NOIGANDRES POETRY IN GREAT BRITAIN: ARRIÈRE-GARDE POETICS

Abstract

In this paper, we intend to present some of the antecedents that enabled the project

of the “Noigandres” group of exporting Brazilian concrete poetry to England and Scot-
land in the 1960s. Recent approaches in the literature document the exemplarity of

Brazilian concrete poetry for concrete poets in these countries, but, simultaneously,
they end up overshadowing the role of the group by treating the arrival of concrete
poetry in the islands as a matter of chance. These studies usually consider that the
first publication on concrete poetry in Great Britain was motivated by a letter from the

Portuguese poet E. M. de Melo e Castro to The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) in re-
sponse to an article that discusses poetic experiments without mentioning concrete

poetry. Unlike these approaches, this paper emphasizes certain characteristics of the
Noigandres’ project that reverberated in that particular context, and also analyzes
some of its import conditions.