Overview
In Visible Voices Nicolas Barker traces the history of the "translation" of poetry from a spoken medium to a written, or printed, medium. The book moves from the pictograms of the Ancient Near East through the development of alphabetic scripts, the traditions of Medieval European manuscripts, the shift from script to print, all the way to the innovations and experiments of the modernist period. Stéphane Mallarmé's typographically exploded poem Un coup de dés n'abolira pas le hasard, Barker writes, "takes the problem that has haunted poets and their audiences over 4000 years to a logical conclusion: that is, how the evanescent iridescent idea in the poet's mind is to be registered in graphic form – what, in short, is the art of poetry?" Illustrated throughout with photographs of the texts, this book provides a fascinating account of the history of this art.Author Biography
Nicolas Barker grew up in Cambridge, surrounded by books. He started printing them at fourteen, then went into publishing, becoming editor of The Book Collector, and in 1976 first Head of Conservation of the British Library. A Fellow of the British Academy, he has written or edited thirty books.
