UbuWeb

UbuWeb began in 1996 as a site focusing on visual and concrete poetry. With the advent of the graphical web browser, we began scanning old concrete poems, astonished by how fresh they looked backlit by the computer screen. Shortly thereafter, when streaming audio became available, it made sense to extend our scope to sound poetry, and as bandwidth increased we later added MP3s as well as video. Sound poetry opened up a whole new terrain: certain of John Cage’s readings of his mesostic texts could be termed “sound poetry,” hence we included them. As often, though, Cage combined his readings with an orchestral piece; we included those as well. But soon, we found ourselves unable to distinguish the difference between “sound poetry” and “music.” We encountered this dilemma time and again whether it was with the compositions of Maurico Kagel, Joan La Barbara, or Henri Chopin, all of whom are as well-known as composers as they are sound artists. After a while, we gave up trying to name things; we dropped the term “sound poetry” and referred to it thenceforth simply as “Sound.”

When we began posting found street poems that used letter forms in fantastically innovative ways, we had to reconsider what “concrete poetry” was. As time went on, we seemed to be outgrowing our original taxonomies until we simply became a repository for the “avant-garde” (whatever that means—our idea of what is “avant-garde” seems to be changing all the time). UbuWeb adheres to no one historical narrative, rather we’re more interested in putting several disciplines into the same space and seeing how they interact: poetry, music, film, and literature from all periods encounter and bounce off of each other in unexpected ways.  
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