When Poems Become Pictures

an exploration of the bridge between art and language

Chapter 1: Introduction

Photo by Europeana on Unsplash

"Poema pictura loquens, pictura poema silens."

- Simonides of Ceos (c. 556 – 468 BC); Poetry is a speaking picture, painting a silent poetry.

In a world where words often rush by unnoticed, concrete poetry invites us to pause and see language in a new light. By transforming text into visual art, these poems challenge the traditional boundaries of literature, redefining what a poem must look like. The poem begins to take life with the reader’s act of reading and becomes a soul of its own with the reader’s every interpretation.

Concrete poetry is defined as the poetic form in which the textual elements are arranged to create a visual pattern. While traditional stanzaic forms of poetry focus on rhyme and metre, concrete poetry gives more emphasis onto how the poem is presented on the page. The negative spaces in poetry, the white spaces, become an integral part of the poem and contribute as much to the poem as the words do.

Calligrams could be considered a form of concrete poetry, one in which the textual elements are arranged to create a recognisable image or picture, one that is usually the subject of the poem. Thus, the poet turns into a painter—the words become the paint, the page becomes the canvas and the reader is presented with an art piece that combines two worlds that otherwise seem far apart.  In doing so, the poem blurs the line between visual arts and language, creating a unique reading experience.

Concrete poetry has deep roots that can be traced back to various ancient traditions. Look at this carving of a chariot on the walls of an old temple in Tamizh Nadu. This is a kind of interactive concrete poetry. When the letters are put together and read in a particular order, they form the poem that is written right below the chariot.

Such visual poems/texts are found in many ancient cultures across Greece, Rome and other parts of India to name a few places. Despite this form existing in many ancient traditions, the credit for bringing calligrams to the modern eye is given to Guillaume Apollinaire. 

Apollinaire’s calligrams

Another very famous shaped poem is The Altar by George Herbert which gave rise to several poets trying their hand at what is commonly called the altar poem.

Chapter 2: Form and Function

In this section, we’ll consider the visual impact that such poems are able to bring to the page. Concrete poems are often more than just about the words; the shape and structure communicates something essential to our understanding of the philosophy of the poem.

1. Matrilineage [umbilicus] by Sarah Ghazal Ali

This contrapuntal poem uses the central white space as a line, a cord to represent the linea nigra, also known as the pregnancy line. When speaking of how the poem came to be for Poetry Daily, the poet said: In “Matrilineage [Umbilicus]” I become—begin to be. Between the mothers that came, and those that will—now, here, I am. The poem traces generations of women, the matrilineage, and has them witness this vulnerable moment of motherhood. 

Matrilineage (umblicus) by Sarah Ghazal Ali, taken from Poets.Org

2. Matrilineage [Recovered] by Sarah Ghazal Ali

Matrilineage (Recovered) by Sarah Ghazal Ali, from Frontier Poetry

This poem is shaped like that of a family tree, a tracing of the maternal lineage through poetry. One of the things that deeply resonated with me about this poem was the inclusion of blank spaces by using the empty square brackets. When asked about the poem for Frontier Poetry, the poet said: On top of this, I learned a few years ago that Muslim women are often excluded from family trees. When an aunt shared ours with me, I was devastated to find that I didn’t exist, that I could locate my uncles and brothers but not myself or my mother. Thus, the poem pays homage to the erased foremothers through the inclusion of a blank space. Though the spaces are empty, it leaves behind a root within the family tree to acknowledge the existence of the matrilineage.

3. What garden do your stories grow? by D.W. Baker, after Angelo Mao

D.W. Baker’s poem was inspired by the tree poems of Angelo Mao. I love the clever use of bold text to represent the tree’s bark. Apart from its visual quality, the poem opens pathways for conversation surrounding the two kinds of text within a tree poem—the tree bark and its leaves. What does it mean for a text to be included within the bark? And what does it mean for it to be a part of the foliage? 

What garden do your stories grow? by D.W. Baker, from Heimat Review

In “What garden do your stories grow?” the poet quotes Franklin D. Roosevelt’s words as the tree’s bark and the leaves coming from the poet are now in conversation with what the American President once said. 

4. Footnotes to Being Nigerian and an Arrow at full draw by Iheoma J. Uzomba

Footnotes to Being Nigerian and an Arrow at full drawn by Iheoma J. Uzomba, from Palette Poetry

Find the complete poem here.

Iheoma J. Uzomba’s poem features the diagram of a bow and arrow, strung to its complete extent. Different parts of the bow and arrow setup are labelled with numbers from 1 to 4 which are then explored in the footnotes of the poem. By using this innovative structure, the poet is able to redefine the complexities of familial history, juxtaposing it with the weapon. 

5. l(a... (a leaf falls on loneliness) by E. E. Cummings

l(a

le

af

fa

ll

s)

one

l

iness

Behaving like a photograph, this poem captures a quiet and vulnerable moment—a leaf falling. The poem says nothing more than this: a leaf falling on loneliness. However, the way the text is arranged mimics the movement of the lone leaf falling helplessly onto the ground. This in a way, reflects human solitude and gives it a visual representation.

6. r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r by E. E. Cummings

r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r by E. E. Cummings

This poem has been the subject of discussion by many poets and critics alike. The first line of the poem rearranges the word grasshopper to read rpophessagr, making us pay more attention to the little insect as an entity. Someone ‘looks’ at the grasshopper and it comes to exist yet again as ppegorhrass after which the insect takes a leap. The structuring of the word leap, resembles the physical motion of a leap. The erratic nature of a grasshopper’s leaps are recreated with the :l followed by the line broken eA and the !p:.

In the end we see something arriving and once again, the movement of arrival is reflected in the poet’s choice of letter arrangement with the a - (r - rIvInG. Eventually, we witness a becoming, a rearranging in the rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly and the grasshopper has finally come to be.

7. Map (Mourning) Poem by Ivi Hua

excerpt from Map (Mourning) Poem by Ivi Hua

Read the complete poem here.

Another poet who uses surprising form in their poems is Ivi Hua. Take a look at this map poem for example. The poem features a ‘map’ with an entrance, exit and the traveller, almost like a real map which shows one where they are and where to go from there on. The map is marked with numbers, each of which are explored outside of the map in the poem. The map itself represents a country or a mass of land bordered by the same phrase in repetition: it gets better it gets worse. 

8. Graph Poem by Ivi Hua

Excerpt from Graph Poem by Ivi Hua

Read the complete poem here.

This exemplary poem features a graph of parallel lines with coordinates marked along the x and y axis. Each location is then explored to reveal heart-wrenching truths which makes one wonder about its significance within the coordinates of the graph. The poem also features an imaginary plane at the very end.

9. Calendar Poems

In The Year of Our Making & Unmaking is an award-winning chapbook written by Frederick Speers available to be read for free through Frontier Poetry. Staying true to the chapbook's name, the entire book is filled with poems that are shaped like a calendar's pages.

10. Original Poems

If there’s something I love more than reading poems that forego traditional form, it is writing them. One such poem that is very dear to me is A Mosaic of Trinkets that I had written a few months ago, now published in Londemere Lit. The poem is in the form of a mosaic painting, one in which the blocks of text represent individual stained glass pieces while the white spaces between them represent the cracks that are observed when mosaics are stuck together.

Chapter 3: Final Thoughts

Critics of concrete poetry often argue that it prioritises form over substance, reducing words to mere visual objects rather than carriers of deep meaning. Some view it as a gimmick where poets emphasise style at the expense of emotional resonance. However, I believe that its visual form adds depth and complexity, creating layers of meaning beyond the text. By forcing readers to engage with the layout and design, concrete poetry challenges conventional reading practices, encouraging interpretation from multiple perspectives.

In the modern era, the digital revolution has further expanded the possibilities of concrete poetry. Interactive and animated forms have emerged, allowing poets to push the boundaries of language and form even further. With digital tools, poems can morph, shift, or respond to user interaction, making them dynamic and immersive. This evolution reaffirms that concrete poetry is not just an avant-garde experiment of the past but a living, evolving form that continues to bridge the gap between art and text in ways that resonate with contemporary audiences. Voidspace Magazine is one of my personal favourite repositories of interactive arts that include the creative word.

Concrete poetry stands at a unique intersection where the boundaries between visual art and language dissolve. Unlike traditional poetry, where words carry meaning, concrete poetry elevates the spatial arrangement of text, transforming letters, words, punctuation and white spaces into visual elements. The poem is no longer something simply to be read, but something to be seen, felt, and experienced as a whole. Such poems often draw inspiration from visual art such as sculptures, paintings, photography, printmaking and goes forward to mimic them. This amalgamation of art and language creates a multisensory reading experience, where the form and subject of the poem are inseparable. Thus, the poem exists once on the page and begins to come to life over and over again with every eye that reads it and goes to live on with every heart that holds the poem close.