The movement of the poem in the 1960s: from circle and line to zero and one, from concretion to computation

Abstract

Poetic form in the 1960s in Britain, and elsewhere, was affected by trans-disciplinary and trans-cultural influences that came fully into focus after the end of the Second World War. These were substantially iterated and theorized throughout the 1950s, paving the way for radical experiments in language during the following decade. Drawing on Paul Celan’s observation that poetry maintains itself ‘at its own extremity’ (expanded by Lyon [1983. “Poetry and the Extremities of Language: From Concretism to Paul Celan.” Studies in 20th Century Literature 8 (1): Article 5. Accessed September 20, 2016. doi:10.4148/2334-4415.1131] and Klink [2000. “You. An Introduction to Paul Celan.” The Iowa Review 30 (1): 1–18. http://ir.uiowa.edu/iowareview/vol30/iss1/2], this article considers movement in the form and language of poetry in the post-war period. It looks at some specific examples of how this became manifest in Britain and at traversal connections to developments within other disciplines, not least in scientific and technological domains.