Experimental Poetry in Spain

Laura López Fernández,
Georgetown College, Kentucky

Contemporary experimental poetry, in its various forms of manifestation -- visual poetry, phonetic poetry, sound poetry, performance poetry, non-object poetry or action art, video poetry, cyber poetry, computer holopoetry, mail-art, etc. is an integrative and interactive art that requires a "reader" willing to participate in a new configuration of semiotic codes. Experimental poets in Spain are working with new artistic parameters and pushing the boundaries of conventional categories of genre. The artistic expansion they are generating comes from a direct relation to available technologies. Most of these poets are multimedia artists working in the technological culture of the image and the sound. They are aware of the possibilities of the new technologies and use them as a transnational medium, to reconfigure our established poetic geographies and imagination. They consider insufficient the use of one artistic language; thus they employ, decode and mix different languages and techniques to produce a multisensorial and interactive poetic work. Experimental poets are reconfiguring symbolically their subjective experience, which is a product of new interrelations between the artistic work, the technology used and the perceiver.

The interaction between multiple artistic languages is a constant characteristic of experimental poetry. An experimental visual poet, for example, can use calligraphy, graphic design, collage, textures, color, and space as part of a visual poem. Sound poets and performers may use the human voice, with or without electronic manipulation, sounds, gestures, body language, and music to produce a sound poem or a phonetic poem. Experimental poets have always given priority to space-temporal relationships in a dialectic play of interaction between the parts and the whole. These artists create a dynamic and significant relationship between signs in the poem and their different possible structures: morphological, phonetic, syntactic, and semantic. Verbal, visual, and sound elements are combined in an active and fragmented mode. In their work usually syntax is subordinated to a paratactic structure. As part of this scenery there is also a tendency to produce collective poetry. Today, for example, we have experiments like mail-art, or hypermedia poems that are looking for any reader to be a physical co-creator of the e-texts. These and other artistic compositions exist in part because of the continuous advances in technology, and because of a new perception of what is considered art. We can state with Spatola in his classic book Verso la poesia totale (1969) that the essence of art in our day is not any longer divided into categories of music, painting, or poetry but is made by different experiments that when changing the codes, break down the barriers between different genres.

Although it is not the purpose of this essay to explain how technology changes the production and reception of art, some of the new poetic experiments using electro acoustic methods, computers, graphic design, mathematics, etc., affect our perception of the message, challenging our traditional and "neoclassical" definition of art divided into different genres, and individualized disciplines. The most radical experimental poems today are probably the holographic and fractal poems by Eduardo Kac (a Brazilian multimedia artist and professor in the USA). These poems are multilinear, interactive, open-ended, incomplete, and can not be translated or printed completely into paper because of their multiple dimensions. In order to define these new experiments as poetry we need to have a very inclusive notion of poetry. In the new electronic era there is a potential for a bigger complexity of interrelations than ever before. The subject, the author, the reader, and the poem are related in a multiple, immediate, and unfinished chain of textuality where the context of impermanence is the dominant way of reading and composing.

Media theorists such as McLuhan, Walter Ong, or Neil Postman believed that if we change the medium we change the message. They assumed that transmission determines reception and reception determines reaction. In less than half a century we have moved from a condition of essential isolation into one of intense mediation. We are living in a computerized society and that is changing our way of reading, listening and seeing the world (Sven Birkerts, 1994). 1 The new multimedia poetry brings us other possibilities and horizons for the arts that impose a new concept of textuality, literature, poetry, poem, reader, art and reality. George P. Landow in his already classic book, Hypertext. The convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology, studies carefully the effects of writing and reading virtual texts. He talks about a paradigm shift reflected in the writings of J. Derrida, Theodor Nelson, Roland Barthes, and Andries Van Dam. These authors argue that we must abandon conceptual systems founded upon ideas of center, margin, hierarchy, and linearity and replace them with ones of multilinearity, nodes, links, and networks. Landow defines hypertext as a text composed of blocks of text, what Barthes terms lexia. Hypermedia simply extends the notion of the text into hypertext by including visual information, sound, animation, and other forms of data. 2

All ages have had their experimental poets and artists that challenged their audience in different ways. Some of these artists became part of important avant-garde movements. In the first three decades of this century we can mention the Surrealists, the Futurists, the Dadaists, and the Cubists as the main creators of new artistic expressions. Social and cultural conditions in the environment have to be included as an important background for the new creations to exist. Today, we are too close to judge the permanence of most of the new experimental and multimedia poetry but we can state that there are a significant variety of expressions that may confirm a paradigm shift for poetry and art in general.

New experimental poetry did not start from zero. These artists follow tendencies generated years and centuries ago but employ them in a new context. New and historical avant-gardes share a tendency to work in a marginal zone, presenting new creative processes that most of the times have been identified as anti-art by the conservative powers. Historical avant-gardes in the Western World have a long tradition. Miguel D'Ors in his book El Caligrama de Simmias a Apollinaire. Historia y antología de una tradición clásica studies a long tradition of experimental poets such as the Romans, artists in the Middle Ages, in the 16th and 17th centuries, and more recent ones. We can see and read avant-garde poems in the 300 B.C like the calligram "The egg" by Simias de Rodas. This is a non linear poem that is composed in the egg form and must be read in a non sequential order starting in the first line and then going to the last line that is the second line, then going to the second line which work as the third one, until one finishes reading it in the center of the poem. Other artists and compositions are Teocritus and his Latin calligrams, the numerologic tradition of the medieval poets, the syllogistic poems of the Catalan Raimundo de Lulio in the 13th century, the pentagrams in the form of a heart made by Baude Cordier in the 14th century, and the Baroque's compositions by Juan del Vado. The Baroque artists started producing visual and musical poems such as the labyrinths of J. Caramuel and Giovanni Battista della Porta. 3

In the 20th century the Western World avant-garde movements spread fast and easily among countries because of the technological advances. Movements like Dadaism, Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism, the phonetic experiments of Henri Chopin starting in the fifties, the Concrete Movement, Lettrisme, Spatialism with Pierre Garnier, etc., expanded the possibilities of understanding poetry and tried to liberate the artist from rigid codes, although creating new tensions between the poems and the audience. These poets provoked the audience with their utopias but also with new creations. One of the utopias of the first 20th century avant-garde movements was the integration of life and art (Peter Bürger, 1974). This is still an issue that some multimedia artists follow today but approaching the relationship in a different mode.

Some of the famous Surrealists, Dadaists, and Futurists, born in high and middle class families, were producing a defiant art against the accepted culture. Ironically today some artistic works that were attacking the established culture became part of the conventional literary and artistic traditions. Nowadays multimedia artists are also against the classical institution of Art because of its limitations but the artists don't intend for their art to last, as Stewart Home says: "Si el Futurismo, el Dadaísmo y el Surrealismo querían integrar el arte en la vida, hoy la vanguardia quiere consignar la categorización del olvido." 4

Two of the 20th century avant-garde movements that influenced most of the contemporary experimental poetry in Spain are Surrealism and Concrete Poetry. Surrealists worked with the unconscious, the écriture automatique, the aesthetic value of chance, and the use of different languages and their self-referentiality. Concrete Poetry, publicly born in Brazil in the 1960s is one of the best examples of innovation and compromise. As part of their formal experiments Concrete poets atomized the words, used typographic resources, ideograms, a relational syntax, and space-temporal structures. Décio Pignatari, Augusto de Campos and Haroldo de Campos had Mallarmé as one of their precursors. These poets, theorists, and professors of semiotics created a new dynamics between the visual elements of the poem and their semantic value. They created a new expression of social compromise, respecting the word, but expanding its functionality towards a new relational syntax.

Some of the most important Spanish experimental poets after the Civil War are Juan Eduardo Cirlot, Carlos Edmundo de Ory, Carles Sindreu, Joan Brossa, Guillem Viladot, Miguel Labordeta, José Luis Castillejo, Fernando Millán, Felipe Boso, and Antonio Gómez. We have to remember that the Franco regime (1939-1975) conditioned the evolution of many Spanish artists because of the lack of freedom, and lack of support. The intentions of their experimental work vary considerably.

The creative and investigative work of Juan Eduardo Cirlot (1916-1973) was not enough recognized for a long time. He was a musician, an intellectual, a critic of art, a medievalist, the author of a dictionary of symbols, he wrote regular poetry, surrealistic poetry, and also experimental poetry (especially phonetic poetry and visual poetry). His poetry evolved from Surrealism towards permutation poetry, where combination of letters and words in different geometrical shapes is the main technique. In his book Inger. Permutaciones (1971) we can see this technique. He used his knowledge of music to include permutations as a poetic value. Edmundo de Ory (1923-) is a poet that was part of the poetic movement called Postismo, a practice influenced by Surrealism but with its own identity. Miguel Labordeta (1921-1969) was also a poet influenced by Surrealism being fantasy, and imagination one of his leitmotivs. Carles Sindreu (1900-1974) and Joan Brossa (1919-1998) were the first poets in Catalonia continuing the avant-garde in the forties. They created the first visual poems after the Spanish Civil War. According to Ramón Salvo in "Carles Sindreu I Joan Brossa en els origins de la poesia visual europea (1939-1941)" Carles Sindreu published in Barcelona three poems without signature in an album whose title was Homenaje de Cataluña liberada a su Caudillo Franco (1939). Ramón Salvo declares that Sindreu's innovative work has to do with the creation of photomontage-poems, which are composed of the union of a calligram and a photography. José Luis Castillejo (1932- ) is another original experimental poet that has no been very recognized yet. His innovative poetry is connected at the beginning with the group Zaj, but after that he explores repetitive patterns and combinations of letters in their own playing space following an abstract process like El libro de veinte letras, or The book of í's (1970) for example.

Joan Brossa (1919- 1998) was another extraordinary artist (a poet, a dramaturge, and a plastic artist). Fernando Millán considers him the father of many different experiments, such as the object-poem, and visual poetry that were developed later in the seventies and the eighties. At the same time we need to mention another great catalan visual artist, but not well known outside of Cataluña was Guillem Viladot (Agramunt, Lleida 1922-1999). He was a writer, and an experimental visual poet, expression where he includes sculpture and abstract painting. One of his best visual poetry books is Poesia T/47 (1971), and if one desires to see his whole works one must visit his "Casa de la poesía visual" in Agramunt, Lleida.

Other younger experimental artists are Antonio Gómez (member of the Group of Cuenca), a poet and a painter and since the eighties is organizer, and editor of different projects like mail-art. Felipe Boso (dead in 1983) and Fernando Millán were publishing and doing many activities in the seventies and eighties. Concrete poetry influences their works, especially the use of ideogram. In 1995 was published Felipe Boso's experimental book Los poemas concretos. Fernando Millán (1944- ) is an experimental poet, a literary critic, an activist who publishes experimental poetry and is very committed to poetic innovation and social problems. He starts creating experimental poetry in Problemática 63 with the Uruguayan Julio Campal (1934-1968) between 1964-1968. He explores the verbal and visual components of the poetic communication enriching the content of a traditional poem, and creating new dimensions to the text, which remains open to the reception's moment. He has experimental books of poetry composed in the late sixties and seventies that precede many practices of the eighties.

Some of Millán's earliest books are Criptogramas (1968-1973) where syncretism is the main language, Mitogramas (1968-1976) which is a significant anthology of different books composed by the author, with his own explanatory introduction about the intentions of his poetry, and Textos y Antitextos (1970) which is considered the first book of visual poetry in Spain if we understand visual poetry as a genre (although is not a uniform genre) where words are not the main component, but another element working at the same level with the language of color, fragments of letters and other icons. Textos y Antitextos is a collection of different visual and verbal experiments composed in the late sixties. The book has an experimental prologue whose title is: "algo así como un prólogo" divided in four parts, and four sections numbered with words in different colors. Millán explores here the language of color, contrasts between black and white, geometrical shapes in black with fragments of letters, and the destructive-creative process of crossing out texts. Besides its plastic quality, this book offers a non-linear method of reading the poem and significant interactions between experimental uses of space, intensifying the relation between meaning and emptiness, between what is supposed to be a text and what is an antitext. What Millán is trying to do here is poetry with non-poetic elements, continuing an avant-garde tradition.

Some of the artists mentioned above, worked individually and also in groups such as the Catalan Group formed by Guillem Viladot, Joan Brossa and Josep M. Iglesias. The experimental group Zaj (1964-1968) concentrated more on the use music and sounds. J. E. Cirlot, Joan Brossa, Carlos Edmundo de Ory, were also part of the Catalan group Dau al set. The Cuenca group was also important in the seventies with artists such as Carlos de la Rica, which was also a priest, and editor, Antonio Gómez, Luis M. Muro, and José Antonio Rojas. They published an anthology of experimental poetry but the life of these groups was brief due to many factors, especially the political one.

Another important group was Problemática 63 created by the Uruguayan poet Julio Campal in 1962. These artists and theorists wanted to inform about the evolution and problems of art. Problemática 63 was influenced by the new abstract expressionism and the pop art that originated in United States (Millán, 1997). From this group derived other groups like Cooperativa de Producción Artística y Artesana, the N.O group, and the authors of the editorial Parnaso 70. All of them worked towards an integration of the arts and explored the concept of an art of synthesis. Fernando Millán founded the N.O group with poets such as Enrique Uribe connected with French Spatialisme (Pierre Garnier and others), Jokin Díez, and Jesús García Sánchez. According to Fernando Millán thanks to the many international contacts that Julio Campal had, these Spanish artists were able to know what other artists were doing in other countries like Italy, for example. This opportunity was very significant in an isolationist country like Spain at that time. This avant-garde group was also influenced by Concrete poetry, through Angel Crespo (1926-1997) who in 1956 contacted the Brazilian Concrete poets.

The N.O poets have a strong plastic imagination, combining verbal and visual simultanism, using ideograms, typography, and visual structures to produce, present and represent a new art liberated from its rigid conventional patterns. Various significant N.O poems made in 1965 and 1966 by Millán are the "textchones" (textos+tachones) but he didn't published the first one until 1968, and it was a postcard. That same poem "(progresión/negativa/2)" was reproduced in the poster of the group N.O in May of 1969. These texts are very unique, and revolutionary. The author crosses out the whole text or most of the text leaving out some textual fragments in the form of a square, a circle, or a non-geometrical form. He starts out this process in 1965 but this is part of a longer project where he is crossing out entire books that he is going to take to the Guinness Book of records. He says that in its origins this creative process is familiar to the practices of the 60s. The "tachaduras" can look like a typical image of the year 1968, but there is an evolution in that process according to Millán. It starts as an image and becomes a technique able to produce different shades and tonalities. We have to say that some "Caligrama" by Julio Campal in 7 Caligramas uses the same procedure of crossing out former texts, and later on Rafael Marín in his poem "Forma en conserva" Poesía Experimental 93 does something similar to the idea of la tachadura but these are isolated poems. Blanca Millán in Poesía Visual en España (1999) gives references of other artists following this practice such as J. M. Calleja, Antonio Gómez, and José Miguel Ullán.

The written and visual fragmentation of the pattern he produced in "textchones" gives us the sense of creating a thesis (traditional text), an antithesis (crossing out the written text) and its synthesis (presenting a new creation). The idea of crossing out what it was written is very significant of an avant-garde spirit. In doing this, the author is questioning any fixed meaning, and in a Derridian manner, is suggesting the infinite possibilities of the text in each reading. Millán is emphasizing his antagonism to a univocal relation between the text and the reader. The written language is not any more representative. The letters, the words, the texts, the books must give us dynamic meanings. There is a close relationship between life and art; both are a whole in constant change. The printed page is meaningful in a contradictory way.

Fernando Millán. Poemas N.O.

This N.O poem exemplifies Millán deconstructive artistic practice. This poem with their visual solid frames (interior and exterior) creates a significant tension at different levels. There is a sense of being in the limits of any comprehensible order. The geometrical form (rectangles) of the text, the "tachadura" or crossing out, and the ink falling down like in an abstract painting, produces a tension between order and chaos, between linearity and discontinuity, but also creates a sense of freedom and relaxation. The verbal component is secondary to the visual effects but it is not totally secondary to the possible meanings of the poem. The process of crossing out a text is another way of writing. The ink, the letters, the black color in contrast with the white space, the frames, the rectangular forms, suggest an unease continuity between creation and interpretation, between limits and freedom. This action of crossing out a text suggests also a fight against the power given to the printed page, and the printed world. Another interpretation of this practice is the repressive Spanish social context Millán was living in. Millán has created other visual poems similar to this one but using the color of Spanish flag that gives the reader a very clear context he wants to fight against. In the Franco regime Millán was fighting for freedom of speech. Millán was making visual and discursive poems denouncing the political situation of Franco regime, and in general, any oppressive power. Another poem that serves as an example is his poem in form of a cup made with the word "represión" in the section "Ideogramas n.o." in Poemas N.O. His anti-institutional art, and intentions to close the distances between life and art, are still alive today. 5

Without having access to today's technology these artists living in the Franco regime wanted more freedom to change their world and the poetic language. In those poetic experiments they included daily iconography, the element of chance, improvisation, new painting theories, and the idea of work in progress. The Brazilian Concrete poets, the European avant-garde artists, and later in the sixties the North American experimental artists such as John Cage and his musical experiments, artists such as Man Ray and the photomontage, and Marcel Duchamp with his visual works were also a big influence in their works. In this environment Spanish experimental poets such as Carles Sindreu, Joan Brossa, Francisco Pino, Fernando Millán, José-Miguel Ullán, and others were producing different types of experimental poems.6

Many artists, and critics have been trying to explain and categorize the different experimental works. One such study is the one done by Fernández Serrato (1997) who establishes five general typologies of experimental poems based upon textures, forms, and to a lesser degree color: "poema minimalista" a very basic and graphic poem, "poema verbal-visual" a poem that has a strong interaction between images and words, "poema-propuesta" that proposes aesthetic actions, "poema-acción", similar to the happening, and "poema permutacional" based upon the variation-permutation of verbal or/and plastic elements with the possibility of a phonetic reading. 7

Visual poetry is a term that is being more accepted when talking about experimental visual works. Visual poetry is not a recent practice but a common poetic avant-garde expression in Spain. At the beginning of the twentieth century we can mention the futurist Catalan poet, writing in Catalan, Joan Salvat-Papasseit, the ultraists Guillermo de Torre, Juan Larrea, Federico de Iribarne, Gerardo Diego and others. Today, one of the most recent antecedents of Visual poetry is the Italian Visive poetry from the sixties (1963-1968), and Inismo that comes from the terms Internazionale Novatrice Infinitesimale. Inismo was founded in Paris and Rome early in 1980 by Gabriele Aldo Bertozzinnos and Laura Aga-Rossi and today is a popular practice in Spain and Latin American countries. 8 Today Inismo is visual poetry but also action poetry, video poems, sculpture poems, and sound poetry. One of the common characteristics of Inismo is to produce object-poetry, a concept that the surrealist André Breton defined in his classical book Le Surréalisme et la Peinture (1966) as a composition that combines resources from poetry and sculpture speculating about their power of exaltation. Inists recognize Verlaine for liberating the verse, Mallarmé for liberating the word, Rimbaud for liberating the letter, and Marinetti and the futurists for liberating the phoneme. Sound Ini artists such as Angelo Merante, make sound poetry compositions scored with the international phonetic alphabet, an Inist innovation in sound poetry (Seaman). 9

In Spain there are different regional artistic groups that are considered to be Inistas. In 1986 the magazine Graphe Koine was created in Madrid and directed by Francisco Juan Molero Prior who was also the founder of Spanish Inismo, and coordinator of other Spanish groups that were coming out in the nineties such as "Auxilios Mutuos" y "El paraíso" both groups from Asturias. In 1991, the Catalan Juan Borda created a group inista in Catalonia. In 1992 the Vasque group "Zeine" was created. The Gallician group directed by Pedro González who publishes the literary magazine Vértice was also created in 1992. They all work with different languages, not only writing, but painting, sculpture, sound, video, architecture, and film to produce an art more universal and free. Their two basic principles are infinitude and universalism. They develop old ideas originated in the historical avant-gardes and incorporate the use of new technological advances.

Before 1900 Visual poetry was also a common practice among different cultures. The oldest known example comes from Ancient Egypt more than 3000 years ago. This is a poem written in crosswords. Other civilizations such as the Islamic, Chinese, and the Indian have image poems where words, letters or lines make visual images that imitate objects and symbols from their daily life. This practice was also a visual art in the Orient and Mesoamerica. In Europe visual poetic practices were frequent before 17th to 19th centuries. We can see now that the 19th and 20th century didn't invent visual poetry. Calligrams and other experiments were invented much before Apollinaire and contemporary poets. (Dick Higgins, 1978) 10

Visual poetry today includes not only old experiments but also technological innovations like the use of photography, graphic design, mail-art, video poetry, and techniques used in films. Body language, kinetic art, and performance poetry are part of visual poetry too. In Spain visual poetry was a men's world but we can mention a few Catalan visual women poets such as Montserrat Felip (wife of Guillem Viladot) with visual works made in 1948. Another visual woman poet is Eugenia Balcells, Antítesi visual, (1981) or Teresa Hereus, Antilogia Visual, (1992). According to Xavier Canals (1999) these visual women poets present some inherent qualities, a different poetic and visual synthesis from the one made by male visual artists. 11 Other Spanish women visual poets that are working today are Julia Otxoa, Nieves Salvador, María Jesús Montía, Angela Serna, Belén Juárez, etc.

Other experimental poets today in Spain are using the voice, the body language, noises, vocal and guttural sounds, words, and music to create a poem. These artists are Sound poets. Sound poets use technology, humor, phonetic techniques, and different kind of noises in an experimental way. This practice has its antecedents in the fifties when the famous French artist and critic Henri Chopin produced with the tape-recorder, multilayered works "vocal micro-particles" and "bucca instances", which he called poésie sonore. Chopin has many audiopems, but also he was adding new technology to his sound poetry through the years. He works with multilineal texts. One of his poems in the nineties uses electronic explorations of the voice, voice texture, vibrations of the larynx, joined by effective use of the tape-recorder and electronics. It includes a booklet in four languages with graphic reproductions of typewriter poems.

Polipoetry is another experimental poetic practice that gives preference to Sound poetry. In some senses the terms Polipoetry and Sound poetry are equivalent. The Italian Enzo Minarelli is the author of the First Manifest of Polipoetry, (1987). He believes in the use of new technologies for a progressive art. The first manifest of Polipoetry prioritizes the sound over the letter, thinking of language as rhythm.12 Polipoetry is especially practiced in Spanish but most of these practices and performances are part of the underground cultures. These artists have a counterculture program and travel all over the world giving performances. These poets exploit the sound as their weapon to produce an aesthetic effect but also to criticize the capitalistic culture of mass production. Our time and values are seen under the sign of production, and money.

The Catalan Xavier Sabater, born in 1953, is one Spanish polipoet. His book of polipoetry Saba-Sanyo-Casio (1992) includes a cassette with his readings and special intonations. The book is written mainly in Spanish, but also in Catalan. It is a book against multinationals, mercantilism, high art, and ecclesiastical discourses which are written in false Latin. He uses a variety of techniques and strategies to make the audience and reader laugh and think. Some of his polipoems include a counter advertising technique, collages, montage, scores, comics, photographs, graphic design, and repetition of words or sentences. He thinks language is political, so he composes poetry to break the high culture canons to be closer to any person. He wants to democratize culture and art fighting against dominant powers. His sense of humor is ironic and has a critical effect. One written example of his poetry is the poem "Saba-Sanyo-Casio" written in the eighties. He uses a language internationally known, but these poems must be listened to capture the effects of the intonation of his voice.

SABA-SANYO-CASIO

E/DODOTIS/NESTLE/KETCHUP
SABA-SABA-SABA
E/MACDONALDS/KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN
IBM
SABA-SABA-SABA
PHILIPS-SANYO-CASIO
iiEO PRESTO!! GALLINA BLANCA
iiAMSTRAD!!
AMSTRAD/APPEL/TOSHIBA
SANYO-SANYO-SANYO
CASIO-CASIO-CASIO
OSTIA-OSTIA-OSTIA

CASIO
CASIO
CASIO
MITSHUBISHI
ROLAND, KORG, YAHAMAHA
IBM, AMSTRAD, APPEL
FORD, SEAT, WOLSWAGEN
PHILIPS, PHILIPS, GALLINA BLANCA
iiCAMPS!!
NESTLE, REPSOL
NYLON, NYLON, TERGAL
CANCER-SIDA-CANCER
IBM, IBM, TELEFUNKEN
PSOE, PSOE, UCD
CDS, CDS, ETA-ETA-ETA
KRISHNA, KRISHNA, KRISHNA
TELEFUNKEN, IBM, REPSOL
BIAFRA-BIAFRA
ETIOPlA, ETIOPIA, ETIOPIA

TELEFUNKEN, IBM, CASIO
NYLON, TERGAL, CHIVAS
CHIVAS-CHIVAS-CHIVAS
PREISLER, PREISLER, ISABEL
IBM-SIDA-CANCER-CASIO
ETIOPlA, ETIOPIA, ETIOPIA
BACCARDI-GORDONS-LARIOS
CHIVAS-CHIVAS-CHIVAS
ETA-ETA-ETA
SIDA-SIDA-SIDA
KETCHUP-DODOTIS-NESTLE
GALLINA BLANCA
NESTLE-KETCHUP-SCHWEPPES
KAS, PEPSI-COLA, COCA COLA

This is a socio-political poem. It is also a very impersonal poem that uses the technique of counter advertising to attack the powerful multinationals, and the language of advertising with its slogans, bombarding us everyday. It is a very effective and corrosive poem that uses internationally known telegraphic messages. The technique of catalogue has a degrading effect. When reading the poem instead of feeling attracted to purchase those products, we feel bombarded by the mass media with all kinds of propaganda. At the same time social problems such as Etiopía, AIDS, Cancer, Eta are today's Spanish popular topics.

Sabater composes video poetry, and cyberpoetry too. The cyberpoem: "I am" (Yo soy) lasts for about 4 minutes. In this very simple and open-ended poem, sound and animation form the message "I am". Most of his poems are counter advertising poems. Sabater uses irony against conventional discourses. In other poems he uses vulgar, and offensive expressions to defeat the system. Sabater uses a counter cultural background to reject institutionalized aesthetic and political values. He sees his work being influenced by punk culture, by John Fante, Celine, Miller, Bukowsky, Villon, the Beat generation, and the rappers. In his performances he uses distortional microphones, and shows slides as components of his artistic performance. He pays special attention to denouncing the official culture, and our passive way of life in which we accept almost anything that is sent to us through the mass media. He has published several books of poems and has participated in National and International Polipoetry festivals: Barcelona, Zaragoza, Madrid, Victoria, Oviedo, Germany Portugal, and Italy. He also edited Polipoesía. Primera Antología in 1992 that includes a tape with the poet's voices using different intonations to produce different reactions. The eight Spanish authors selected in this anthology are: Llorenç Barber, J. M. Calleja, Enric Casassas, Bartolomé Ferrando, Carles Hac Mor, Fátima Miranda, Josep Ramón Roig, and Xavier Sabater.

Most of the polipoets selected in that anthology are musicians and art critics like Llorenç Barber and Bartolomé Ferrando. They do performance poetry, sound poetry and phonetic poetry. Fátima Miranda is a specialist of music interpretation. In the musical group "Taller de Música Mundana" (1979), she improvised with her voice and explored the sounds of different objects such as stones, and paper. Later on she worked for "Flatus Vocis Trío" (1986) composed by Llorenc Barber, Bartolomé Ferrando and Fátima. This group was doing phonetic poetry in a surrealistic tradition. Several years later she studied the Druphad song with its multiple modalities and microtones that survive from the 17th century by oral transmission and in 1991 she composed "Las Voces de la Voz." In 1995 she published "Concierto en canto" and in 1998 she produced "Arte Sonado" which is a superb expression of vocalic sounds supported by amplification without electronic manipulation. Fátima works with unconventional scores that have hundreds of notes, graphemes, pictograms, poetic-descriptive explanations, and vignettes.

Fátima receives inspiration from everyday sounds, advertisements, daily life objects, but also from oral traditions. With her voice she doesn't pretend to invent a new art, but is coming back to the source. In the beginning, even before writing was invented, it was the sound and the song. The sound was the first way of communication in the more primitive cultures. Musical instruments came later as an extension of our breath. In Polipoesía. Primera Antología, Fátima mentions the first acoustic expressions from different cultures, for example, the old Buddhist psalmody of Shomyo's song where each syllable is amplified without paying attention to the lack of meaning. The empty syllables of the Chinese Opera, the "Hyhy" from Egypt, the polyphonies from the pygmies in Central Africa, the Galician "aturuxos", the Gomeran "whistle", the unintelligible interjections of No Song, etc. Her sound poetry is very irrational, focusing on the repetition of specific sounds, and using silence as an important component of her experiments. 13

J. M. Calleja's poetry is more visual. He has published several books of visual poetry, and has given performances all over Europe. In his poem "Duets" numbers are written in Catalan letters and ordered in a single vertical column. The author follows Poe's notion of "Spasm Poem" where inner time and not external time is what really gives meaning to our life. He echoes the medieval Catalan Ramon Llull and his study about the symbology of numbers. He wants to give a plastic quality to poems written with numbers. Calleja participated in the Mostra Poesía Intersignios Brazil, 1998. Some of his works are in the electronic magazine Brazilitalia http://www.pucsp.br/~cos-puc/epe/mostra/calleja.htm. In this web site there are videopoems, sound-poetry, written poems, object-books, and interactive poems.

Philadelpho Menezes (1960-2000) --a literary critic, a professor at two universities in Brazil, a poet, a multimedia artist, and organizer of the "I Mostra International de Poesia Visual de Sao Paulo (1988)"-- points out that what is important in the use of new technologies in experimental poetry is the integration between languages and a fusion of all literary genres where poetry can penetrate theory, short stories, etc., without having to prioritize the verbal signs. 14 Another critic of the new avant-gardes is Renato Barilli who in an interview with Philadelpho Menezes (1998) talks about the democratization of the new experimental poetry thanks to the multimedia.15

The Argentinean poet Fabio Doctorovich in his electronic project Abysm talks about the possibilities of hypertext in poetry, and gives us examples of his poetry which is a fusion of visual, and three-dimensional signs. The bi-dimensional relationship the letter had in the written word is now expanded to a forth-dimensional world where there is almost an infinite series of possibilities for new meanings with a few signs. For the Uruguayan critic Clemente Padín an experimental poem: "it must question the significant structure of the expressive system used by the author, in order to create new information. It must have a radical semiologic project trying to invent a new writing or reading code. An experimental poem must manipulate the signs used in the poem." 16

In Spain in the last years there has been an increasing number of visual poetry anthologies such as Poesía experimental 93 (1993), El color en la poesía visual. Antología consultada por José Carlos Beltrán (2001), Poesía visual valenciana (2001), Phayum, poéticas visuales, (2000), Aldea Poética II. Poesía en acción (2000), Poesía visual española ante el Nuevo milenio, (1999). These anthologies present the work of visual poets such as J. M. Calleja, Xavier Canals, Joaquín Gómez, Carles H. Mor, Xavier Seoane, Josep Sou, Gustavo Vega, César Reglero, Angela Serna, Antoni Albalat, Nieves Salvador, Isabel Jover, Tomás Camacho, Jose Luis Campal, Joaquín Gómez, Antonio Orihuela, Antón Reixa, José Carlos Beltrán, Bartolomé Ferrando, etc. Some artists like Gustavo Vega still keep the interrelation word-image in their visual poems, but other artists consider collages visual poetry and go beyond the basic idea of visual poetry as an art where words and images are present. They exceed the limits of historic movements such as concretism or lettrisme for example, giving priority to an image-to-image relation. All of them use a wide variety of techniques and motives to that come from the language of publicity such as telegraphic images, clichés, repetitions of words, from the mass media, painting, graphic design, etc.


Joaquín Gómez: "País". Poesía Experimental 93.

One of the visual poets selected in Poesía Experimental 93 is Joaquín Gómez'. His work "País" is a very meaningful collage composed with parts of the Picasso's "Guernica", and with daily life objects such as the soccer lottery (la quiniela), its symbol the soccer ball, and the three of hearts in the Spanish cards (symbolizing also love). The title "País" and the objects used to (re) present Spain have an implicit and controversial discourse: The unity and identity of the country called Spain. He links popular sports and activities such soccer, the National sport, playing cards, and Bullfights with the political element and the artistic one. Gómez recreates old topics about Spain, but also incorporates the language of painting, and more specifically cubism and Picasso as a motive of the collage. Cubism is an experimental art, but at the same time serves as a historical reference "Guernica". Picasso's bull and "Guernica" echoes the Spanish Civil War, the fratricidal violence. The bull also represents one of our historic traditions, which serves as an emblem of our country, and even after Franco's regime is still a tourist attraction. Soccer, the most popular sport, and playing cards are important symbols that portray Spanish folklore. We have an ekphrastic visual work, and at the same time we can see how experimental art can be committed to social problems, and daily life without loosing its capacity to generate aesthetic meanings. The title "País" is also reinforced with the word "Estado" which has connotations with the Franco's regime. The interrelation between words and images is present in these two words that work as a verbal frame for the visual poem. As we see, in this poem there is a functional relation between different languages, and discourses at work.

Many other visual artists reflect on these and other motives in relation to Spain, such as Fernando Millán in his NO Poems, José Carlos Beltrán in poems like "España, España" in A todo riesgo. We see the controversial subject about Monarchy in Ferrán Costa "Juan Carlos I, Rey de España 2 Resultat Final" and in Raúl Gálvez "En el país de los calvos, el Rey lleva peluquín" both works in Poesía Visual Valenciana.


Xavier Canals: "Homenatge a Jack Kerouac".
Poesía Experimental 93

Xavier Canals' collage "Homenatge a Jack Kerouak" is a metaliterary text. This visual poem uses literature and nature as an inspirational motif. The road is simulating the same form of the feather. The topic of the road as a text is a classic one. The rhetorical question "To write?" provokes the reader to reflexionate about the very essence of writing. The title "Homenatge a Kerouak" is an obvious reference to the art of writing, to the Beat Generation, and their ideals, which are still a strong influence for some underground Spanish poets. In this visual poem Art is considered more a process than a product. The road, like the text, is an open road, the feather like the pen, gives us the impression of freedom, spontaneity, and joy. Art is projected in terms of pleasure. Many other visual poets incorporate different artistic references to show the necessary interconnection between the arts: Music (José Carlos Beltrán in "Poemajonda"), Graphic Design (Ferrán Costa, Fco Pérez Belda), Photography (Regina Balbastre García, Raúl Gálvez).

Josep Sou: "Fal.luscrácia".
Poesía Experimental 93.

Josep Sou's "Fal.luscrácia" is a visual poem with a clear denouncing purpose. The graphic poem with seven "men" in ties, and bow ties depict the intention of the title: A society governed by a male dominant power. The phallus, and the ties also represent the tyranny of several powers, like the political power, and the businessmen. The title has a double meaning. The word Democracy is the subtext of Fal.luscracia, which comes from the Greek suffix kratos or government. The title, and the vertical disposition of the icons suggest a strong hierarchic world. It suggests that the actual Democracy doesn't exist. The title and the image refer directly to another subject that is sex and men. But the sexual content of the poem is subordinated to the social meaning. There is an obvious political content and intentions of denouncing the tyranny of political and economical power that come from the men's world.

Other authors selected in Poesía Experimental 93 denounce publicist firms that exploit female bodies to sell products. One example is José Criado's "Enjoy Costa Blanca" with a photograph of four naked girls and the sentence "Ideal fun for the family". In this visual poem his ironic sense of humor subverts the Coca-Cola ads, and in general any kind of product. This photograph criticizes the increasing commercialization of our society that alienates the human being in favor of materialistic interests. Another visual poem is "Serie Ilimitada" by José Luis Campal that is similar to a Colgate add. With these explicit counter-advertising messages these poets are continuing a long tradition born at the beginning of the century. Also, some of these artists are fans of the Beat Generation artists like Jack Kerouack, and at the same time they appreciate computer art. Their uniqueness is to use different languages --publicity, literature, painting, graphic design-- as their own artistic expression, which is mostly non-verbal, using the same mechanisms publicity does to create an antipublicist message.

There are good selections of experimental poetry on the Internet such as:
http://www.pucsp.br/~cos-puc/epe/ape/index.html. This site, "Arquivo de poesia experimental" has an alphabetical index that shows and gives reference to selected works of experimental poetry available in the "Biblioteca Reitora Nadir Gouvêa Kfouri da PUC", in Sâo Paulo. In this Brazilian site there are Spanish multimedia artists such as Xavier Canals, Javier Darias, and Antonio L. Bouza. Bouza has a visual poem "Ginepoema 4". In this visual poem O and Y are letters that give the appearance of a female body. These are the only two letters of the poem. With the special alignment of O and Y we can visualize a female body with ovaries (symbolizing the potential for life, for all letters, for all poems). The title "Ginepoema" Gine (greek prefix that means women) prioritizes the special relation between poetry and women in its potential for creation of meanings, creation of bodies and creation of life.

Performance Poetry offers in its oral delivery, and visual techniques a sense of immediacy, spontaneity, and uniqueness like Electronic Poetry does in its more experimental poems.16 Most of the new avant-garde Spanish artists are using both performance and computers to reach a broader audience expanding the limits of the written text. There have been thousands of performances in Spain, in the last ten years, especially in Catalonia.

Antón Reixa is a Gallician multimedia artist (a musician, ex-professor of literature, a poet, a performer, a show opera writer, a critic) who writes experimental poetry in Gallician and Spanish language. There are surrealistic elements in his poems. He uses Italian, Spanish, English, and German as literary, political, artistic and popular references. In his performances he uses sounds, mimic, and pictures provoking the audience against the mass media, the religious discourses, and against any political law without democratic intentions. He is a very creative and original artist that plays with classical literature; opera and popular culture like show operas and films to engage his audience. His texts give the impression of spontaneity touching multiple daily life motives, and his performance accelerates the already rapid pace of the poems. His sense of humor is a very critical one. He denounces the First World governments for their self-interested ambitions.

In 1992 Reixa published Ringo Rango, a book of visual poems with paintings by other artists that includes a video performance. This textbook is a collection of poems written for different artists between 1978 and 1988. One of the leitmotivs of this book is to demystify high and pop culture, and to produce an art for the common people. The first section's title is "Como escribir en público." It has poems with reference to Tagore: "Biografia contra Tagore", to Petrarca: "Apoloxía do petrarquismo barra Decreto-lei", to Joyce "sober joyce no 80 anos vello de s. beckett" and at the same time poems dedicated to anonymous people such as "Lied für túa prima." The complexity of his works allows him to write at different levels for any kind of public. The funny poem "A vaca de Martin Heidegger" permits him to associate "cow", which is vaca in Gallician, to Lauren Bacal because of phonetic similarities. The author criticizes every power by making us laugh using surrealistic associations, the repetition of several words, and the constant change of motives. Another type of poems selected in this book is the eckfrastic poem. There are poems dedicated to different paintings and painters. He minimizes the syntactical expression, he works to create a quick rhythm of verbal images with a sense of urgency. His experimentalism comes in the form of a confluence of literary, and social motives. One example is this fragment of the poem (tempo):

48 horas
hai mulleres hebreas que non aman ós sábados
comprendo que hai homes de patria excesiva
e aínda así non se entende o que che quero dicir
pero vin TV a noite toda e ó espertar almorcei cereais:
aínda así non era americano
hai palabras encadenadas ó silencio
pero ben sei por palestino que o silencio está escrito en braille
ver e non tocar reclamas deitada en territorio ocupado
[...]
-na información deportiva intercalarán documentais de fondo:
disturbios nos territories ocupados-
así que non te me poñas hebrea
e non reacciones como unha cebra nun paso de cebra
verso n. 20: é como se tivesen pasado 48 horas

In this fragment of the poem "(tempo)" belonging to section "4x20", Reixa brings immediacy with an acute sense of humor. There is also criticism, and irony when talking about social events, like Palestine, Sports, TV news and the anonymity of the daily life watching TV, and eating cereals without having to be an American. The poetic voice is very aware of the dominant power of the mass media in our daily lives. This and other poems written and performed by Reixa are social poems reflecting our system' deficiencies.

The poem "(mar)" "(see)" in the section "4x20" is another text that subverts various literary cannons and confronts social problems. The title in parenthesis, and in small letters is a common strategy used by the poet to break the academic and orthographic rules. The parenthesis of the title also means that reading is optional. The absence of periods, commas, and capital letters is another rebellious license he uses:

(mar)

hai un mar de tan cursi literario
dunha princesa que lle esvarou un acuario nas mans
que se lle escachou mecachis
océano mecachis
ese non interesa
(hai un silencio de 14 versos)
verso n. 20: no mar acaban as nacións pero hai centolas que son francesas

This poem gives the impression of spontaneity because it uses conversational expressions such as "que se lle escachou mecachis" ("it broke dam") but it is a very well elaborated poem. Fishers today are not free to fish beyond their sea's frontiers: "no mar acaban as nacións pero hai centolas/ que son francesas" ("Nations finish on the sea but there are spider crab/ that are French"). The poetic voice also criticizes literary styles that seem ridiculous because they are too distant from daily life. In the first two lines "hai un mar de tan cursi literario/ dunha princesa que lle esvarou un acuario nas mans" ("there is a sea that for being so snob is literary/of a princess whose aquarium escaped in her hands") the lyrical voice makes a derogatory comparison between a literary and stylized sea and the social problematic of the people living in the coast of Gallicia. He evoques the Modernism of Rubén Darío or other Modernist authors in his use of "princesses", and in the reference to lines of 14 syllables, the called "versos alejandrinos" typical modernist line: "(hai un silencio de 14 versos)" "(there is a silence of 14 lines)".

In conclusion we can say that there is a strong connection and continuity between new experimental poetry and historical avant-gardes. Although today there are different projects, and sometimes opposite intentions among different experimental poetic groups, in general, we can state that there is a tendency for all new experimental poets to continue integrating and exploring new interrelations between different artistic languages (music, painting, sculpture, films, writing, architecture) creating a supranational art that in most of the cases is the result of the evolution of a technological society.

Experimental poets in Spain and in other countries too continue altering syntax, orthography, morphology, and semantics to explore with a variety of topics. They mix languages, and genres in such a way that classical categories of poetry, and art, are not valid to define experimental poetry. We know from historical experimental poets that the notion of gender as a model does not apply in avant-garde poetry. We need a very inclusive notion of poetry when studying experimental poetry.

We have to say that new experimental poets in Spain, especially visual poets, in the nineties are having some accreditation. Different workshops, conferences, and educational projects have been a common practice in different autonomical regions, for example the program "Juan de Mairena de la Consejería de Educación de Andalucía" in 1991. But there are still some obstacles. Many works are not published or are published in very small editorials, or exhibited in temporary collections, not reaching the general public yet because of the lack of money, or interest.

New multimedia artists are not interested in producing an atemporal art, but a universal art for today's audience. They use TV, music, and mass media references as part of our immediate reality to reflect on emptiness as a critical sign of our times: Bosnia, the Middle East, Gender issues, Marginal peoples, ethnic and religious subjects, the materialistic way of life, commerce and globalization, and many other political, artistic and cultural discourses. In some of their criticism experimental poets are not far away from conventional poets who are still using traditional forms of diction to criticize our system. In this sense, traditional and experimental poets are immersed in a common context but they choose different formats to express their interaction with the world. Multimedia artists focus more on the technologies available to have more freedom to interact with their audience or perceivers. They want to reach their audience using irony, surprise, ludicrous intentions and a mixture of different daily life motives.

Performers, the computerized artists, the phonetic and sound poets want to produce a popular and creative art by using non literary elements. Some performers and phonetic poets continue using electro-acoustic methods while rescuing and presenting elements from oral traditions. New experimental poets mix different genres to empty the conventional value of the signs. They want to create a more spontaneous poem liberated from rigid rules, and from our usual associative thought mechanisms. Surrealists did that too, but today experimental poets don't believe in originality, neither do they have an exclusive corresponding pattern of semantic values.

Experimental poetry requires a new understanding of what is poetry. Articulated and unarticulated signs form a language of their own, so the new receptors of these works have to participate with a very open mind and disposition. Experimental artists don't believe in the autonomy of a specific artistic expression or language. Their ludicrous syncretism shows an iconoclastic attitude towards the conventional arts. The new syntax, product of the multiplicity, and juxtaposition of artistic languages, establishes a new perception, a new rhetoric, a new relation between the author and the moment the "text" it is being read, seen or/and listened to. The new aesthetic and political avant-gardes are challenging traditional concepts that originated in Romanticism such as the notion of individualism, the artist as a special human being, and the idea of art as a private privilege. Spanish experimental poets, like other artists, work towards the globalization of their art, which is becoming more technological and available to everyone thanks to technology.

New experimental poets continue expanding aesthetic values. The old slogan "art for art's sake" that some historical avant-garde artists used to believe in is still in practice today by some movements but there is also a social commitment, which is an intrinsic aspect of some experimental poets. Today in Spain, new poets, and artists in general, produce their artistic works balancing both values (art for art's sake, and social commitment). This is a complicated practice considering the diversity of genres they are using. Probably because of the cultural context of structural and formal discontinuity we are living in, experimental poetry, in its different expressions, is still at the beginning of producing some radical changes in our conventional aesthetic values. Although is still too early to give a historical perspective on these experimental practices we can see that the implications of challenging regular discursive practices as well as conventional poetic processes are the first steps to create a new foundational artistic language that is destined to be a living experience.

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