On display in the Kimberlin Library, De Montfort University, Leicester ( http://www.library.dmu.ac.uk/Home/Location/index.php?page=149 ) – a collection of letters and concrete poems by Edwin Morgan; Scotland’s first modern national poet (as recognised in 2004 by the Scottish Executive). The “Edwin Morgan, Concrete Poetry and Fluxus” exhibition is located in the Kimberlin Library wooden stairwell cabinets (on three levels) during December and January 2011. Work by some of the other Fluxus artists is also displayed.

Fluxus is the name attributed to the international avant-garde art and literary movement, which began officially in 1962, and was active throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Meaning “flowing” in Latin, the movement advocated purging the world of bourgeois, commercial, and professional art. The style is characterized by the creation of multimedia and intermedia works used in street art events and concerts.

Concrete Poetry is a genre of visual poetry, of the 1950s and 1960s that was adopted by Fluxus practitioners. In concrete poetry language elements are arranged freely, not necessarily in linear syntax, and meaning is derived from spatial, pictorial, and typographic characteristics of the work, as well as from the sense of the words. In these visual poems the letters, words, or lines are arranged to form a shape or image.

The Verona publisher Francesco Conz donated a large collection of Fluxus works to De Montfort University. He shared an interest in the avant-garde movement with the late Nicholas Zurbrugg, Professor of English and Cultural Studies at De Montfort University (1995 – 2001). This donation features work by Ian Hamilton-Finlay, Alison Knowles, Philip Corner, Robert Lax, Dick Higgins, Robert Watts, Eugen Gomringer and Edwin Morgan, amongst others.

More about Edwin Morgan can be found at on http://www.edwinmorgan.com/menu.html and in Literature Online (LION) http://bit.ly/f8mAE3

The exhibition is curated by Jo Tidswell, University Art Collections Co-ordinator.