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Comics poetry or poetry comics is a hybrid creative form that combines aspects of comics and poetry. It draws from the syntax of comics, images, panels, speech balloons, and so on, in order to produce a literary or artistic experience akin to that of traditional poetry.
Comics poetry traces its origins to illuminated manuscripts, graphic novels, concrete poetry, and poets who combined images and text such as Kenneth Patchen. In the mid-2000s, a number of artist-poets began publishing independently of one another, referring to what they were doing expressly as comics poetry. According to artist and scholar Tamryn Bennett, "The term comics poetry can be applied to a growing field of works that fall outside of traditional definitions of both comics and poetry. These works include Warren Craghead’s How To Be Everywhere (2007); Matt Madden's Comic Sestina (2004), Michael Farrell's BREAK ME OUCH (2006); as well as a host of comics poetry collections by Bianca Stone, Alexander Rothman, Paul K. Tunis, Gary Sullivan, John Hankiewicz, Anders Nilsen, Derik Badman, Eroyn Franklin, Franklin Einspruch, Sommer Browning, Kimball Anderson, Mohit Trendster, Kevin Czapiewski, Malcy Duff and Julie Delporte, among others."[1]
Use of the terms "comics poetry" and "poetry comics" is widespread among its practitioners. Alexander Rothman, editor-in-chief of Ink Brick, has written, "I call the work that I make and publish 'comics poetry.' ...at the end of the day, more than any other practitioner, a poet is just dealing with words.... Words aren’t necessary for comics, but of course they’re there to use. Panels aren’t necessary, but they’re also there to use. Where the poet’s toolbox contains every imaginable arrangement or manipulation of words, the cartoonist’s holds analogs for the visual elements of the page."[2]
Chrissy Williams, editor of Over the Line: An Introduction to Poetry Comics, said in an interview, "I generally say 'poetry comic' by the way, not to give any priority to the poetry, but rather to avoid any confusion with 'comic poems,' which are already their own very different hilarious genre of poem. ... the genre needs to be defined fundamentally as an inextricable combination of both comics and poetry, neither of which should be dispensable. In the best poetry comics, I believe, the piece would fail utterly (or at best be horrifically diminished) if you removed either the poetry or the artwork from the composition."[3]
Tamryn Bennet has written, "Like [comics poet] Derik Badman, I use the term 'comics poetry', as opposed to 'graphic poetry', 'comics-as-poetry', or 'poetry comics', as it refers to the origins of the form rather than the sequential narratives of graphic novels. As Badman explains, 'Comics poetry isn't poetry as text with comics images; it's the whole comic as poetry. The images, the words, the structure, the rhythm, the page, all of it is used together to create the poetry, to create comics in a poetic register.'"[4]
"Comics poetry" can be used to differentiate the genre from written poems later interpreted in comics form, such as the work of Dave Morice, which is also called "poetry comics."