Visual Poetry is the poetry of image, which is present in several historical avant-garde mo(ve)ments, from Symbolism (1886), going through DADA (1916), Surrealism (1924), Spacialism (1946), to some branches of the Concrete Poetry, like Neo-Concretism (1959). As a virtually conceptual and factual movement, it happened in the 60's through the Italian Visual Poetry (1963) and the Portuguese POEX (1965). In Brazil, such movement materializes itself
in the Poem/Process movement (Natal-Rio de Janeiro, 1967). During the 70's, this strong branch of poetry as conceptual image is widely practiced through the international movement of Mail Art. Recently, these poetical inventions can be found in the Multimedia and InfoArt processualism, which make it live poetry.
2 - Who were and/or are your sources of inspiration, your models (either poets or artistic movements) in this artistic medium?
My sources of inspiration go back to the early 60's, when I invented my first poem, "Ilha" (Island), an envelope hand-sewn by my grandmother Maria Guedes Alcaforado, in Belém, State of Paraíba. The word "Ilha" (Island) was there in the white envelope, "very in"; cosmologic influences, where I was born, in a haunted house.... It was dictated in a dream. Afterwards, when I was eight years old, in the year of the Poem/Process movement, I sent to live in Natal (State of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil). I made up an alphabet with my own signs, and a flag under which I would, egotistically, feel like a "nation," and I finally got acquainted with Poem/Process, influenced by Anchieta Fernandes, Wlademir Dias Pino, Falves Silva, Moacy Cirne; and above all, Álvaro de Sá, when I abandoned my childhood poetic alphabet and took over his poem/process "Alfabismo," allowing myself many versions of it. At the end of the 70's, there was the Mail Art movement, and afterwards it came multimedia, which I used, like in the video/poem "Galáxias" (Galaxies), together with the astrophysicist Joel Carvalho, a "structural version," as defined by Haroldo de Campos, the author of the poem. My poetry is a "poetry of reading," as foretold by Jorge Luis Borges.
3 - Why did you choose to create, or why do you enjoy creating, Visual Poetry as one of your artistic expressions?
Visual Poetry as means to artistic expression is the post-contemporaneous language!... It has its own language, acting in the artistic-conceptual territory....
4 - When did you first adopt Visual Poetry as a mode of expression?
Since the moment (1964) I felt isolated, in an attic, looking at a blue mountain range from a window wide open in the direction of "Pedra do Cordeiro" (Sheep Rock), in Belém, State of Paraíba, I was six years old and already felt like an exiled man, inside my own country. That was the inspiration for "Ilha" ("Island"), from the poet, outside of the context, outside of the common-sense, isolated in mediocrity, the counter-sense of sense, absurdly full of animism.
