Tag: visual

Visual poetry focuses “on the textual materiality of language. The form includes poems written as mathematical equations, collage poems, xerographic pieces that include no words but concentrate on the meaning that has built up within the shapes of letters, and even asemic writings in invented scripts created to mean through shape rather than word. Visual poetry is written for the eye, but its methods and intentions, even in those works most limited in their verbal content, are always poetic, always compelling the reader forward into the transformative power of language” (Geof Huth, “Visual Poetry Today”). For brevity, Heliosparrow will include haiga in this broad category.

Visual-ku, or “visku” a term coined by Cherie Hunter Day, is most simply connoted as intermedia which contains text possessing some of the attributes of haiku, such as brevity, disjunction, etc. Visku includes the traditional haiga (haiku with artwork), as well. Cherie writes: “I see visku as more of a trunk in the hallway. It is primarily visual and may use features of these other forms, but it maintains some aspects of haiku—a reference to nature, discrete units that act as language elements [mora] without actually forming words, movement from element to element. It’s different from haiga, which is more text-based.”