Poemx, the Baptismal Public Poem, Knokke, 1970
1970-2011
Mixed Media, 2 x ( 32 x 110 cm ).
Materials:
Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. UFO_080_3).
'My great friend Paul De Vree invited me back from Spain to the Knokke Poetry Festival in 1970, where I did my Public Baptismal Poem, POEMX. One by one I dipped the human-sized foam rubber letters in the salty North Sea with ritual gestures: P O E M X -- until they were so soaked that they were too heavy to lift. By poetic osmosis World was absorbed into World and this literal rite wrote the waves until the waves became writing and the gulls and the wind metaphor and a new poetics by this baptism was born: POEMX." - Alain Arias-Misson
