Anti-poetry is an art movement that attempts to break away from the normal conventions of traditional poetry. Early proponents of anti-poetry include the Chilean Nicanor Parra [1] and the Greek Elias Petropoulos.
Parra, known as the father of anti-poetry, published his first collection of antipoems in 1954 [2] and sought to reject the belief that verse holds any mystical power. The poems have been described as prose-like, irreverent, and illuminating the problems of human existence. [3]
Elias Petropoulos had tried to describe the art of Anti-poetry. This was in his “notebook” in Berlin; containing verses that included intentionally made mistakes in regard to prosody, grammar and rhyme. The inspiration for many of Petropoulos poems had been the difficult atmosphere of the wall divided German metropolis where he was residing. Petropoulos had long come to the conclusion that poetry about love and desires was becoming too gentle for the literature of modern age. Rather it was time to introduce anti-poetry by incorporating anti-sentimentalism feelings and reaction within poems. [4]
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 had made the decision to compose verses in vernacular rather than Latin; they were behaving in an anti-poetic manner. Many Playwrights which include both William Shakespeare and Moliere were some of the writers cited for using Anti-poetry within their work now and then in the midst of a verse play. [4]
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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. [5] [6] 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". [7] [8] 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". [9] [10] [11]
Dada or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire. New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Paris. Dadaist activities lasted until the mid 1920s.
An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants.
Nicanor Segundo Parra Sandoval was a Chilean poet and physicist. He was considered one of the most influential Chilean poets of the Spanish language in the 20th century, often compared with Pablo Neruda. Parra described himself as an "anti-poet," due to his distaste for standard poetic pomp and function; after recitations he would exclaim "Me retracto de todo lo dicho".
Poetry, also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, a prosaic ostensible meaning. A poem is a literary composition, written by a poet, using this principle.
A happening is a performance, event, or situation art, usually as performance art. The term was first used by Allan Kaprow during the 1950s to describe a range of art-related events.
Performance poetry is a broad term, encompassing a variety of styles and genres. In brief, it is poetry that is specifically composed for or during a performance before an audience. During the 1980s, the term came into popular usage to describe poetry written or composed for performance rather than print distribution, mostly open to improvisation.
Found poetry is a type of poetry created by taking words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages from other sources and reframing them by making changes in spacing and lines, or by adding or deleting text, thus imparting new meaning. The resulting poem can be defined as treated: changed in a profound and systematic manner; or untreated: virtually unchanged from the order, syntax and meaning of the poem.
Modernist poetry in English started in the early years of the 20th century with the appearance of the Imagists. In common with many other modernists, these poets wrote in reaction to the perceived excesses of Victorian poetry, with its emphasis on traditional formalism and ornate diction. In many respects, their criticism echoes what William Wordsworth wrote in Preface to Lyrical Ballads to instigate the Romantic movement in British poetry over a century earlier, criticising the gauche and pompous school which then pervaded, and seeking to bring poetry to the layman.
Spoken word refers to 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, 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.
The Language poets are an avant-garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The poets included: Bernadette Mayer, Leslie Scalapino, Stephen Rodefer, Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, Ron Silliman, Barrett Watten, Lyn Hejinian, Tom Mandel, Bob Perelman, Rae Armantrout, Alan Davies, Carla Harryman, Clark Coolidge, Hannah Weiner, Susan Howe, James Sherry, and Tina Darragh.
Jerome Rothenberg is an American poet, translator and anthologist, noted for his work in the fields of ethnopoetics and performance poetry.
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.
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.
Latin American poetry is the poetry written by Latin American authors. Latin American poetry is often written in Spanish, but is also composed in Portuguese, Mapuche, Nahuatl, Quechua, Mazatec, Zapotec, Ladino, English, and Spanglish. The unification of Indigenous and imperial cultures produced a unique and extraordinary body of literature in this region. Later with the introduction of African slaves to the new world, African traditions greatly influenced Latin American poetry. Many great works of poetry were written in the colonial and pre-colonial time periods, but it was in the 1960s that the world began to notice the poetry of Latin America. Through the modernismo movement, and the international success of Latin American authors, poetry from this region became increasingly influential.
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.
Raúl Zurita Canessa is a Chilean poet. He won the Chilean National Prize for Literature in 2000.
The Coast of Poets is a cultural space in the Valparaíso Region of Chile, named for four world-renowned Chilean poets.
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.