An extensive anthology focusing on concrete poetry written by women at the beginning of this pioneering movement. It includes fifty writers and artists from Europe, Japan, Latin America, and the United States, selected by editors Alex Balgiu and Mónica de la Torre.

It takes as its starting point "Materializzazione del linguaggio," the innovative exhibition of visual and concrete poetry by women, curated by Italian feminist artist Mirella Bentivoglio for the 1978 Venice Biennale. Through this exhibition and others she curated, Bentivoglio identified a group of female artists working at the intersection of the verbal and the visual, seeking to "reactivate atrophied communication tools" and free words from gender conventions, patriarchal limitations, and normative syntax.

The works in this volume evolved from previous manifestations of concrete poetry, as defined in the foundational manifestos of Öyvind Fahlström, Eugen Gomringer, and the Brazilian Noigandres group. While some works are easily recognizable as concrete poetry, as documented in canonical anthologies edited by Mary Ellen Solt and Emmett Williams in the late 1960s, it also includes extensive serial works of a distinctly feminist nature that often make understanding difficult. Women in Concrete Poetry: 1959-1979 revisits the figures from Bentivoglio's circle and includes works by women working in other areas of the United States, Eastern Europe, and South America, who were also concerned with activating the visual and auditory properties of language and experimenting with the spatial syntax of poetry.

Among the artists and writers are Lenora de Barros, Ana Bella Geiger, and Mira Schendel, from Brazil; Mirella Bentivoglio, Tomaso Binga, Liliana Landi, Anna Oberto, and Giovanna Sandri from Italy; Amanda Berenguer from Uruguay; Suzanne Bernard and Ilse Garnier from France; Blanca Calparsoro from Spain; Paula Claire and Jennifer Pike from the United Kingdom; Betty Danon from Turkey; Mirtha Dermisache from Argentina; Bohumila Grögerová from the Czech Republic; Ana Hatherly and Salette Tavares from Portugal; Madeline Gins, Susan Howe, Liliane Lijn, Mary Ellen Solt, and Rosmarie Waldrop from the USA; Irma Blank and Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt from Germany; Chima Sunada from Japan; and Katalin Ladik and Bogdanka Poznanović from former Yugoslavia.

488 pages

20.3 x 22.7 cm