Language is broken. Some schools of poetry sit on the floor and cry about it. Others look at the pieces and say, “What can we make out of this?”
Concrete poetry is a mapping of the myriad means by which a passenger on the information transmission train can climb out of their sleeper car and ride atop the speeding bullet, leap from car to car, and sometimes, just sometimes, leap to grab the low-hanging landing skid of the helicopter that has come to the rescue.
Color, emphasis, reorganization, incorporation of visual elements, typography, photography, all are pry bars to peel open the skin of canned communication. Peek inside, and see what Ward Tietz sees when he looks at, inside, around, and outside of language.
Ward Tietz has exhibited and performed in festivals, art centers and museums in the United Sates and Europe since the late 1980s, working in a variety of media including sculpture, sound, performance and works on paper. His most recent work includes Hg-The Liquid, which is forthcoming from 1913 Press, and a word sculpture installation called la chasse-cueillette (hunting and gathering) which is at the Villa Bernasconi Museum in Geneva, Switzerland.