Visual poetry: drawing and telling words

How does poetry and the visual relate to each other? How do they trigger questions and engage reflection on the semantic, structural, narrative, interrogative, speculative and emotional flows of poetry? Our aim is to explore the intermedial that is central to contemporary creation with a set of recent texts from French and English writers who inject in their writing – from the very start – a mix of languages, voices and pictures, continuously collaborating with film makers, musicians, actors and dancers.

This presentation will include an exhibition of visual art works: this all-age presentation of the bilingual edition of Riddles and Spells, by Richard Berengarten, a poet who lives in Cambridge. We will share a text, accessible to the youngest readers, with delicious shifts of meaning and mischievous verbal mixes.

Geneviève Guétemme is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Orleans, France. Her research focuses on collecting and studying cultural and artis¬tic images of displacement. Her continuous collaboration with artists and poets (I.e. Richard Berengarten who founded the 1975 Cambridge Poetry Festival) stands at the interface between drawing, photography and text. She investigates the ability of images to initiate an inclusive and hospitable process while reflecting the profoundest qualities in the poems.