Concrete Poetry vs Typographic Space
具体詩／コンクリート・ポエトリー / タイポグラフィック・スペース
Both sit in Experimental Typography, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. Both are read here as layout. 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.
Typographic Space
Uses the blank of the spread, changes of size, leaps between lines and more than one typeface to lay out reading time and vocal dynamics as space.
| Concrete Poetry | Typographic Space | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1950s–1970s | 1897– / modernist legacy |
| Family | Experimental Typography | Experimental Typography |
| Kind | Layout | Layout |
| Cues | Repeated words / Shapes made of letters / Large blanks / Dismantled reading order | Sentences crossing the spread / Great blanks / Multiple faces / Nonlinear reading order |
| 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 | Print pieces where a poem or a manifesto must carry its own pace and pauses · Using the spread as one field where placement shows vocal dynamics |
| Type | One face at one size, emphasis from position and repetition only | Assign faces and sizes as voices and switch them line by line |
| Composition | Place words on a grid so reading can start from any direction | Let lines leap across the gutter and hold the blank as the largest element |
| Material | White paper and one black ink, quality carried by register and margin | White paper, one black ink, exact register, stock thick enough to stop show through |
| 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. | Copying only the size of the blanks removes every cue about reading order, so design how blank, size and position govern both the speed and the sequence of reading. |