Concrete Poetry: A 21st-century Anthology

Read now in the creative commons

This book might be more accurately called a ‘primer’ or ‘reader’, rather than an anthology, as it should be an essential text on any introductory reading list relating to concrete poetry or the twentieth-century literary avant-garde more generally. Perloff’s introduction is a detailed and analytical account of the genre, tracing its international development from the 1950s to the present day. The selection of poems grew out of a 2017 exhibition curated by the editor – in her words, it singles out some of the leading practitioners of concrete poetry rather than aiming to be a comprehensive scholarly retrospective of the form.