Derek Beaulieu,
Surface Tension, Coach House Books, $23.95
ISBN
9781552454503
Sacha Archer,
cellsea, Timglaset, €12.00
ISBN
9789198725766
…
There’s something very pleasing about small square books. Some of the most prized possessions in my bookshelves are Bob Cobbing’s collection of Selected Poems (Bill Jubobe, Kob Bok, Bob Jubile), with the first book in the bundle, Bill Jubobe, produced beautifully by Coach House Books in 1976. Before I even opened Derek Beaulieu’s Surface Tension (which was published by the same press, 50-ish years later) I knew from the shape and distinctive two-toned cover design that this book was either somehow linked to the Cobbing bundle or that it served as a homage to the distinctive poet of the British Poetry Revival.
Surface Tension is a collection of expansive, symmetrically perfect, and ‘palindromic’ poems, as Beaulieu calls them in the book, which vibrates both nostalgia and inventiveness. The book opens with a series of cursive Letraset concrete poems that subtly occupy the centre of each page. The balanced position of the mirrored letters is very enjoyable to the eye, especially to someone like me who finds pleasure in symmetrical arrangements (see extract from the ‘Kursiv’ section, for instance). As the book progresses, the Letraset poems become more and more unstable: the visual poems are ‘photocopy manipulated, chance-based’, as the poet writes, to appear stretched, fatigued and overwrung. An inkeous metamorphosis takes place: the neat concrete poems gradually erupt onto the page with the letters undergoing expansion – as you flick through the pages, the poems appear scanned and digitally stretched to remind us of the growing effects of technology upon us all. The poem is changed upon coming into contact with the photocopier, just like the poet (or humans, more widely) whose lives are continuously being transformed in technologically and Capitalist-driven Western societies. This approach seems to be very much influenced by Bob Cobbing, whose photocopier poems of the 80s-90s constituted a new poetics and exemplified avant-gardist practice as a breaking out of conventional forms.
For those familiar with Beaulieu’s work already, Letraset, the dry-transfer lettering product that revolutionised graphic design in the 1960s, is a recurring material and approach in this poet’s work (see his Les Figues Press collection, Kern, for example). This intensely physical letter transferring technique which involves scratching off individual letters onto a surface to assemble messages, enhances the industrial dimension of the concrete poems; remnants of a tool once used in advertising—an essentially capitalist enabler—now adorns poetry assemblages. Due to the limitation in buying new packs of Letraset, poets working with this material must rely in old second-hand stock, which is often ‘less-than-perfect’, with some letters being more intact than others. This adds a charm to poems like the ones seen in Surface Tension that showcase typographic materials that were once customary and have now been replaced by more advanced tools. Beaulieu is a poet of our times – his work is not afraid to take risks and echoes what Cobbing called the “need for the awareness and action of taking it all that one step further”.
Like Surface Tension,
Sacha Archer’s Cellsea also experiments with typography and the concrete
form in interesting ways. Beautifully produced by Malmö-based publisher
Timglaset, Cellsea is a square publication with two covers and can be
read in two directions. This stylistic choice alone creates a flow that is
replicated in the poems—each
rubber stamp poem takes you out to sea, the letters pulsate in a way to awaken
the imagination. The book opens with a quote from Jacques-Yves Cousteau which
partly reads, “I held onto a rock and closed my eyes. This was the punishment
of the sea,” which made me think of poems as waves – waves that, depending on
the weather intensity, reveal a blanket of new rocks, cells and other wonders
for us to discover upon searching; each poem carries meaning which awaits to be
uncovered.
Each section (each half
is divided in three sections) opens with the words ‘inhalation’, ‘exhalation’
and ‘return’, enhancing the idea of reading visual poetry as an act of
meditation and discovery. For some, this sounds like a familiar experience when
encountering good poetry, although others may not naturally agree with the
meditative and healing effects of poetry reading and making. As a reader, I understood
these words to be instructions from the poet, and enjoyed each suggested pause
which, in my opinion, was well positioned in the book.
The first few concrete poems in Cellsea are small and contained, and are coloured in a mixture of blue, green and black inks (see poem ‘Phase 5’, for example). As the reader turns each page, the poems expand, with the letters stretching out and claiming the whiteness of the page – it should be noted that the poems eventually become monochrome – another technique indicative of movement and progression. In the poem ‘13th Position’ for example, the letters ‘U’, ‘E’ and ‘R’ (amongst other letters) seem to have escaped their contained space, thus creating a visually satisfying buzz on the page. Repetition seems important for concrete poems such as these ones – in the same way that a coastal landscape is adorned with patterns and colours, these poems also have their own unique rhythm and standing.
Archer’s choice to handstamp the letters in Cellsea reveal another layer that makes this visual poetry book so fascinating; stamping is an act that predisposes physical force, and in a way points to the violence of the wave-like poems. In the same way an inked stamp leaves a footprint when it comes in contact with the page, a sea wave alters the coastal landscape one cell at a time. Archer’s letters are swept away by ocean storm – this, to me, alludes to the power of language to change the world.
Unique in its use of movement, typography and approach to book design, Cellsea offers a meditative yet unpredictable energy, capturing the turmoil and, simultaneously, the beauty of temporal spaces. Archer’s concrete poems are visual masterpieces and Timglaset did a brilliant job in presenting them in the best possible way.
