Concrete Poetry vs Lettrism
具体詩／コンクリート・ポエトリー / レトリスム
Both sit in Experimental Typography, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. One is layout and the other style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Concrete Poetry
Treats the placement, repetition, blank space and sound of words as the poem itself, not only what they mean.
Lettrism
A Paris-born movement that freed the letter from its duty of carrying meaning, treating sound and shape themselves as the material of the work. From surfaces paved with unreadable characters, to hypergraphy's proliferating signs, to marks scratched directly into film stock, it expanded the experiment of handling letters as physical matter.
| Concrete Poetry | Lettrism | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1950s–1970s | 1946–1970s |
| Family | Experimental Typography | Experimental Typography |
| Kind | Layout | Style |
| Cues | Repeated words / Shapes made of letters / Large blanks / Dismantled reading order | Surfaces paved with unreadable characters / Handwriting mixed with type / Hypergraphy of proliferating signs / Letters handled as painterly material |
| Best used for | Print pieces where a few words carry the reading speed and the pauses · Exhibitions and wall works that take language itself as the subject | Experimental type specimens and title sequences where letterforms are pure texture · Music and poetry scene printing and covers shown as density rather than reading |
| Type | One face at one size, emphasis from position and repetition only | Invented alphabets, asemic glyphs and salvaged type mixed without hierarchy |
| Composition | Place words on a grid so reading can start from any direction | All-over fields of signs with no reading path; density itself is the composition |
| Material | White paper and one black ink, quality carried by register and margin | Ink, paint and scratched film or paper—letters applied as physical marks |
| Caution | When making a shape comes first, the meaning of the words stops answering their position, and the piece is only letters poured into a picture. | Laying out unreadable letters as decoration alone drops the claim and leaves pattern. One legible word left in the field reinstates the meaning the work exists to suspend. |