Visual Poetry: A Lyrical Twist was an exhibit in SFPL’s Jewett Gallery combining the calligraphy of Thomas Ingmire with the writing of eleven contemporary poets. In a collaborative process, Ingmire inscribed poems of varying lengths and styles with expressive letterforms and abstract brushwork.

Vinyl lettering on the front wall represented the exhibit title in both readable typography (white) and calligraphy specially commissioned from Ingmire (black). This duality was echoed elsewhere in the exhibit, as viewers could read typeset poems in full, right next to individual pages of Ingmire’s original artist book versions.

A multi-part foamcore-mounted reproduction of a scroll depicting Li-Young Lee’s 2400-word poem, “Changing Places in the Fire,” took up the gallery’s longest wall. (The original scroll was kept safe off-site for the duration of the exhibit.)

Thomas Ingmire on the Exhibit:

“[A] driving force behind the exhibition … was my interest in the expressive potential of letterforms and calligraphy. I wanted to push the visual potential of calligraphy. It was more of a process of creating abstract forms, textures, and lines out of words and text that could bring something more to the meaning of a text than what we read. Early attempts involved trying to capture the emotion of a poem, or the atmosphere of a poem. This process ultimately evolved to thinking more about the verbal rhythms of language and how to capture that ida visually … and ultimately to the idea of linking poetry to music, and then music to calligraphy.”

(Alphabet: The Journal of the Friends of Calligraphy, vol. 44, no. 3, Spring 2019, page 17)

In addition to exhibit contents, I designed a catalogue that included smaller reproductions of Ingmire’s artwork, accompanied by the poems, short biographies of the poets and some commentary from Ingmire.