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          FIFTH ANNUAL VISPO CONTEST

Contest window: June 1 - June 15, 2025

Judges: Shloka Shankar & Robin Smith 

 

What is Vispo?

Visual poetry is a development of concrete poetry, characterized by intermedia. The predominant elements that constitute a visual poem/vispo include non-representational language and the interplay of text & art. There is a strong graphic element to these pieces.

“Visual poetry can be defined as poetry that is meant to be seen—poetry that presupposes a viewer as well as a reader.”— Willard Bohn

“Never before has language had so much materiality—fluidity, plasticity, malleability—begging to be actively managed by the writer. Before digital language, words were almost always found imprisoned on a page. It’s just another reminder that, in the future, words very well might not only be written to be read but rather to be shared, moved, and manipulated, sometimes by humans, more often by machines, providing us with an extraordinary opportunity to reconsider what writing is and to define new roles for the writer. While the writer today is challenged by having to go up against a proliferation of words and compete for attention, she can use this proliferation in unexpected ways to create works that are as expressive and meaningful as works constructed in more traditional ways.” — Kenneth Goldsmith

 

What to submit:

 

- blackout poems (cite the source)
- erasures (cite the source & use your original artwork)
- haiga (collaborations welcome)
- Artist Trading Cards
- fridge magnet poetry
- asemic writing
- typography art
- collage & cut-ups (digital & analogue) 
- altered book pages
- conceptual pieces

 

Guidelines:

 

1. Please type VISPO CONTEST in the subject line and send your entry/entries as an attachment to sonicboomjournal@gmail.com. ALL work must be unpublished. We do not consider pieces published on social media/personal blogs as published. Collaborations welcome.

2. Make sure you include your name, country, and a short artist's statement or note about your entry/entries in the body of the email. We would love to know your process!

3. Please name each file with the title of your piece and your full name. Example: Title_Full Name. Maximum file size: 2 MB. 

4. Please submit 1-2 visual poems. Additional entries will be ignored. 

 

5. Submissions will remain open from June 1 through midnight on June 15, 2025 (Indian Standard Time). Entries received before or after the contest period will be deleted unread. 

6. The top three winners  and honourable mentions will receive e-certificates. Shortlisted entries will be displayed in an online gallery format on our website. 

As poet and artist Johanna Drucker once noted, “All works of written poetry are graphical, but only some take advantage of that in interesting ways.”

VISPO GALLERY 2024

'The Work Is to Love My Body' by Richard Ely
'Break Glass in Case of Emergency Curiosity' by Dale A. Lombardi
'St. Sebastian' by Joe Roberts
'Depression Era' by Debbie Strange
'theophoric name' by Raghav Prashant Sundar
'Aristotle-Plato debate' by Vidya Premkumar & Chidambar Navalgund
'Both Writer and Artist Unafraid' by Heidi Neipris Wexler
'All These Words' by Dale A. Lombardi
'Chronological Scraps' by Deepa Patil
'Without Baggage' by Heidi Neipris Wexler
'Prairie Landscape' by Marcia Brauer
'ichor' by Vidya Premkumar & Deepa Patil
'The Government' by Surashree Joshi
'After Harvest' by Marcia Brauer
'The Other Side' by Heidi Neipris Wexler

VISPO GALLERY 2023

'Buddha' by Chidambar Navalgund
'after Klee, the equivocateur' by David E. Matthews
'cerebral wavelength' by Surashree Joshi
'ancestral trauma' by Dhaatri Vengunad
'Check Enclosed' by Alison Jennings
'Oh Child' by Michele Rule
'Map of the Michigander' by Kristen Gledhill
'girlhood' by Norma Bradley
'Heart Strings' by Marcia Brauer
'dried river' by Bhawana Rathore
'Of People' by Chidambar Navalgund
'comparison' by Dhaatri Vengunad
'Owning My Narrative' by Deepa Patil
'True Story' by Lesley-Anne Evans
'Foreign Letters #1' by Alejandra Koreck
'Treaty 1' by Debbie Strange
'Communication or Confrontation' by Shrehya Taneja
'new year' by Darlene O’Dell
'Living Memory' by Seth Copeland
'Contronymia' by David E. Matthews
'Truth Behind Shadows' by Marcia Brauer
'Repentance' by Julie Schwerin
'glitsky' by Deepa Patil
'moksha' by Raghav Sundar
'waves' by G. Akila

VISPO GALLERY 2022

'Neuromeds' by Geethanjali Rajan & Dhaatri Vengunad Menon
'With real swords' by Thomas Terceira & Dave Read
'Reader' by Chidambar Navalgund
'Longing' by Jane Ellen Glasser
'twelfth anniversary' by Raghav Prashant Sundar
'horoscope' by Aishwarya Vedula
'Here I Come' by Nico Vassilakis
'Max Semiotic Irregularity' by David E. Matthews
'Le città #3' by Cinzia Farina
'Jasper Arrow' by Maureen Alsop
'I don't want to be giddy' by Amanda Earl
'Sustenance' by Agnes Eva Savich
'Pausing' by Kati Mohr
'windchimes' by Vidhi Ashar
'Tu Me Manques' by Natalia L Rudychev
'Nautical Depths' by Ustat Sethi
'How Do You Feel When I Kiss You Good Night' by Natalia L Rudychev
'hope' by Chidambar Navalgund

VISPO GALLERY 2021

'Visarjan' by Raghav Sundar
'tic-tac-toe' by Geethanjali Rajan and Dhaatri Vengunad Menon
'Plastic Love' by Alisha Ahmad
'Family Secret' by Kelly Nelson
'Tanka for Pollock' by Tchello d'Barros
'Expect Nothing' by Rajeshwari Goswami
'Noetic Map' by Mark Meyer
'Outback Sunrise' by Oormila Vijayakrishnan P
'drawing together' by Julie Bloss Kelsey
'Our First Conversation' by Kelly Nelson
'Of Itself VI' by Penny Smith
Trying to Recreate_ Meredith McGhan
'Mounds of Silence' by Vidhi Ashar
'as for us' by Geoff Pope
'Yatra' by Teji Sethi
'A Patch of Sunlight' by Christine L. Villa
'Retirement' by Engin Gülez
'God' by Chidambar Navalgund
'Endangered 3' by Katy Wimhurst
'Animals' by Meredith McGhan
'a hovering multitude' by Amanda Earl
'White Space' by Rajesh D.
'Anima' by Genaro Barba
'Psalms of the Shoal' by Karla Van Vliet

© 2014 - 2025 by Sonic Boom 

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