Jim Carruth’s first collection Bovine Pastoral was published in 2004. In 2009 he was awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship and won the James McCash poetry competition. A sequence entitled ‘Grace Notes 1959’ was commissioned by The Glasgow Jazz Festival and launched in June 2010. Jim spoke about two recent collaborations: ‘Lot 76’ , created with Michael Waight, and ‘Three Little Words’, created with Murray Robertson. Both collaborations took place as part of the Poetry Beyond Text project.

POETRY WHISPERS: 6PM Wednesday 15.06.11

Poetry Whispers is a creative experiment, run over the last two years, in which local artists and poets have responded to each other’s work, creating imaginative reiterations in their own medium. The works that have resulted shed light on the relationship between visual and textual reception and creativity, and form fascinating documents of how ideas, subjects and moods can be interpreted and transmitted. Guests joined us to see and experience these works, and hear the artists and poets discuss the process of working across media.