Barcelona City Council and the Joan Brossa Foundation are publishing the book 'The Net in the Forest: Joan Brossa and Experimental Poetry, 1946–1980', edited by Eduard Escoffet, which takes a look at the various experimental poetry trends in Europe and America between 1946 and 1980, the period in which Joan Brossa developed his poetic language.
This period embraces from the initial public activity of the Lettrist movement in Paris in 1946 up to 1980, the start of a decade in which Brossa began to gain public recognition as one of the great European experimental poets of the twentieth century. Between these years, poets from all corners of Europe and America explored new ways of making poetry enter into a dialogue with the tools and languages of the present to convey the idea that, despite the physical distances, all of these poets were interconnected. The different poems in the selection join up as though they were links in a chain, based on aesthetic, discursive or less evident elements.
To mark the centenary of Joan Brossa (Barcelona, 1919-1998), and with the aim of taking a closer look at the exhibition of poetic creativity of the second half of the twentieth century, the Joan Brossa Foundation decided to promote La xarxa al bosc (The Net in the Forest), a project that consisted of an ambitious international show held between May and November 2019 at the Joan Brossa Foundation in Barcelona, and this book, which includes an anthology of 79 visual and concrete poems, a text on these poetic expressions (in three versions: Catalan, Spanish and English) and documentation about the exhibition.
It is a unique anthology of visual and concrete poetry that brings together poets from all corners of Europe and America and that combines both iconic poems and others that are less well-known or hard to find. In addition, the book gathers together documentation about the exhibition and the relevant catalogue of works shown at it, most of them inaccessible as they are held in private collections.
The book is aimed at all audiences and commands of language, from specialists to anyone wanting to plunge themselves into the world of visual and concrete poetry for the first time. It is a unique opportunity to discover how poets from different countries wanted to create poetry that transcended borders and that was universal.
Book presentation
The presentation will be on Thursday 23 July at the ARTS LIBRIS International Art Book Fair. The event will take place at 1.30 pm at the El Born Cultural and Memorial Centre, given by Eduard Escoffet and the book’s designers, the Todojunto studio.