Culture Now: Dom Sylvester Houédard (Letters in Space)

Please join us for a lunchtime talk with Rick Poynor, focussing on Dom Sylvester Houédard. This talk coincides with the recent publication of Notes from the Cosmic Typewriter: The Life and Work of Dom Sylvester Houédard.

Published by Occasional Papers, this book is the first since the early 1970s devoted to the extraordinary British Benedictine monk, scholar, translator, concrete poet and artist Dom Sylvester Houédard (1924–92). Edited by Nicola Simpson, with new essays by Gustavo Grandal Montero, Rick Poynor, David Toop and Charles Verey, Notes from the Cosmic Typewriter offers a broad and richly illustrated introduction to this major artistic and theological figure.

Besides many of Houédard’s 'typestracts'—the concrete poems produced entirely with his Olivetti typewriter—this book also includes examples of his lesser-known 'poem-objects', a selection of key texts, as well as never-before-published performance scores. In both his spiritual views and artistic output, Houédard stands out as a model of insatiable curiosity, building around him a vast network of enlightened poets, visual artists, performers, musicians and thinkers of all faiths and walks of life.

This talk is organised in collaboration with Occasional Papers