poem atlas

Tell us what you do!

As well as promoting visual poetry, Poem Atlas aims to bring people together and celebrate creativity and experimentation. It has achieved this to date by showcasing experimental talent from diverse backgrounds in the UK and beyond, through its visual poetry exhibitions. Poem Atlas has worked with poets from Canada and Norway to Germany and America amongst other countries, and aims to promote both emerging and established poets. We’ve been lucky to have worked with notable poets such as Kimberly Campanello, SJ Fowler, Karen Sandhu, Kate Siklosi, Chris McCabe, James Knight, montenegrofisher and Derek Beaulieu. In December 2019, Poem Atlas started the tradition of online visual poetry exhibitions, which was unprecedented in poetry at the time, and proved very timely since the COVID-19 pandemic which saw a spike in online events.

How do you see the current state of visual, constraint-based, and other formally experimental poetry? 

The current visual poetry landscape seems to be flowering more and more by the day which is wonderful to see—new presses such as Steel Incisors and Osmosis Press pave the way for some exciting new work to come, I’m sure! I hope that more and more platforms will welcome formally diverse work in the future. It’s all very optimistic. 

Why run a poetry press? What struggles do you face, but also what rewards are there?

Ultimately, Poem Atlas exists to anthologise object poetry (or poetry with emphasis on materiality) and to connect visual poets from all over the world to new audiences and to each other. Time and resources are two of our biggest challenges at the moment, but the titan’s eyes are always fixed on the prize—exchanging ideas, networking, giving stage to visual poets and creating some precious memories with like-minded people.

What is the ultimate goal of Poem Atlas? 

We hope to continue to organise physical and online exhibitions, and to continue to introduce visual and object poetry to wider audiences. There are some plans for further exhibition catalogues as well. Who knows, one day, we may even open a small Poem Atlas gallery, in London or elsewhere, dedicated to visual poets. That’s the dream!