the origin of the term “dirty concrete poetry” (en route to digital D.I.Y.)
Some time ago I wrote a post here on netpoetic about “Meaning as Making: From Dirty Concrete to Critical Code.” Since then, I have been working on turning this post-turned-conference-paper into an essay for a special issue of the Canadian journal Open Letter on Steve McCaffery. This piece now has the title “Marking as Meaning: Reading Steve McCaffery’s Dirty Concrete as Digital D.I.Y.” and in it I’ve tried to delineate a history of the term “dirty concrete” – a term which is frequently used to describe a messy, typed-over aesthetic of concrete poems by McCaffery as well as bpNichol and bill bissett. I thought it worthwhile posting here some of the bits and pieces I’ve picked up along the way on this strange, long journey to discover the origin of the term – a journey which has still not yet come to an end!
Once again, uut of the research I have been doing on digital poetry and digital Do-It-Yourself (D.I.Y.) communities, I am coming to think that Steve McCaffery’s so-called “dirty concrete poem” “Carnival” – as well as his lesser known but no less relevant typestracts such as “Broken Mandala” and “Vowel-Grid Sequence” – can usefully be read through, or alongside, both communities of practice. These groups comprise a movement not only to democratize the creative process, but they also reflect a desire to make this same democratization possible through techniques which draw attention to the literary artifact as both a created and mediated object – techniques which essentially turn the artifact inside-out. It is a philosophy of making, similarly exemplified by the dirty concrete poem, that erodes the division between surface and depth, inside and outside.
The term “dirty concrete” has become a fairly well-used term to describe a deliberate attempt to move away from the clean lines and graphically neutral appearance of the concrete poetry from the 1950s and 60s by the Noigandres in Brazil and Ian Hamilton Finlay in England (a cleanliness that can also be construed to indicate a lack of political engagement with language and representation). Yet, despite the references and discussion around dirty concrete, there is no clear, written account of who originally used this term. As Steve McCaffery wrote to the Poetics Listserv, this could be simply due to the fact that certain concrete poets were meeting in person and so I assume they were not at that time invested invested in writing down their thoughts and activities for posterity’s sake.
After corresponding with a number of poetry critics and practitioners, as far as I have been able to determine the term “dirty concrete” was first used either by the English critic Mike Weaver or the Canadian critic Stephen Scobie; however, there are no documents that prove this definitively. [1] Still, it is worth noting that the first written reference appears in a letter Nichol wrote to Nicholas Zurbrugg, the editor of Stereo Headphones, in 1970 in which Nichol claims he learned of the term from Stephen Scobie (and Scobie informed me in a recent email that he learned of it from Mike Weaver). The term was likely then put into broader circulation first by way of bill bissett’s 1973 “Quebec Bombers” in pass th food release th spirit book which, as Jack David describes it, “begins with the phrase ‘dirty concrete poet’ repeated twice, then changes to ‘the concrete is dirty dirty,’ ‘sum like it clean what dew they ooo.’ . . . the comparison presents the clean ordered life of a capitalist system and the dirty chaotic life of the lower classes.” In the same article Jack David claims that Rosalie Murphy refers to “dirty concrete” in her 1970 Contemporary Poets of the English Language. (99) However: I inspected the Murphy book and could find no reference anywhere to either dirty or clean concrete poetry. In fact, Frank Davey informed me that David is in fact referring to Davey’s own 1971 definition of clean and dirty concrete that he includes in Earle Birney and which he wrote with the assistance of bpNichol: “Concrete is usually divided by its devotees into ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’. In clean concrete, the preferred and dominant type, the visual shape of the work is primary, the linguistic signs secondary. In this view the most effective concrete poems are those with an immediate and arresting visual effect which is made more profound by the linguistic elements used in the poems constituent parts. The weakest are dirty concrete, those with amorphous visual shape and complex and involute arrangements of linguistic elements. In dirty concrete there can be no immediate to the whole, only a cumulative interpretation gained by painstaking labour.” (65) In the same email correspondence, Frank Davey writes that “When I met bp in 1970, he told me that clean concrete was a kind you could understand by looking but not reading, and that dirty was the kind that had a visual shape made of phases or clauses or sentences that had to be read as well as viewed. (But he didn’t attribute that theory to anyone.)”
The term was also picked up in Stephen Scobie’s 1984 book-length study bpNichol: What History Teaches in which he aligns Mike Weaver’s use of the terms “expressionist” and “constructivist” with Ian Hamilton Finlay’s “suprematist” and “fauvre” and claims that “[m]ore simply, bpNichol spoke of a division between ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ concrete.” (Scobie 35, 139)
I hope some of you find this history interesting – I am planning to interview Mike Weaver over the phone next week and I hope to put online the transcript. Some of you might recognize Weaver’s name because he was one of the first English-speaking critics to write about Concrete Poetry in 1964 and he also organized the First International Exhibition of Concrete and Kinetic Poetry also in 1964. He is a foundational figure in the history and development of concrete poetry which, in turn, has exerted tremendous influence over contemporary digital poetry and e-literature.
Incidentally, Frank Davey sent me scans of letters that Dom Sylvester Houedard and Zurbrugg sent to the Canadian poetry and digital poetry pioneer, bpNichol; one of the fascinating things about these letters is that they indicate that concrete poets were reading Marshall McLuhan as early as the mid-1960s and thinking about concrete poetry in terms of medium and message. I have posted these letters online at bpnichol.ca.
[1] I am tremendously grateful to George Bowering, Jack David, Frank Davey, Jamie Hilder, Steve McCaffery, Stephen Scobie, and Darren Wershler for their attempts to help me track down the history of the term “dirty concrete.”
Tags: clean concrete | concrete | dirty concrete | history
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18 Responses to “the origin of the term “dirty concrete poetry” (en route to digital D.I.Y.)”.
This is a brilliant history. And fascinating parallels between what we do now and what poets have been producing for years. I’ve recently experienced a similar bias and/or fear and/or prejudice/classism regarding my work and how it compares to traditional forms.
By the way, growing up in Oklahoma, the term dirty usually referred to those non-christians and/or artists of any kind.
Hi Lori, I was interested to see your comments above on dirty concrete. In the 50′s in Regina, Saskatchewan where I liven Harold Innis was well known for his C.B.C. programs and for his published work. I t was from his ideas plus our own observations of what was then recent international creative work in several mediums plus many other currents that bill bissett and I drew our ideas. This being the case and since Innis was one of Mcluhan’ s intellectual inspirations I would suggest that it would be more correct to say that the work of Innis to some extemnt inspired Canadian Concrete poets from 1960 onward. Mcluhanb was of course important later in many aspects of Candian culture.
If you look at The Intermedia Poetry Project on line you will see a short piece that I wrote on the subject of some early Canadian concrete poetry. It would also be useful to look at ruins in process: vancouverartin thesixties.com
Sorry for typo’s my wrists are confusing me at the moment.
Hi Lori, Another comment. Just to point out that my comment about Mcluhan was, obviously, just in response to your last paragraph here. The rest of the commentary was very interesting and worthwhile. I think when you look at some early works by bisset they are quite dirty. However I don’t remember when that precise naming came into use. I would like to suggest that it is possible for the linguistic, literary, perceptual and embodied qualities of any one piece to vary from any other and to exist in it’s own frame work. It is interesting to categorize these works but it is also interesting to see what in them is able to go beyond any prior categorization. Still it was interesting for me to hear the term dirty concrete. I can hear bill saying in my mind’s ear “it’s called dirty concrete now dear.”
Hi Lori where will you be presenting that paper you refer to at the beginning of your entry here? And what is Critical Code?
I guess what I was mainly asking just now was where can I get access to this paper or have you presented it yet. I don’t see what date you have on your entry.
I agree with the comment about supermatists and constructivists. In Western Canada, at any rate, in the 50′s and 60′s writing, as Bryan Gysin, is so often quoted as saying, more or less, Poetry is 50 years behind art. And so much inspiration could at that point be gained by writers when they strayed into the fields of art and music and so forth. If you look at the vancouverartinthesixties.com web site you will see what Michael Turner had to say about intermedial writing here in in the 60′s.
Another place where there is interesting information about multidisciplinarity in poetry in Vancouver in the ’60′s can be got from an essay by me in a book named “Making Waves” which came out from Anvil Press in Vancouver in the fall of 2010. that information can also be accessed on- line from a site named: The University of the Fraser Valley Research Journal. My article is called “An Informal Check List of Larger Poetry Activities in Vancouver in the 1960′s”.
Hi Judith, thanks so much for all your comments! I presented the paper I allude to last May, at the ACCUTE conference in Montreal. The essay I’m working on for Open Letter will be a fancied-up, more formal version of that same talk. I’m happy to email you a copy of both or either. I am eager to read more of your work – I’m glad you posted some references!
I hope that you will be able to include the information that I have given you about some of the origins of concrete poetry in Canada if you are going to speak of it’s such origins in your paper. Here in Vancouver there was a fair amount of concrete being done in the ’60′s and if you get a chance to look at the Special Collections Department at SFU it becomes clear, as it must if you look at bp’s on correspondence since he published so many people and wrote so much himself, that concrete poets were reading many kinds of intellectual, political, art and literature theory before the middle of the1960′s.
I am not sure why your sources of information regarding concrete poetry especially in the 1060′s are George Bowering (not that you mentioned him here but you did mention him as helpful in this regard some where recently) and Frank Davey because although they are both powerful and well known known as writers, publishers and academicians and friendly people they both expressed to me a disinterest in concrete poetry in the 1960′s.
I hope that any one interested in all of this will soon get a chance to check out the blew ointment magazines and writing by bill bissett and other concrete poets in that magazine from the 1960′s, as well as the various writing and magazines produced by david uu harris and others. Also a check of the various on-line sources that I have mentioned above in these same comments will, I think, be helpful to anyone who wishes to know a bit more about this subject which has unfortunately been somewhat ignored and perhaps misunderstood.
Hi Judith – thanks so much for posting this! I’m planning on writing more on early concrete poetry so I’ll be sure to try to include more work on you and bissett. I’ve talked to Frank Davey and Bowering only because they’re ones I’ve had access to and also because Bowering responded to an open call for help I put out on the poetics listserv. So, again, I’m happy to be in touch with you in particular!
Thanks for your response Lori. And also your response on email saying you would say more in a week or so when you had met your deadlines and had time to read the material I sent to you. I haven’t meant to down play George’s and Franks’ importance in Canadian poetry at all I just feel it is not really productive to consider them as experts on the particular areas such as early concrete in Canada (and specifically 1960′s in B.C.) when other people were more involved in these disciples and eras.
I would be curious to know if I could get access that poetics listserv as nobody has ever told me about such a call and perhaps there are other calls or discussions that I might be helpful in. Or perhaps it is this listserve in which case I should try to look for it here as well as pay more attention to this listserv.. .Is that what this is called?. How long ago was that do you remember? Sorry I know you are busy but I am so curious about all of this. Thanks for your interest.
Just to clarify what I am talking about since my comments have moved away from what your piece was really (in short I think) about Steve McCaffery’s work and a move from paper to digital writing. The thing is my comments were not specifically about dirty or clean concrete as I am not involved in dichotomizing concrete particularly. My comments were to do with what I felt was a by way in the consideration of the history of concrete poetry in Canada. My personal artistic interest is more in regard to an embodied poetic and so though I appreciate the immense freedom that the digital universe is giving us I find myself unable to comment on the world of digital poetry in general at all.
Dear Lori I hope I haven’t appeared to be critical of your efforts in regard to concrete poetry. I appreciate all the work you have done.
All I am trying to do is to get a handle on are what sources are available for the viewing, dissemination and understanding of this material and how it is going to be possible to redress any omission that might have inadvertently occurred in the presentation or production of this material.
Hi Lori
I am trying to think what could be done to make the situation on the West Coast in the 60′s better known. The problem is I don’t have quick access to SFU’s special collections where there is a lot of material.
What I am just going to be writing here is massively disorganized and totally skimpy also. Just a couple of sentences of one note per sentence.
i just wanted to point out that this area of compiled and easily available information on early concrete in Canada and especially on the west coast is sadly a mainly blank area except for the primary sources (ie magazines, books and also human resources which are dieing out quite quickly it seems) which are hard to come by or access.
One place to learn about Concrete in Canada in the 60′s would be bp’s little magazines such as, gronk, ganglia and so forth. Another magazine worth looking at is Spanish Flye put out by David W. Harris.
One of the reasons that I wrote The Check List of of Larger Poetry Events in Vancouver in the 1960′s was that I was afraid that any information on everything that happened here at that time was going to very soon disappear into the dust. Unless someone has the time to start interviewing secondary sources a lot of that information has already gone.. That list I compiled is only 4 or 5 pages long and only deals with the largest and most well known events but it would definitely be a start for anyone who wished to study this area further.
And perhaps it is the same for early Canadian concrete. If I were able to do such a study I would perhaps write first to everyone or who ever I had time to write to who was published in bp’s early magazines and ask for their chronology and bibliography of concrete in Canada. I think a lot could compiled from just such information. the poet Pauline Thibaudeau would be an other person who would be an excellent contact in this regard.
The trouble is that concrete has just being started to be taught so the scholars who might work on this (and those who might get funding to work on it) are just starting to appear. There is the work on bp who was so important but there were many others as you will see in gronk etc. Of course the way of most criticism and scholar ship seems to be not to study the community as a whole but to stick to one or two people and make them stand for everything. But in these two case (concrete in 60′s Canada and poetry in 60′s Vancouver) which are what I know about that would be extreme short sighted and inadequate especially, perhaps as the 60′s was a time of broad based involvement.
I expect that computer poetry may have the same broad base as 60′s poetry had with the proviso that the early people had to have enough electronic skills (and still have to have to some degree) to keep the machine running and creating itself and the final work. But that isn’t something I know anything about.
I should also note that if it were not first for bill bissett, and the later for David W. Harris, John Curry and Daniel F. Bradley producing their own work, publishing very many people and supporting my work I would probably be unaware of anything going on in concrete. And bp was very important too of course but he has been, to some degree documented, and he was not the only producer and supporter of concrete in Canada.
They are all very important in the history of concrete poetry in Canada. Sometimes the iconoclastic nature of some of their their personalities and philosophies makes it difficult to document them but a look at bill bissett’s blew ointment press or James Reaney’s Alphabet magazine,david uu’s spanish flye magazine, or query to jw , a look at his catalogues, or his magazines such as 1cent or industrial sabotage, or a visit to jw’s book store in Ottawa, the book store of Nelson Ball in Paris, Ontario or to Letters Bookstore which is run by Nicky Drumbolis with questions about the history of Concrete in Canada would likely be very useful.
-
Hi Lori
I am trying to think what could be done to make the situation on the West Coast in the 60′s better known. The problem is I don’t have quick access to SFU’s special collections where there is a lot of material.
What I am writing here is just notes in thee hope that it will be on some use to who might be interested in using some of this material in their own studies of an interesting and important area of Canadian poetry.
Ijust wanted to point out that this area of compiled and easily available information on early concrete in Canada and especially on the west coast is sadly a mainly blank area except for the primary sources (ie magazines, books and also human resources which are dieing out quite quickly it seems) which are hard to come by or access.
One place to learn about Concrete in Canada in the 60′s would be bp’s little magazines such as, gronk, ganglia and so forth. Another magazine worth looking at is Spanish Flye put out by David W. Harris.
One of the reasons that I wrote The Check List of of Larger Poetry Events in Vancouver in the 1960′s was that I was afraid that any information on everything that happened here at that time was going to very soon disappear into the dust. Unless someone has the time to start interviewing secondary sources a lot of that information has already gone.. That list I compiled is only 4 or 5 pages long and only deals with the largest and most well known events but it would definitely be a start for anyone who wished to study this area further.
And perhaps it is the same for early Canadian concrete. If I were able to do such a study I would perhaps write first to everyone or who ever I had time to write to who was published in bp’s early magazines and ask for their chronology and bibliography of concrete in Canada. I think a lot could compiled from just such information. the poet Pauline Thibaudeau would be an other person who would be an excellent contact in this regard.
The trouble is that concrete has just being started to be taught so the scholars who might work on this (and those who might get funding to work on it) are just starting to appear. There is the work on bp who was so important but there were many others as you will see in gronk etc. Of course the way of most criticism and scholar ship seems to be not to study the community as a whole but to stick to one or two people and make them stand for everything. But in these two case (concrete in 60′s Canada and poetry in 60′s Vancouver) which are what I know about that would be extreme short sighted and inadequate especially, perhaps as the 60′s was a time of broad based involvement.
I expect that computer poetry may have the same broad base as 60′s poetry had with the proviso that the early people had to have enough electronic skills (and still have to have to some degree) to keep the machine running and creating itself and the final work. But that isn’t something I know anything about.
I should also note that if it were not first for bill bissett, and the later for David W. Harris, John Curry and Daniel F. Bradley producing their own work, publishing very many people and supporting my work I would probably be unaware of anything going on in concrete. And bp was very important too of course but he has been, to some degree documented, and he was not the only producer and supporter of concrete in Canada.
They are all very important in the history of concrete poetry in Canada. Sometimes the iconoclastic nature of some of their their personalities and philosophies makes it difficult to document them but a look at bill bissett’s blew ointment press or James Reaney’s Alphabet magazine,david uu’s spanish flye magazine, or query to jw , a look at his catalogues, or his magazines such as 1cent or industrial sabotage, or a visit to jw’s book store in Ottawa, the book store of Nelson Ball in Paris, Ontario or to Letters Bookstore which is run by Nicky Drumbolis with questions about the history of Concrete in Canada would likely be very useful.
-
Hi Lori
I am trying to think what could be done to make the situation on the West Coast in the 60′s better known. The problem is I don’t have quick access to SFU’s special collections where there is a lot of material.
What I am writing here is just notes in thee hope that it will be on some use to who might be interested in using some of this material in their own studies of an interesting and important area of Canadian poetry.
I just wanted to point out that this area of compiled and easily available information on early concrete in Canada and especially on the west coast is sadly a mainly blank area except for the primary sources (ie magazines, books and also human resources which are dieing out quite quickly it seems) which are hard to come by or access.
One place to learn about Concrete in Canada in the 60′s would be bp’s little magazines such as, gronk, ganglia and so forth. Another magazine worth looking at is Spanish Flye put out by David W. Harris.
One of the reasons that I wrote The Check List of of Larger Poetry Events in Vancouver in the 1960′s was that I was afraid that any information on everything that happened here at that time was going to very soon disappear into the dust. Unless someone has the time to start interviewing secondary sources a lot of that information has already gone.. That list I compiled is only 4 or 5 pages long and only deals with the largest and most well known events but it would definitely be a start for anyone who wished to study this area further.
And perhaps it is the same for early Canadian concrete. If I were able to do such a study I would perhaps write first to everyone or who ever I had time to write to who was published in bp’s early magazines and ask for their chronology and bibliography of concrete in Canada. I think a lot could compiled from just such information. the poet Pauline Thibaudeau would be an other person who would be an excellent contact in this regard.
The trouble is that concrete has just being started to be taught so the scholars who might work on this (and those who might get funding to work on it) are just starting to appear. There is the work on bp who was so important but there were many others as you will see in gronk etc. Of course the way of most criticism and scholar ship seems to be not to study the community as a whole but to stick to one or two people and make them stand for everything. But in these two case (concrete in 60′s Canada and poetry in 60′s Vancouver) which are what I know about that would be extreme short sighted and inadequate especially, perhaps as the 60′s was a time of broad based involvement.
I expect that computer poetry may have the same broad base as 60′s poetry had with the proviso that the early people had to have enough electronic skills (and still have to have to some degree) to keep the machine running and creating itself and the final work. But that isn’t something I know anything about.
I should also note that if it were not first for bill bissett, and the later for David W. Harris, John Curry and Daniel F. Bradley producing their own work, publishing very many people and supporting my work I would probably be unaware of anything going on in concrete. And bp was very important too of course but he has been, to some degree documented, and he was not the only producer and supporter of concrete in Canada.
They are all very important in the history of concrete poetry in Canada. Sometimes the iconoclastic nature of some of their their personalities and philosophies makes it difficult to document them but a look at bill bissett’s blew ointment press or James Reaney’s Alphabet magazine,david uu’s spanish flye magazine, or query to jw , a look at his catalogues, or his magazines such as 1cent or industrial sabotage, or a visit to jw’s book store in Ottawa, the book store of Nelson Ball in Paris, Ontario or to Letters Bookstore which is run by Nicky Drumbolis with questions about the history of Concrete in Canada would likely be very useful.
-
Hi Lori Sorry for the repeats of this last message. Perhaps you know how to erase the extra copies. I you do know how please do so.
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