"The Space of Poetry" exhibition in Boston examines the built environment of poetry

Who knew that architecture could let you perceive poetry in a new angle or two. Currently at Boston Architectural College's 951 Boylston Street Building until May 1, "The Space of Poetry" exhibition reveals the intricate ties between the written art form and architectural history, theory, and design — all by Cara Armstrong, a trained architect and poet who works as an educator, writer, and illustrator.

As an exhibition extra, the gallery is inviting everyone to a free talk on April 30 at 5 p.m. We can be sure this won't be like your typical poetry analysis class.

Keep reading for more info.

"The exhibition allows us to delve into the space of poetry by bringing it together with architecture history, theory and design,  encouraging viewers to look critically at poetic construction and promoting a more evocative understanding of architecture and writing.  

By considering poetry as a built environment, Cara reveals spaces, meanings, and relationships in poems that may not be immediately evident to a reader. She draws out connections between images, sounds, and lines. She plays with the cadence and mathematical organization of poetry and draws to make new readings and alignments evident. First, to understand the components  (story, structure, music, imagination) of a poem, Cara looks at poet Gregory Orr's Four Temperaments and the Forms of Poetry."

"Using the lens of architecture and art, she visually considers story, structure, music, and imagination as building blocks. Then, through architectural analysis techniques such as solid/void analysis and diagramming, she translates individual poems into a set of spatial relationships that becomes art in its own right. This allows the work of poets such as John Donne, Jean Valentine, and Jane Mead to converse across time and brings to light similarities in form, structure, and meaning.

Cara draws attention to the silences/pauses in the poems, the places between the voiced lines, which call our minds to the implicit and explicit patterns in and between stanzas. Her insightful drawings and notations blur the boundaries of architecture, poetry, and art to find a transdisciplinary discourse that examines how form, space, and order can be generative and convey meaning, while creating zones of indeterminacy and focus, of repetition and release. The drawings create discontinuities and capture turns of mood and phrase. By holding the words under ink and wash, she gives us a new way of reading."