After Words: Visual and Experimental Poetry in Little Magazines and Small Presses, 1960–2025
April 23 – July 26, 2025
Ground Floor Gallery
By the 1960s, visual poetry was widely acknowledged as the first truly international poetry movement, occurring on several continents. The simultaneous “mimeograph revolution”—an emerging name for the proliferation of small, poet- and artist-operated presses and little magazines that emerged in the postwar era—meant that an extraordinary variety of experimental work appeared in ephemeral outlets. In particular, little magazines (in which “little” refers to their grassroots orientation and small print runs) reflected an array of geographic influence and communities and circulated the development of experimental poetry in real time.
After Words: Visual and Experimental Poetry in Little Magazines and Small Presses, 1960–2025 is a thematic journey through the recent history of visual poetry and draws from the collection of Steve Clay at Granary Books, an imprint that has published verbal/visual works for the past forty years. After Words features little magazine and small press works that use cut-up, collage, sound poetry scores, performance scripts, practices of “writing through,” erasure, asemic writing, glyph systems, calligraphy, experimental typography, non-Western alphabets, assemblages, and beyond, to trace the varieties of forms that an experimental poetics might take.
The radical and experimental approaches of the poets, artists, magazines, and presses in this exhibition are increasingly relevant to contemporary media. Now more than ever, we live in text-based environments that are increasingly image-heavy—social media, email, the Internet. We continue to share the anxieties that haunted the first generations of concrete and visual poets—war, nationalism, ecological destruction. In turning our ears and eyes towards these poets, may the evidence of their efforts inspire us to create works and communities that sustain us.
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Curated by Steve Clay and M.C. Kinniburgh, in collaboration with Conley Lowrance. Graphic design and publication management for the exhibition catalog by M.C. Kinniburgh at Granary Books. Our sincere appreciation to the Susan Jaffe Tane Director of Exhibitions Shira Buchsbaum, Assistant Director of Exhibitions Oscar Salguero, Executive Director Declan Kiely, and Kate McKenzie and Lee Berman. We thank the Chair of the Publications Committee Marie Oedel, Publications Manager Ann Donahue, and the Chair of the Public Exhibitions Committee, Michael T. Ryan. We are especially grateful to the poets, artists, editors, and publishers whose work is featured in this exhibition, and whose important ideas shaped the trajectory of this project.
Poster design by M.C. Kinniburgh. Image is Journeyman no. 12, by Robert Lax and Emil Antonucci. Courtesy of The Robert Lax Literary Trust and the Estate of Catherine Antonucci.
Images are for educational use only; if you are the creator and do not wish to have your item featured in this online exhibition, please contact us: info [at] grolierclub [dot] org.