Dirty Concrete Poetry and White Space

the Visual Texts of Steve McCaffery and Douglas Kearney

Abstract

Concrete poets Steve McCaffery and Douglas Kearney created exuberant graphic compositions of their words, almost a half century apart, using, respectively, the typewriter and desktop publishing software on a personal computer. Because of the gritty, energetic, expressionistic quality of their work, this style is referred to as “dirty concrete poetry.” They also approached white space in their poems with a mix of compositional and conceptual intention. This paper explores the visual similarities and differences between the poets and considers how they bridge the verbal, vocal and visual in their intermedia artform.