Anti-poetry is a literary movement that advocates breaking with the usual conventions of traditional poetry. Early proponents of anti-poetry include the Chilean Nicanor Parra [1] and the Greek Elias Petropoulos. [2]
Parra, known as the father of anti-poetry, published his first collection of antipoems in 1954, [3] rejecting the conventional belief that verse holds a mystical power. His poems have been described as prose-like, irreverent, and illuminating of human existential concerns. [4]
Petropoulos sought to describe the art of anti-poetry in his Berlin notebook containing verses that included intentionally-made mistakes of prosody, grammar, and rhyme. An inspiration for many of his poems was the difficult atmosphere of the wall-divided Berlin where he resided. Petropoulos had come to believe that poetry centered on love and desire was too gentle for modern literature – that it was time for an anti-poetry incorporating anti-sentimental feelings. [5]
During 5th century B.C, theatrical sketches called mimes were being introduced with ideas and languages that were determined to be anti-plays. There had been times when poets would turn against his/her own poetry in an antagonistic way. Anti poetry can be found and cited from the first poets of Italy and also (Dante, followed by Petrarch) as well as some other places in Europe. They made the decision to compose verses in vernacular rather than Latin, and were therefore behaving in an anti-poetic manner. Many playwrights, including William Shakespeare and Moliere, were cited for using anti-poetry within a verse play. [5]
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Anti-poetry has been picked up in the 21st century. Modern anti-poetry carries the same spirit as the early writers, but is still distinct in nature. In modern anti-poetry, punctuation is minimal and only used as necessary. Formatting and capitalization are simple and friendly to the eye. It also incorporates new vocabulary and depicts poetic images and scenes.
Taking inspiration from Dada and performance poetry anti-poetry reading performances have gained momentum in the Prague, Czech Republic. [6] [7] The Prague-based performance and poetics collective Object:Paradise began in 2019 by Tyko Say with the mission to make "poetry readings more inclusive and inter-disciplinary and less restricted to art cafes and turtlenecks". [8] [9] Since then, the collective has hosted performance poetry events which feature a variety of disciplines happening at the same time to highlight "everything that happens at a poetry reading besides the poetry reading itself". [10] [11] [12]
Dada or Dadaism was an anti-establishment art movement that developed in 1915 in the context of the Great War and the earlier anti-art movement. Early centers for dadaism included Zürich and Berlin. Within a few years, the movement had spread to New York City and a variety of artistic centers in Europe and Asia.
Nicanor Segundo Parra Sandoval was a Chilean physicist and poet. He has been considered one of the most influential Spanish-language Chilean poets of the 20th century.
Poetry is a form of literary art that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, literal or surface-level meanings. Any particular instance of poetry is called a poem and is written by a poet.
Performance poetry is poetry that is specifically composed for or during a performance before an audience. It covers a variety of styles and genres.
Modernist poetry in English started in the early years of the 20th century with the appearance of the Imagists. Like other modernists, Imagist poets wrote in reaction to the perceived excesses of Victorian poetry, and its emphasis on traditional formalism and ornate diction.
Spoken word is an oral poetic performance art that is based mainly on the poem as well as the performer's aesthetic qualities. It is a 20th-century continuation of an ancient oral artistic tradition that focuses on the aesthetics of recitation and word play, such as the performer's live intonation and voice inflection. Spoken word is a "catchall" term that includes any kind of poetry recited aloud, including poetry readings, poetry slams, jazz poetry, pianologues, musical readings, and hip hop music, and can include comedy routines and prose monologues. Unlike written poetry, the poetic text takes its quality less from the visual aesthetics on a page, but depends more on phonaesthetics, or the aesthetics of sound.
Paradise Regained is a poem by English poet John Milton, first published in 1671. The volume in which it appeared also contained the poet's closet drama Samson Agonistes. Paradise Regained is connected by name to his earlier and more famous epic poem Paradise Lost, with which it shares similar theological themes; indeed, its title, its use of blank verse, and its progression through Christian history recall the earlier work. However, this effort deals primarily with the temptation of Christ as recounted in the Gospel of Luke.
Neo-Dada was a movement with audio, visual and literary manifestations that had similarities in method or intent with earlier Dada artwork. It sought to close the gap between art and daily life, and was a combination of playfulness, iconoclasm, and appropriation. In the United States the term was popularized by Barbara Rose in the 1960s and refers primarily, although not exclusively, to work created in that and the preceding decade. There was also an international dimension to the movement, particularly in Japan and in Europe, serving as the foundation of Fluxus, Pop Art and Nouveau réalisme.
French poetry is a category of French literature. It may include Francophone poetry composed outside France and poetry written in other languages of France.
Hedwig Irene Gorski is an American performance poet and an avant-garde artist who labels her aesthetic as "American futurism." The term "performance poetry," a precursor to slam poetry, is attributed to her. It originated in press releases for experimental spoken word and conceptual theater Gorski created during 1979. She is a first-generation Polish American academic scholar and accomplished creative writer. The innovative poetry, prose, drama, and audio works are published and produced in a variety of media using standard and experimental forms.
Icelandic literature refers to literature written in Iceland or by Icelandic people. It is best known for the sagas written in medieval times, starting in the 13th century. As Icelandic and Old Norse are almost the same, and because Icelandic works constitute most of Old Norse literature, Old Norse literature is often wrongly considered a subset of Icelandic literature. However, works by Norwegians are present in the standard reader Sýnisbók íslenzkra bókmennta til miðrar átjándu aldar, compiled by Sigurður Nordal on the grounds that the language was the same.
The Devětsil was an association of Czech avant-garde artists, founded in 1920 in Prague. From 1923 on there was also an active group in Brno. The movement discontinued its activities in 1930.
Spam poetry, sometimes called spoetry, is poetic verse composed primarily from the subject lines or content of spam e-mail messages.
Vítězslav Nezval was a Czech poet, writer and translator. He was one of the most prolific avant-garde Czech writers in the first half of the 20th century and a co-founder of the Surrealist movement in Czechoslovakia.
Ecopoetry is any poetry with a strong ecological or environmental emphasis or message. Many poets and poems in the past have expressed ecological concerns, but only recently has there been an established term to describe them; there is now, in English-speaking poetry, a recognisable subgenre of poetry, termed Ecopoetry, which can, on occasions, form a major strand of a writer's career, preoccupy entire poetry collections, or be the theme of international competitions. Prior to the term, work embodying what we would now instantly recognise as 'an ecological message' had no agreed banner to fly under, but nevertheless the increasing presence of work having an 'ecopoetic' stance exerted an influence on, and gave impetus to, the subsequent subgenre. Examples of influential texts include: the book Ecopoemas of Nicanor Parra (1982); The White Poem by Jay Ramsay & Carole Bruce ; Bosco ; and Heavy Water: a poem for Chernobyl . Other early publications include The Green Book of Poetry by Ivo Mosley. This included over three hundred poems from around the world, many translated by Mosley, and helped to define and establish the genre.
The poetic style of John Milton, also known as Miltonic verse, Miltonic epic, or Miltonic blank verse, was a highly influential poetic structure popularized by Milton. Although Milton wrote earlier poetry, his influence is largely grounded in his later poems: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes.
The Coast of Poets is a cultural space in the Valparaíso Region of Chile, named for four world-renowned Chilean poets.
Poetism was an artistic program in Czechoslovakia which belongs to the avant-garde; it has never spread abroad. It was invented by members of the avant-garde association Devětsil, mainly Vítězslav Nezval and Karel Teige. It is mainly known in the literature form, but it was also intended as a lifestyle. Its poems were apolitical, optimistic, emotional, and proletaristic, describing ordinary, real things and everyday life, dealing mainly with the present time. It uses no punctuation.
Object:Paradise is a performance and poetics collective based in Prague, Czech Republic, formed by writers Tyko Say and Jeff Milton in 2018. The non-profit collective produces anti-poetry happenings, installations, and other multi-media works regarding their manifesto which calls to make poetry readings more dynamic, interdisciplinary, and contextually-dependent, in the name of a language happening.