The Future of Concrete Poetry Forum: Neo-Concrete or New Concrete?

 

"mind less" (2022) by John M. Bennett & Shawn McMurtagh 

The Future of Concrete Poetry Forum: Neo-Concrete or New Concrete?

Respondents: Cleo Allan (USA), Miekal And (USA), John M. Bennett (USA), Volodymyr Bilyk (Ukraine), Andrew Brenza (USA), Neil Gordon (USA), Patrick Playter Hartigan (USA), Joel Lipman (USA), Serse Luigetti (Italy), Valerie MacEwan (USA), John Richard McConnochie (Australia), Jonny Neverwas (Canada), Cheryl Penn (South Africa), Stephen Perkins (USA); Alicia Starr Ryan (USA), De Villo Sloan (USA) (Moderator), Kristine Snodgrass (USA), Daniel E. Stetson (USA), Nico Vassilakis (USA), Chris Wells (USA), Tamara Wyndham (USA).

Edited transcript from July 13-16, 2022 for the New Concrete (Neo-Concrete) Poetry blog.

Valerie MacEwan: Neo.

DVS to VME: Vote registered. I would go for Neo-Concrete in a second myself EXCEPT that it is also a term used in music and elsewhere. I fear “brand confusion.” Or maybe that’s good. Let’s see how the other sages weigh in.

VME to DVS: Oh, good point. Neo might be over-used. Nouveau?

Patrick Playter Hartigan: New. Fresher. “I love the smell of new concrete in the mooooooorning.”

Nico Vassilakas: I go with Noncrete, but that’s just me.

DVS to NV: Thanks. We’ll see. I am truly curious.

Kristine Snodgrass: Neo - that is what you usually say so go with that no matter if it is used elsewhere - De Villo, gut.

DVS to KS: Queen Kristine has spoken! The scale is tipping! Please share your views, though “that is what you usually say” isn’t logos in my humble opinion.

De Villo Sloan: Back in IUOMA days I think it was Diane Keys and some of us vowed to use so much confusing jargon and interject so many fake “movements” into the current avant that no one would know up from down. Be careful what you wish for. Ask Jim Leftwich.

Serse Luigetti: Neo?

DVS to SL: Be assertive: Neo.

John Richard McConnochie: Neo.

Patrick Playter Hartigan: So, ‘nuf-concrete is on the table still?

DVS to PPH: Patrick, if “Neo-Concrete” survives, your Concrete Formalist group on Facebook will be remembered as a haven for this stuff.

Patrick Playter Hartigan: I am already eternally grateful! Even New Grateful!

"untitled" (2019) by Cheryl Penn

Nico Vassilakas: Why regurgitate concrete? Why try making it new? New will always tarnish. Neo is a bit over the top and purposelessly decorative. Depends if you see a lineage, an actual connection to concrete. You can blur your eyes to find those tendrils, but maybe you want a new thing, beyond concrete. Leave that shit behind, deep in the past. Or not. You can make it your cousin, your family relation - then there ain’t no neo just nexto and that’s cool too, I suppose.

DVS to NV: I think that is an excellent point that reveals an underlying issue of importance: Can you locate a tendency among visual poets today strong enough to warrant a New Concrete or Neo-Concrete group designation? That is, are there visual poets working within the older genre of Concrete Poetry? Are they adding to the body of Concrete Poetry? Are they reacting against or correcting inherent flaws in Concrete Poetry (as Postmodernism so famously did with Modernism)? I think I see it. Maybe. I see the terms used elsewhere, for sure. Kenneth Goldsmith named “New Concrete” a few years ago. I know there are people who WANT to see us go [back?] to Concrete Poetry. But those are, perhaps, self-serving interests? However, I already see a thin line between Neo-Concrete & Vispo. Perhaps asemics and New Concrete are just eccentric names for contemporary vispo?

Andrew Brenza: To me, concrete poetry obviates a purely linear conception of time, rendering neo or new as misnomers at best. I'm after concretions by concretins as we dissolve in the quantum universe.

"a little thought evaporating" (2022) by Andrew Brenza

John Richard McConnochie to DVS: I am not my name.

Nico Vassilakis: Seems to me pro concreters are bound by type or letraset or design or grid constraint or rigidity. That’s fine, but a conservative approach to me. I like looking at it, I guess, and am impressed by the divine waste of time. It doesn’t quite reach me deeply. These are only my opinions, of course. The concretes were prone to ultra minimalism, the sparest pun, the end of word before it dissolves into letter snake movement - the result of staring (as I like to say it) or the pre-word.

Miekal And: Conconcrete.

DVS to MA: That has to count, like, 10X one vote.

Stephen Perkins: Cement.

DVS to SP: Damned Neoists can't be serious. Post-Neo, I think.

Tamara Wyndham: New Concrete.

Kristine Snodgrass: On the other hand: Why is this a topic of conversation?

John Richard McConnochie to KS: Because DVS wants to categorize?

DVS to KS and JRMC: Sooner or later someone is going to have to deal with it plus I have a new blog

Neil Gordon: New. Neo is stuck in the matrix.

Jonny Neverwas: Re-enforced concrete is stronger, no? 

DVS to JN: A concrete block walks into a bar...

JN to DVS: … and meets the metal rod of his dreams. They tie the knot with steel wire and bond forever...

Cover collab by Kristine Snodgrass & Andrew Brenza (2022)

Chris Wells: Post-Concrete. Discrete. If it’s Neo-Concrete let’s agree not to call it “neo-con” for short, though.

DVS to CW: “Post” now that's overdone: pomo, post-Fluxus, post-Neo…

Cheryl Penn: Neo-Concrete. That’s how you began isn’t it? - Be brave. NAME IT!!!

Alicia Starr Ryan: Neo.

Andrew Brenza: I consider my work digital concrete.

Nico Vassilakas to AB: That consideration sounds appropriate to your work.

Volodymyr Bilyk: Who cares? Can’t build a wall with neither of them.

Cleo Allan: Neo.

Daniel E. Stetson: How about the cubist model... analytic and synthetic....

Joel Lipman: I learned in my 20s from concrete work, but am not of that named movement. Well beyond it conceptually by a good half-century. Poetry opens to all forms - visual patterns and lexical patterns, lines and clusters, fragments and sentences, mechanical tools and hand-writ letterings. New formalisms bind.

-sSs-