ABSTRACT

This volume addresses the global reception of "untranslatable" concrete poetry. Featuring contributions from an international group of literary and translation scholars and practitioners, working across a variety of languages, the book views the development of the international concrete poetry movement through the lens of "transcreation", that is, the informed, creative response to the translation of playful, enigmatic, visual texts. Contributions range in subject matter from ancient  Greek and Chinese pattern poems to modernist concrete poems from the Americas, Europe and Asia. This challenging body of experimental work offers creative challenges and opportunities to literary translators and unique pleasures to the sympathetic reader. Highlighting the ways in which literary influence is mapped across languages and borders, this volume will be of interest to students and scholars of experimental poetry, translation studies and comparative literature.

chapter |8 pages

Introduction

chapter 2|15 pages

The Origins of the Untranslatable

The Earliest Western Visual Poetry

chapter 3|20 pages

Concrete Poetry in China

Form, Content, Theme and Function

chapter 5|26 pages

Exploring the Structures of Chance

Transcreating Noigandres ideogramas into English

chapter 6|15 pages

Transcreation without Borders

chapter 7|15 pages

Edwin Morgan as Transcreator 1

chapter 8|23 pages

Constellations and Ideograms

Eugen Gomringer’s Multilingual Concrete Poetry

chapter 10|16 pages

Concrete North America

Some Questions of Reception