Free Thinking

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Free Thinking: Concrete poetry

Concrete poetry

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Concrete poetry

Matthew Sweet and guests on the career of poet and monk Dom Sylvester Houédard (1924-92).

How important is the layout of a poem? Concrete poetry fuses art with writing. Matthew Sweet and guests discuss the work of Dom Houédard.

The monk and poet Dom Houédard used his Olivetti Lettera 22 typewriter to fuse art and writing in concrete poetry.  Born in 1924 he worked in Army Intelligence in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore and in 1949 he joined the Benedictine Abbey of Prinknash, Gloucestershire.  Matthew Sweet looks at his life and art with guests Nicola Simpson, Rey Conquer, Charles Verey and Greg Thomas. 

Charles Verey is writing a biography of Dom Sylvester Houédard and has recently edited The Kiss, The Beshara talks of Dom Sylvester Houedard (Beshara Publications 2022), a collection that gives voice to the Dom’s wider spiritual wisdom. 

Nicola Simpson is editor of The Cosmic Typewriter, The Life and Work of Dom Sylvester Houédard (Occasional Papers, 2012) and curator of The Cosmic Typewriter exhibition and symposium (South London Gallery, 2012) and The Yoga of Concrete (Norwich University of the Arts, 2010). Her research interests focus on the influence of Zen and Vajrayana Buddhism on British Conceptual Art of the 1960s and 1970s. She has also worked on an online exhibition at the Lisson Gallery  https://www.lissongallery.com/exhibitions/dom-sylvester-houedard-tantric-poetries 

Greg Thomas is a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Edinburgh studying concrete poetry.

Rey Conquer writes on poetry and religion and lectures in German at the University of Oxford and researches the problem religious belief in art and literature poses to the secular imagination. 

Producer: Luke Mulhall

You can find more discussions about Prose and Poetry in a collection on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047v6vh and a collection of programmes exploring religious belief https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03mwxlp

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