These image-poems by Richard Berengarten and Will Hill are part of a series of thirty-two collaborations, which are to be published in book form in 2018 by Dos Madres Press (Cincinnati, USA), under the title DYAD. All the compositions in this series are anagrams, based on 4-letter words. In each one, the mathematical and geometrical forms inherent in 16 letters (4 x 4, or 42) implicate the perfect symmetry of both square and circle. These patterns not only conjure up the Platonic and Pythagorean traditions of ancient Greece, the Tibetan mandala, and other symmetries, but also remind us that in ancient Chinese cosmology, the square symbolises earth, and the circle, heaven. And while letters, with their necessary visual variations, introduce subtle departures from symmetry, the combinations of numbers and letters recall Cabbalistic motifs from Hebrew, and stir archetypal resonances. Tradition and modernity combine in the image-design, which deploys digital methods to structure typographic forms.
Richard Berengarten has told Margutte: «They are of course acrostic poems – to be read both horizontally and vertically. They present a kind of “word magic” since they embody ancient principles of mathematical (geometrical) harmony and symmetry by squaring the tetragrammaton. The pieces are Pythagorean and Cabbalistic (in the tradition of Gematria), and the forms are also, of course, those of mandalas. What is more, Will is working digitally. The project is therefore both very ancient and also new.»
The poems in this article incorporate the word TREE and can be considered part of the Albero Project (for more information, click on the tag).
Will Hill in Margutte: Breathing the Kite.
(Edited by Silvia Pio)