Poetry of Unknown Words

Poetry of Unknown Words is a collaborative project with Dr. Katharine Meynell. Taking Iliazd’s La Poésie de Mots Inconnus (1947) as a format and making new works re-examining issues of material processes and their shifting meanings. An interest in the artefact itself, rather than the signifying text/image alone, giving us an opportunity to understand historical context through material means. We reference Iliazd’s illustrated anthology of (mostly men’s) concrete and experimental typography and sound poetry in folio form. Our use of title, simply translated, contains a sense of an ‘unknown’ which plays on feminist concepts of ‘hidden from history’. Our folios transcribe works by women artists, writers and thinkers. These printed sheets pay attention to a particular individuals’ relationship to their contemporary technologies and consequent artistic applications.

Poetry of Unknown Words explores an expanded notion of the book and the archive - socially, culturally and politically. This project is being developed in sections, initially exhibited in public venues appropriate to that section; for example, this ‘Literary’ section was exhibited at the Poetry Library, London, as part of the South Bank Centre season of ‘Women of the World’ in March 2012.

• http://www.poetrylibrary.org.uk/exhibiti...