Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry

‘Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry’ profiles artist Michael Morris during the period between 1964 and 1971. The book has a particular focus on concrete poetry, considered as perhaps the first global art movement, springing up in South and North America, Japan and Europe in the mid to late 1950s to the present day. Morris’ interest in concrete poems underlies his desire to develop the relationship between one medium and another this was a period in which his work shifted from primarily painting to photography, sculpture, performance and video. ‘Letters’, a series of six painted triptychs executed in the late 1960s that form the basis of this book, embody this interdisciplinary thinking. Incorporating vertical mirrors, they were imagined not only as objects in themselves, expressing the pivotal role light plays in painting, but also as ‘props’, before which a dance performance might take place. The book features essays on Morris’ ambitious paintings of this period alongside texts on international and Canadian concrete poetry as represented by the work of Ugo Carrega, Henri Chopin, Lily Greenham, Jiri Kolar, Ferdinand Kriwet, Arrigo Lora-Totino, Steve McCaffery and Gerhard Ruhm. 171 b/w and colour