I’m sure that many of you remember this scene from “Who’s minding the Store”, in which Jerry Lewis performs the famous typewriting scene. This is just one of the various ways in which a typewriter can be used. For instance The Boston Typewriting Orchestra is totally based on this vintage writing tool.

                                                 

But apart from this undoubtedly original use of a typewriter, I’m going to introduce you a poet whose work is based on typewriting, too, but in a way that I am sure will astonish you. We see Jerry Lewis typing but no letter appears. We don’t see Ana Maria Uribe typing her letters, too, but what we see is a crowded cloud of “h” that become a herd of centaurs, while a rapid series of intermitting R, I and P become a rhythmic Pas de Deux.

Ana Maria Uribe started her career as a poet during the period of Concrete Poetry, a widespread movement in Brasil, and through her production we can see how the advent of the computer and of the Internet in particular has changed the way of literally “making” poetry. In her website her first works, the Typoems, and the later, the Anipoems, are clearly distinguished. The name “Typoems” refers to the fact that the poems were literally typewritten: 

“. . . I wrote “Typoems”, a series of visual or typographic poems which I typed with an old machine called Lettera 22.”

(Source: http://vispo.com/uribe/datos/aboutAnaMariaEnglish.htm)

 

From 1997, though, her poems had the chance to come to light thanks to many new animation softwares. Sound has become a recurrent when not fundamental part of the Anipoems. Moreover, animation made the construction of a plot possible (it doesn’t really make much sense building a plot just using letters on a screen).

Ana Maria was an affectionate traveler and her competence in many languages reflects in her works. She herself provided the translation for most of them and in some cases, such as “Deseo - Desejo – Desire“, the different translations of the same word work as a standpoint for the structure of the poem. It is organized in three movements, one for each version of the word.

There’s a different music for each of them. A sharp attention should be paid to the final “Desire” in particular. Here there’s the key to read her works, which are never just letters on a screen, but she usually tried to let the letters be at the same time signs and signifiers for something else. Thus he final tango between S and I is not only evoking her native land, Argentina, and the probably one of the most sensual dances we can think about, but it also refers to the lovers accepting to surrender to this desire, that is saying “Si”, “Yes” in Spanish. (Source: http://vispo.com/uribe/datos/aboutAnaMariaEnglish.htm).

Another work worth of mention is the series “Spring” compared to “Winter”.

In Spring and Spring 2 we see respectively a column of Ps and Qs forming a  tree brench with leaves and buds sprouting from it. In Winter and Winter 2, though, these signs of a renewed nature disappear. The Ps fall down and square brackets are the naked branches, and Qs transforms into Y.

A strange thing happened while I was watching this letters moving on the screen: it took me a couple of seconds to realize that they were actaully letters. So smartly Ana Maria make them floating in the black background and interacting that you almost forget what they are. You only perceive a shape and, influenced by the title of the piece, your fantasly makes you see things that actually don’t exist. Is a V jointed to another V  a W or a zipper?