Concrete and Animated Poetry

I’m a concrete poetry fan. Right now, when I have a few extra minutes at the end my class’s morning meeting, I read a poem or two from John Grandits’ Technically It’s Not My Fault. From the cover on, this is one hilarious book; Grandits has captured the voice of 5th grader Robert perfectly and uses the special effects of this particular poetic form (the text placed on the page in ways related to the poem’s content) in a notably fresh way. I’m looking forward to the forthcoming Blue Lipstick, evidently more concrete poems from Robert’s older sister’s point of view. (A couple of other recent children’s books featuring concrete poetry are Joyce Sidman and Michelle Berg’s Meow Ruff and Paul B. Janeczko and Chris Raschka’s collection A Poke in the I.)

Then there is concrete poetry’s cousin, animated poetry. I started out looking for animations featuring text and words and came across It’s Not My Fault by Claire Mason and an animated version of John Hegley’s What a Poem is Not. I also love the animated poems at the British Council website (and I love the British Council because when I lived in Freetown, Sierra Leone, they had the only library in town).

Finally, do check out Ana Maria Uribe’s anipoems — very neat mixtures of concrete and animated poetry.

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