Birth Cage: Poems

Abstract

Birth Cage is a trilingual and genre-bending approach to poetry. It is a postmodernist blend of visual and concrete poetry inspired by Deconstructivist architecture. Through different languages and voices, Birth Cage investigates the evolution of an individual. The transformation of a body, the search for home and the need to communicate are themes in the journey of a fragmented self towards unity. With a visual and linguistic emphasis on the idea of borders and access, various possible reading paths are related to the immigrant experience of a new culture. Language is treated as a cultural construct shaping the self as it defines the experience of space, on pages or in material space surrounding us. The idea of the self as architecture is a poetic reflection on living space, whether that is body, building or city. Architecture’s double-coding is present as a metaphor and followed in the visual formats which further question the graphic possibilities of words. The different languages and shifting visual elements allow a multifaceted reading experience that is a playful challenge for the reader. As a hybrid book, Birth Cage is a multidisciplinary approach to poetry and a blueprint for a cognitive architecture.