Naming Poetry Comics

“Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” -Gertrude Stein

Although labeled differently by poets, artists, and historians, work that investigates the relationship between pictures and words (i.e. drawing and poetry) strives for the same result: create meaning that’s not possible with words or pictures alone.

Here are terms “A History of Poetry Comics” has uncovered that each point in their own way to the practice of incorporating words and pictures into art.

Term	Represented by	Timeline
haiga (Japanese haiku drawings)	Bashō, Buson	1500s on
illuminated poems	William Blake	1780s
sequential narratives	Rodolphe Topffer	1830s
comic books, comic strips, comics	Various*	1890s-1930s
pictorial prose poems (without words)	Lynd Ward	1930s
picture poems	Kenneth Patchen	1940s-70s
concrete poems –> vispo (visual poetry)	Augusto deCampos, Nico Vassilakis	1950s-70s on
graphic novels	coined by Richard Kyle	1960s
hand-drawn poems	bpNichol	1970s
poetry comics (drawings w/ other’s poems)	Coined by Dave Morice	1980s
comics mainly without pictures	Kenneth Koch	1990s
haiku comics	Seth	1995
poetry comics** (drawings w/ own poems)	Bianca Stone	2010s
poem/drawings	Alice Notley	2020s
graphic poetry	Naoko Fujimoto	2021

*A good starting point to get perspective on when these terms were first use is Wikipedia’s History of Comics. For U.S.-centric perspective, American Comics: A History by Jeremy Dauber (W.W. Norton & Co., 2022) comes recommended.

**See A History of Poetry Comics #05 for suggested ways to identify poetry comics.

Timeline: Pre-history to Current

Warning: This incomplete history maps my journey as a poet learning about comics and doesn’t follow a strict chronological order.