Conference Report: Symposium Engaged Visuality: The Italian and Belgian Poesia Visiva Phenomenon in the 60s and 70s. Academia Belgica, Rome. July 7, 2022 / Università degli Studi “La Sapienza” di Roma. July 8, 2022

In a historical and cultural moment, in which poetry could present itself as 'phono-, ideo-, typo-, icono, photographical; mono-, stereo-, quadro-, ambiophonic; phonographic, bioscopic, kinetic; kinesic, eatable, odorous, tangible' (H. Damen, 1972), the 'esoeditorial' and countercultural experiences of Italian and Belgian visual poets drew a cutting-edge roadmap within the wider and multifaceted context of neo-avant-garde experimental poetry of the 1960s and 1970s by creating a unique model of interdisciplinary cooperation where verbivocovisual research, media discourses, and social criticism strongly converged. Combining insights from the fields of art history, literary criticism, and media studies, Engaged Visuality investigates the impact of new media, political imagery, and semiotics on poesia visiva phenomenon by focusing on a bilateral case study rarely analyzed from a comparative and transcultural perspective: the foundation of the international poetry magazine Lotta Poetica (first series: 1971-75) by Sarenco and Paul De Vree, i.e., the aim of Italian and Belgian interartistic exchanges, co-authored initiatives, and cross-disciplinary inquiries. Scholars, artists, and poets are invited to prompt a cross-disciplinary, dynamic, and international debate on the issues, and to examine an outstanding and collaborative editorial project that reflects the scope and the importance of Italian and Belgian cultural transfers in the 1960s and 1970s, deepening the historical and critical understanding of its legacy in the history of neo-avant-garde visual poetics.