What is Poem Brut?

Poem Brut celebrates artistic creative writing - embracing text and colour, space and time, handwriting, composition, abstraction, illustration, sound, mess and motion - affirming the possibilities of the page, the voice and the pen in a computer age. Through over a dozen live events, nearly 100 commissions, exhibitions at The Poetry Society and Rich Mix and a series of brand new books, Poem Brut has offered an alternative understanding of 21st century literature since 2017. Poem Brut roots it’s activities in a mindful thinking through of the potentials and possibilities of neurological and physiological diversity for a literature that expands our understanding of what the medium can do. Rooted in an exploration of cognitive difference, of everything from autism, dyslexia, aphasia and dyspraxia to mental health conditions, Poem Brut seeks to ask whether it is in service to original and powerful writing for writers and poets with these experiences to try and ‘escape’ them into sense and order, rather than embracing how their brains understand language. Poem Brut has generated over a dozen events since 2017, alongside multiple exhibitions, workshops, conferences and publications.