Comics Poetry

Beyond ‘Sequential Art’

Tamryn Bennett

Abstract
Emerging forms of comics, such as comics poetry, multi-layer, experimental, abstract and digital works
have significantly expanded the landscape of contemporary comics. Despite this creative evolution,
comics scholarship continues to be dominated by narrative analysis that favours semiotic, prose, film
and cultural studies over formal foundations of the medium (Gardner 2011). As a result, many emergent
forms of comics, especially in the field of abstract, experimental and comics poetry have been ignored.
Until now, a comprehensive theory capable of analysing both narrative and non-narrative comics
has remained elusive. Accordingly, this study draws on Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ formalist strategy of
‘segmentivity’ to move beyond sequential definitions that preference narrative components over all other
features of comics. Through a model of segmentivity, it is possible to construct and critique comics as an
assemblage of segments that communicate in multiple directions, for both narrative and non-narrative
means.

Résumé
De nouvelles formes de bandes dessinées, comme la BD-poésie, les BD multimédias, les BD
abstraites, ou les BD numériques, ont élargi le domaine de la bande dessinée contemporaine. En
dépit de ces changements créateurs, la théorie de la bande dessinée reste cependant dominée par
des modèles d’analyse narrative qui privilégient la sémiotique, le texte, les études culturelles et
cinématographiques au détriment d’analyses proprement formelles (Gardner 2011). Pour cette
raison, on continue à faire l’impasse sur bien des formes nouvelles, surtout dans le domaines de la
BD abstraite et expérimentale et de la BD-poésie et une analyse intégrée des aspects narratifs et
non-narratifs fait toujours défaut. Le présent article s’appuie sur la méthode de lecture de Rachel
Blau DuPlessis qui accorde une place centrale à la notion de ‘segmentivité’ et qui a pour ambition
de dépasser les analyses séquentielles de la BD qui font primer les éléments narratifs sur tous
les autres aspects du médium. La notion de segmentivité aide à repenser la bande dessinée en
termes d’assemblage, dont les parties sont reliées de plusieurs manières, tant narratives que non-
narratives.

Keywords
comics theory, comics poetry, segmentivity, simultaneity, seriality, multi-linear comics.

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Introduction
While there’s no doubt narratology has formulated useful ways of understanding comics, it must be
recognised that sequential narratives are but one piece of the comics puzzle. By concentrating on narrative
elements scholars have often overlooked fundamental features of form, privileging ‘story’ and ‘reading’
over all other experiences and interpretations of comics. The danger of this narrative colonisation is the
critical neglect of emergent comics that don’t fit sequential formulas as well as a lack of alternative modes
for comics analysis. As Charles Hatfield attests, comics are a form ‘characterized by plurality, instability,
and tension, so much so that no single formula for interpreting the page can reliably unlock every comic’
(2005, 66). To realise the divergent potential of comics it is essential to redress narrative dominance
and enhance possibilities for pluralized creation and formal examination of comics, specifically comics
poetry. Accordingly, this study expands on scholarship by Baetens (2011), Groensteen (2007, 2013) and
Miodrag (2013) as well as Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ concept of ‘segmentivity’, to propose an alternative
theory of comics; a theory capable of analysing a spectrum of comics, be they narrative, non-narrative,
multi-linear, simultaneous, experimental, abstract or poetic. Development of an alternative mode of
comics analysis is not anti-narrative, nor does it dismiss sequential scholarship. Rather it seeks to
establish formalist foundations to support pluralised creation and examination of comics. As Groensteen
asserts, ‘Far from deconstructing narration, or rendering it outmoded, these advances enrich it, and so
fulfill the potential of comics as an art form that is both visual and verbal’ (2013, 174).

Why Comics Poetry?

Despite comics potential for plurality, semantic studies by European scholars such as Pierre Fresnault-
Derulle, Benoît Peeters as well as sequential analysis by Will Eisner, Scott McCloud, David Kunzle, David
Beronä and Douglas Wolk have largely confined comics studies to narrative examples and definitions of
‘images in deliberate sequence’ (McCloud, 1993, 20). As Miodrag observes, ‘sequentiality features nearly
universally in critical attempts to nail down a definition of the comics form’ (Miodrag 2013, 108). The hegemony
of narrative is further evidenced in Wolk’s review of Abstract Comics: The Anthology (ed. Molotiu,
Andrei, 2009) in which he states, ‘anyone who’s used to reading more conventional sorts of comics is
likely to reflexively impose narrative on these abstractions, to figure out just what each panel has to do
with the next’ (abstractcomics.blogspot.com). Wolk’s statement is symptomatic of what Gardner (2011)
suggests is an oversight of formal analysis in favour of ‘aspects of narrative that translate relatively
effortlessly from novel to comic: the representation of time, narrative frames, the narratee, genre’ (54).
Even as increasing numbers of abstract, experimental and non-representational comics resist traditional
‘reading’, the lack of alternative modes of analysis means narrative assumptions continue to be imposed
on comics. The result of these narrative impositions is the neglect of formal and aesthetic comics analysis,
especially in the field of experimental, abstract and comics poetry where sequencing devices like panels
and page grids are often removed and visual elements push beyond illustration of narrative captions.
Aligned with these creative developments, the need to move beyond narrative analysis is supported by
Jan Baetens in his article ‘Abstraction in Comics’ where he states the ‘a priori approach to narrative in
comics as a mere instantiation of narrative in general is now under pressure’ (Baetens’ emphasis, 2011,
94). Increasingly, European scholars have expanded on sequential and semiotic studies to examine the

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impact of other features of comics like fragmentation, spatial arrangement, line, and rhythm.
Limitations of sequential narrative approaches have also been criticised by comics creators like
Gregory Gallant (a.k.a Seth) as increasingly inadequate:

Comics are often referred to in reference to film and prose — neither seems that appropriate to
me. The poetry connection is more appropriate because of both the condensing of words and the
emphasis on rhythm. Film and prose use these methods as well, but not in such a condensed and
controlled manner. Comic book artists have for a long time connected themselves to film, but in
doing so have reduced their art to being merely a ‘storyboard’ approach (Seth, 2006, 19).

Comics, like poetry, concentrate on the aesthetic audio-visual arrangement of segments whereas other
literary forms are more concerned with syntax than spatial composition. In addition to their concentration
on formal qualities, comics and poetry both incorporate meter, juxtaposition, line breaks, enjambment,
countermeasure and disjunctive strategies, amongst other typographic and aesthetic devices. In both
comics and poetry, visual and verbal components can be repeated, layered, removed from panels or
presented as a simultaneous series of moments not bound by linear grid lines or narrative ‘closure’
(McCloud 20). Akin to poetry, comics are formed by consistent use of visual and verbal segments and
spaces. And as Varnum and Gibbons attest

[b]oth texts and images are decoded visually and, for the most part, produced manually […] From
the point of view of semiotics theory, images and words are equivalent entities, and comics is a
system of signification in which words and pictures are perceived in much the same way (xi).

This shared focus on visual-verbal signification, as well as spatial arrangement, results in a closer relation
of comics and poetry than comics and prose. Despite the presence of leaps, ‘gaps’ and gutters on the
comics page and screen, the dominance of narrative analysis urges audiences to focus on linear panels
relations rather than acknowledge poetic pauses and the possibilities these gutters and gaps present to
influence the pace and rhythm of ‘reading’ and viewing comics. The liminal spaces and combination
of visual and verbal lines inherent in both comics and poetry are distinct from the linear experience of
reading prose. And as creator and critic Gary Sullivan acknowledges ‘As more radical comics artists and
publishers seed the field, attention has slowly turned from story value, with all other elements judged on
how they contribute to the story, to an appreciation and consideration of other aspects of comics’ (2008).

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 Figure #1
Warren Craghead III
from, HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE, 2007
‘I have given everything to the sun’
pencil on archival paper

Intensifying interest in combinations of comics and poetry is evidenced in collections of ‘comics poetry’
by Kenneth Koch, Dino Buzzati, Warren Craghead, Bianca Stone, Paul K. Tunis, Michael Farrell, Derik
Badman, Andrei Molotiu, Austin English, Grant Thomas, Alexander Rothman, Matt Madden, Gary
Sullivan, Eroyn Franklin, Richard Hahn, Ray Fawkes, Sarah Ferrick, Sommer Browning and creators
within Franklin Einspruch’s Comics as Poetry, among others. Moreover, in comics poetry exhibitions
like REBUS (2014), The Fire to Say (2014), the Poetry Foundation’s Verse, Stripped: A Poetry Comics
Exhibition (2012) or Leuven Stript’s Graphic Poem (2012), as well as the growing field of comics
poetry criticism including Steven Surdiacourt’s ‘Graphic Poetry: An (im)possible form?’ (2012), Derik
Badman’s ‘Comics Poetry, Poetry Comics, Graphic Poems’ (2012) and Rob Clough’s essay in parts
‘Recent Examples of Comics-As-Poetry’ (2011). Despite these developments, the sequential focus
within comics scholarship, largely borrowed from prose, film, cultural and semantic studies, has largely
limited comics analysis to narrative examples.
Like comics creator Derik Badman, I employ the term comics poetry to describe the growing
field of works that experiment with the visual-verbal topology of comics and poetic devices, not always
for sequential narrative means. Critics and creators have also referred to this growing genre as ‘graphic

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poetry’(Surdiacourt, 2012), ‘comics-as-poetry’ (Clough, 2009, 2011) and ‘poetry comics’(Stone, 2010).
For me, however, the term ‘comics poetry’ more accurately foregrounds the origins of the form within
the field of comics rather than graphic novels. As a genre in its own right comics poetry is still in its infancy
with Joe Brainard’s C Comics (1964) considered a seminal collection. Other creators credited with laying the
foundations of comics poetry include Dino Buzzati (1969), Jas Duke (1978) and Kenneth Koch (2004). Their
experiments intersected with ‘art comics’ until recently emerging as a distinct genre with an increasing number
of dedicated publications, exhibitions and conference panels. Consideration of comics poetry as a distinct
category creatively and critically broadens understanding of the forms of comics beyond sequential
narratives. Moreover, what distinguishes comics poetry from other forms of visual poetry, concrete
poetry and illustrated prose is the conscious and consistent use of inherent comics devices includ­ing, but
not limited to, panels, captions, speech balloons, rhythm, countermeasure, spatial experimentation. For
a work to be classified comics poetry it must consistently employ combinations of explicit comics and
poetry devices, and be characterised by ‘segmentivity’.

Segmenting sequence

The concept of ‘segmentivity’ stems from Rachel Blau DuPlessis’ (2006) attempt to distinguish the
components of poetry from ‘narrativity’ and ‘performativity’. DuPlessis argues that while narrativity
and performativity can be applied to some poems, neither term comprehends all poetry. By focusing on
the fundamental segments of poetry, DuPlessis’ quest echoes formalist approaches. She explains

‘I actually started thinking what was the –tivity of poetry— what was the irreducible element of
the poetic text not dependent on exclamations around beauty, sincerity, personality/biography,
image, “music,” and all sorts of empty, or half-empty terms […] In a funny way, I was repeating
the trek of Jakobson in his “What is Poetry?” essay—again asking the question what distinguishes
poetry’ (quoted in Bennett 2012).

Segmentivity does not deny any form or style of poetry and it is open to oral and written, visual and verbal,
narrative and non-narrative. Segmentivity is not opposed to sequence, narrativity or performativity,
rather it realises that segments form the foundations of sequential narratives. Narrative and segmentivity
are not mutually exclusive, nor are they separate tendencies – segmentivity is the primary component of
comics. Formally and fundamentally these works exist in parts and pieces.
Narrative and performance can also segment and sequence events, however, it is the dominant
spatial arrangement of segments and subsequent negotiation of gaps that distinguishes poetry from prose.
According to DuPlessis, the underlying characteristic of poetry as a genre is its ‘ability to articulate and
make meaning by selecting, deploying, and combining segments’ (2006, 199). For DuPlessis,

“Segmentivity” constitutionally distinguishes the poem. This means poems are formed by their
uses of segments – gaps at the turn of every line break; segments counted as/created by regular
rhythm; caesura or the intralinear use of page space; gaps between stanzas; leaps and gaps in the

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 grammatical ordering; interesting clashes when sentences (one kind of segment) articulate across
lines (another kind of segment) (2012, 60-62).

‘Meaning’ in poetry is not always dependent on syntax and temporal associations. In poetry, as in
comics, there is a greater emphasis on segmented ‘matter’, spatial arrangement and ‘gaps’ than in prose.
In both poetry and comics formal analysis of material components is encouraged, as ‘segments’ can be
examined independent of narrative ‘closure’. The formal qualities of both poem and the comics page/
screen require aesthetic consideration, not only semantic cognition. As DuPlessis argues

to address the text successfully, readings evoking cultural studies methods need to assimilate
formalist reading dialectically, making sure that the poem gets treated as an art object saturated
with aesthetic choices (even banal ones) […] To ignore the formal issues in a poem, to ignore the
signifier (the material, textual, poetic matter), to limit “cultural studies” to opinions, situations, and
rhetorics in the signified (content, semantic meaning, extractable ideas, ideologemes, historically
active political power relations and their representation) results in lopsided readings (DuPlessis
interview:2011).

As a ‘spatio-topical’ tool, segmentivity provides a framework for a comprehensive theory of comics,

capable of examining both spatial and temporal connections to understand both narrative and non-
narrative works. Within comics creation and analysis segmentivity enables examination of fundamental
components like ‘gutters’ and gaps as well as visual-verbal segments (panels, visual fragments, captions,
speech balloons, page layouts, typography, gutters, etc.) and how these can be used in intralinear ways
and for non-narrative means.

Segmented seriality

As in poetry, accumulation of ‘meaning’ in comics does not always occur in straight lines via narrative
sequence or correct syntax. Both comics and poetry enable segments to be arranged and collected as a
‘series’ of fragments not bound by the same semantic and temporal rules as prose. In addition to spatial
arrangement, identifiable gaps between words and page layouts, segmentation in poetry and comics
also occurs through seriality. According to DuPlessis, seriality provides an alternative to linear narrative
sequence:

Seriality is based on smaller units of material (individual sections of poems, for instance) which
are not organized by narrative disclosure, single telos, cause and effect that can be naturalized in
some way, ending as explanation or solution. They are organized by leaps, associative logic or
juxtaposition, vectors of concerns (rather than mono-directional argument). A vectored text with
several directions and gaps is an alternative to sequential narrative (quoted in Bennett 2012, 169).

Seriality and sequentiality are not mutually exclusive or binary concepts. Seriality is not narrative, nor

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is it anti-narrative. On the contrary, seriality offers an alternative model for understand­ing that not all
segments must be arranged or apprehended in linear sequence and syntax to be of value. Comics segments
can be serialised and or sequenced to create meaning. Via segmented seriality, visual-verbal components
can be arranged in multiple directions, as equal, dissonant or disjunc­tive elements, as well as for
narrative and non-narrative ends. Seriality, as a mechanism of segmentivity, has the potential to be utilised in
both sequential narrative and non-narrative comics. Words and images in a series may be read in multiple
directions, or as equal to one another rather than left to right or up and down. When ‘reading’ or viewing
comics we can follow a conventional Z path, reading left to right across the rows, or we can assemble
information up to down as in Manga, down to up, diagonally, via the path of the captions, as a series of
simultaneous moments, as a narrative progression or a collection of non-narrative moments. Whichever
way we ‘read’, a glimpse of comics by Ray Fawkes, Warren Craghead, Bianca Stone, Paul K. Tunis,
Alexander Rothman, Matt Madden, Kenneth Koch, Michael Farrell, Richard Hahn, Souther Salazar,
Renee French, Gary Sullivan, Eroyn Franklin and Malcy Duff, reveal the potential for comics to resist
traditional narrative ‘reading’ paths and analysis. Similarly, collections like Comics as Poetry, Kramers
Ergot and Abstract Comics demonstrate possibilities for comics to exist and convey ‘meaning’ outside
of purely narrative paradigms. Although narrative readings can certainly be imposed on these works, as
Wolk’s review of Abstract Comics (2009) shows, segmented seriality expands opportunities for spatial
and material analysis to dissect and examine all the components of comics, be they narrative or non-
narrative, multilinear, abstract, experimental or poetic.

UnMcClouding ‘closure’
Through cognitive processes and narrative impulses we continually impose contextual relationships on
textual segments, seeking to make ‘meaning’ via sequential accumulation of segments. According to
McCloud, the navigational process known as ‘closure’ requires negotiation of ‘gutters’ by the audience.
In opposition, Cohn claims ‘closure’ is a cloudy term incapable of describing the complex cognitive
processes of making ‘meaning’, questioning

If closure occurs ‘in the gaps between panels’ then how does it work if a reader cannot make
such a connection until the second panel is reached? That is, the gap cannot be filled unless it has
already been passed over, making closure an additive inference that occurs at panels, not between
them (Cohn 135).

McCloud’s narrative insistence on panel associations and subsequent ‘closure’ not only excludes a sweep of
non-narrative and single-panel comics like The Yellow Kid, The Far Side and Dennis the Menace, it has also
led to sequential assumptions that ignore the potential for image/text segments to operate outside of panels and
to represent simultaneous moments rather than linear sequence. This neglect of non-sequential comics strikes
me, as it does Dylan Horrocks, as arbitrary; narrative closure is dependent ‘more on what relationship we wish
to see between words and pictures in comics than on any objectively valid criteria’ (5). Despite the narrative
resistance of many examples of abstract comics and comics poetry, narrative ‘readings’ are continually
imposed by sequential modes of analysis (Baetens, 106). In opposition, Baetens contends ‘it is no less

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possible to gradually “downgrade” the narrative strength of apparently very narrative panels, pages, or
sequences by becoming sensitive to the power of abstractive mechanisms’ (106). Re-focusing attention
on individual segments, abstraction, poetic devices, spaces and disjunctive strategies reveals that
‘meaning’ is capable of existing outside of narrative frames. Thus Baetens concludes

narrative and anti-narrative are not so much different forms as different strategies of reading and
looking […] the dominance of narrative norms should not prevent us from seeing the perhaps
more covert role of non-narrative aspects (110).

Aligned with Baetens’ assessment, segmentivity doesn’t discount narrative possibilities or the value of
sequence, instead it enables visual and verbal components to be understood as a series of pieces that can
contain both narrative and non-narrative elements depending on cognitive inclinations.
Like Horrocks and visual linguist Neil Cohn (2006), I take issue with the linear and narrative
assumptions fueled by the concept of ‘closure’ and a definition of comics as ‘sequential art’. In Cohn’s
article ‘Closure’s assumptions’ (2008), he contends, ‘[j]ust because we experience reading sequenc­es of
images linearly doesn’t mean that is how we understand them’ (1). Using cognitive research methods,
Cohn looks beyond linear panel relations to argue that information is grouped via unconscious cognitive
processes rather than as complete sequences. Contrary to conventional analysis, cognition of visual and
verbal segments is not only dependent on sequence or narrative disclosure. Experiments by Dr. Morton
Ann Gernsbacher (1985) that rearranged page sequences determined that ‘people’s comprehension did
not appear overly damaged by flipping the composition of images’ as audiences grouped elements by
segments rather than linear sequence (in Cohn ‘Segmentations in visual narrative’ 2011). Not only is the
process for ‘closure’ cognitively questionable, the concept of neat narrative ‘meaning’ confines analysis
to examples of comics with sequential panels and grid structures.

The speed of simultaneity

In addition to the fog of closure, McCloud’s explanation of six panel to panel ‘transition types’ perpetuates
the persistent illusion of space and time as linear constructs (74). Five of the six examples given by
McCloud illustrate a linear interpretation of panels that restrict sequences to ‘moment to moment’,
‘action to action’, ‘subject to subject’, ‘scene to scene’ and ‘aspect to aspect’ (74). By focusing on the
immediate panel relations of sequential images critics like McCloud have overlooked the possibility
for comics to operate outside of linear grids and conventional narrative structures as occurs in works
by Craghead, Tunis, Salazar and Rothman. These creators demonstrate that it is possible for comics
segments to operate in both narrative and non-narrative ways much like the dual properties of a photon
exhibiting as both wave and particle.
In both comics and poetry there is the potential for works to be created and understood in
multiple directions. They share an emphasis on spatial experimentation, manifold layers of ‘meaning’
and combinations of visual-verbal components that make them more malleable than prose. Most comics
analysis relies on the arrangement of segments in specific syntactical sequence to engender ‘meaning’

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or move towards disclosure, yet in abstract, experimental and non-linear comics, segments are without
enforced order or narrative imperative, leaving the text ‘open’ to interaction and interpretation. Beyond
linear sequence, segmentivity also enables analysis of information that doesn’t have to be sequentially or
syntactically ordered to make ‘meaning’. It also demonstrates that audience reception does not always rely on
sequentially collected information and supports concepts of semantic networks (Cohn, 2011). Increasingly internet
searches, advertising, pictographs, non-linear technologies and hyperlinked texts are informing multi-directional
interactions with text. According to Wil­
lard Bohn, these multi-directional, ideographic foundations
were laid by the ‘chief priest’ of simultaneism, Guillaume Apollinaire, in his essay ‘Simultanisme-
Librettisme’ (56). By arranging poetic text into representational shapes – flames, rain, horses, the Eiffel
Tower – Apollinaire encouraged simultaneous viewing of verbal and visual components. This quest for
simultaneity influenced numerous artistic movements from Cubism to concrete poetry where formal
analysis frees the work from the service of sequence and narrative:

the poetic nucleus is no longer placed in evidence by the successive and linear chaining of verses,
but by a system of relationships and equilibriums between all parts of the poem (de Campos 1958).

Poetry, like comics, recognises the potential for simultaneity via multi-directional arrangement of
segments, gaps and graphemes where ‘gaps’ are as much a part of the text as verbal components. Examples
of simultaneity, disjunctive strategies, hypertextual or multi-directional reading paths in comics can be
found in collage, montage, cut-up and fragmented works of Brainard, Koch, Craghead, Fawkes, Ware,
Farrel, Hahn, Stone and Salazar. In these comics, words, images, lines, stanzas, sweeps and spaces are
layered, looped, recombined and repeated in various ways to challenge sequential narrative analysis.

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Beyond ‘sequential art’

Figure # 2
Warren Craghead III
from, HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE, 2007
‘MUSIC OF SHAPE’
pencil on archival paper

Epitomising the potential of segmentivity and simultaneity is Warren Craghead’s pioneering example of
comics poetry, HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE (2007). The collection takes its name from Apollinaire’s
‘insistence on the importance of “simultaneity” as a way of representing the way we experience the
world’ (Craghead 5). Symbolism, segmentivity and simultaneity are at the core of Craghead’s reworking
of the manuscripts of Apollinaire into 50 new visual poems that consistently feature visual-verbal
comics devices such as speech balloons and captions. Apollinaire’s Calligrammes influence Craghead’s
typographic experimentation, reminding audiences of the semiotic sphere and materiality that words and
images share when marking meaning via lines on paper.
Distinct from conventional comics, Craghead does not use panels or page grids. There are no
linear or narrative structures enforcing reading paths, instead, each page of HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE
is a self-contained poem often made of seemingly disconnected visual and verbal segments. Like

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Apollinaire, Craghead, found freedom in assembling a poem out of disparate parts, stating in the work’s
introduction ‘It’s about creating mystery and confusion and bafflement, like the real world does. I want
to make something that doesn’t only reflect the world, but competes with it’ (2007). Craghead’s approach
results in a series of vividly poetic, non-linear vignettes exampled in the combination of visual and
verbal segments of the poem. Borrowing techniques from Apollinaire and the Cubists, Craghead creates
diagrammatic pages that expose the multi-linear potential for both comics and poetry. Lines link words
and images in multiple directions, destabilising linear connections and sequential narrative approaches
to reading the page. This process encourages audiences to connect several segments simultaneously in
the process of seeing rather than searching for narrative captions.
In ‘MUSIC OF SHAPE’, lines between text and image lead to various dead-ends. There is no
single or sequential path, instead a maze that draws audiences around and across the page. The visual-
verbal metaphor of free-falling is magnified when attempting to map the lines on the page. Unlike
conventional poetry, the ‘line’ is freed from linear sequence, intersected by image and connected to a
constellation of other segments. Individual sketches of bottles and tools, scissors and pipes are placed all
over the page like parts of a machine. These symbol-like sketches are juxtaposed with the verbal imagery
of jugglers who raised ‘huge dumbells’ and ‘juggled with weights at arm’s length’ (Craghead 2007). The
weights can be viewed as simultaneously flying and falling, strung across the page ‘at arm’s length’ or
like weightlessly drifting clouds just out of reach. Craghead’s comics poetry achieves simultaneity not
only as the structure is apprehended all at once but as the typography is itself part of the image, falling
down the page like rain, constantly caught in speech balloons or intersected with symbols.

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 Figure # 3
Warren Craghead III
from, HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE, 2007
‘They have hung death’
pencil on archival paper

Similarly in Figure # 3, fragments of text and image are enjambed across the page, creating a
countermeasured rhythm between visual and verbal segments. Lines between stanzas and images imply
a slow-motion framework reminiscent of comics panels and gutters but not as strictly sequential or linear
as conventional forms. Lines draw the eye across, down and around the page allowing for multiple,
non-linear readings. The ‘hypertextual’ possibilities are reflective of line breaks used in the poetry of
Apollinaire. Craghead’s erasure of panels and frames further emphasise the sense of a poetic vignette
as the words and images bleed into the gutters rather than the sequence of the next page. Through
segmentivity Craghead’s works can be understood as simultaneous moments within a larger page scene
rather than linear elements that must be read in a single direction in order for ‘meaning’ to be made.

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 Figure # 4
Ray Fawkes
from, ONE SOUL, 2011
pp.10-11

Figure # 5
Ray Fawkes
from, ONE SOUL, 2011
pp.12-13

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Multi-direction reading paths are also presented in Ray Fawkes ONE SOUL (2011) where visual and
verbal segments can not only be read left to right or up and down but across double-page spreads. A
masterful multi-layered comic, ONE SOUL experiments with time and space to depict the simultaneous
unfurling of eighteen individuals’ lives throughout history. The comic consists of double-page spreads,
each with eighteen panels that reveal a moment in one character’s life. From the particles of first life
(11) to the characters final breath (169), Fawkes plays with traditional sequential markers of time and
space. The eighteen characters are each from a different epoch, spanning a spectrum of careers, classes
and cultural contexts from ancient Egypt to 20th century anarchy.

Figure # 6
Ray Fawkes
from, ONE SOUL, 2011
pp.60-61

Within each of these 18 panel spreads, Fawkes’ use of segmentivity and spatial arrangement demonstrates
possibilities for hypertextual, multi-directional comics that defy traditional narrative reading paths.
Reading ONE SOUL left to right using a conventional Z path exposes an entirely different series of
events than reading across the pages to the corresponding character’s panels. The following examples
illustrate the potential for multiple associations between segments and simultaneous moments.
ONE SOUL reveals that conventional linear interpretations are not negative, they are simply
too narrow to encompass all forms of comics, including poetic, multi-sequential and non-linear works,
especially those that remove panel and grid structures. In contrast, segmentivity does not limit poetry
or comics to purely linear or non-linear forms, nor does it suggest that poetry is what enables comics to
break free of linear or narrative boundaries. Instead, it demonstrates that by looking at comics through
the lens of segmentivity one can analyse individual components in various combinations, be they linear,
non-linear, multi-linear, abstract, narrative or non-narrative. As Fawkes explains

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 “You could read them separately, read their lives one panel at a time, but when you put them
together and see their differences and their common points, you catch a glimpse of a greater scope.
The characters, through their frustrations and triumphs, are asking and answering big questions
and, in a way, in cartooning ONE SOUL, I’m trying to do the same for myself.”

ONE SOUL, like HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE, proves that comics creation and analysis are not
dependent on a sequential narrative framework. Both Fawkes and Craghead employ poetic devices
like condensed language, spatial arrangement and syntactical experimentation to expose meaningful
possibilities for comics creation and analysis beyond linear narrative. Their uses of segmentivity show
audiences that moments, lives and stories occur in the chaos of simultaneity, not only in neatly sequenced
lines. Analysing these examples through segmentivity enables each image, panel, word or piece to be
discerned in and of itself instead of always for a narrative means.
This study is by no means a complete account of segmentivity or comics poetry. It is one small
piece of an ongoing conversation with comics poetry creators that exposes the analytical potential of
segmentivity to enhance comics scholarship. As a creative and critical tool, segmentivity doesn’t diminish
the role of narratology, rather it presents possibilities for an expanded approach to comics analysis,
of which narrative plays a major part. Narrative comics certainly account for the largest percentage
of the market and any comprehensive model must address these works, but narrative nine-panel grid
structures are not the only structures for comics. In poetry, meter and rhyme were once staple elements,
but modern poetic techniques have expanded the possibilities of the form via spatial arrangement as
well as syntactical and sound experiments, to name a few. Accordingly, if comics creation and criticism
is to continue advancing, the potential for experimental, digital, abstract, multi-linear, poetic and non-
narrative comics must be recognised and embraced, not ignored. Segmentivity offers a starting point
from which to construct, critique and examine visual-verbal components in all forms of comics be they
narrative or non-narrative.

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Dr. Tamryn Bennett is a writer and artist. She has a PhD in Literature from UNSW where she taught
Creative Writing. Tamryn is Education Manager for The Red Room Company and has designed and
delivered poetry programs for Artspace and El Centro de Cultura Digital, Mexico. Her comics poetry,
artists books and illustrations have been exhibited in Sydney, Melbourne, Miami and Mexico. Her poetry
and essays have been published in Nth Degree, Cordite, Drunken Boat, English in Australia, ImageText
and various academic publications.
Email: education@redroomcompany.org

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