Text-Centric Concrete Pattern & Shape Poetry by Patrick Plyter Hartigan (USA) & Mike Ferguson (UK)

By Patrick Plyter Hartigan (Portland, Oregon, USA)

(November 2021) (Image courtesy of the poet)

Constrained Concrete:  Text-Centric Visual Poetry

 by Patrick Plyter Hartigan & Mike Ferguson

Patrick Plyter Hartigan and Mike Ferguson are two poets associated with the New Concrete Poetry who share poetic sensibilities. 

Both their styles are grounded firmly in the "old" concrete. In a time when many visual poets - sometimes me - use the old modes to create undecipherable asemics or leave linguistic meaning behind altogether to create abstract art with typewriters, Playter Hartigan and Ferguson remain, steadfastly, text-centered. 

"Classic Concrete" Poetry seeks balance and harmony between form and content. Modernity has challenged this notion and created new avenues. John Hollander's poem "Swan and Shadow" is a textbook example of this Classical golden ideal of concrete poetry. 

In the poem above by Plyter Hartigan, we see a deeply intimate, almost confessional, expression worthy to stand among fine examples of the Western lyric tradition. He carefully chisels forms that are both stanzas and offer the geometric shape-recognition of pattern poetry. Form and content interact in a dance that transforms both components. 

While Plyter Hartigan does a highly individualistic poetic sculpture, Mike Ferguson - also a critically acclaimed traditional poet - accesses the more mechanistic processes of language deconstruction and disassociation that is achieved through pattern poetry repetition. With great aplomb, he uses the favored device of all concrete poets: Repetition.  Ferguson's text juxtapositions and syntactic reconfigurations create smooth, not jarring, jazz-like variations.

Both poets' careful selection of font and then the creation of structures indicate that their tools (some digital) have a far greater range than the Brazilian concrete poets of the 1950s. Text-centric poems are yet another new avenue ripe for further exploration.

- De Villo Sloan

July 4, 2025

Elbridge, New York, USA

By Mike Ferguson (Devon, England) (July 2025) 

(Image courtesy of the poet)

By Mike Ferguson (July 2025) 

(Image courtesy of the poet)