paper–poem–objects

In 2022, Christoph Benjamin Schulz initiated the series paper–poem–objects with Grass Publishers as an edition project for text-based poetic works that have an object-like, sculptural character – and which cannot be published in a conventional book format. Still, these ‘poem objects’ were often developed in the context of the artists’ or poets’ engagement with the bound book. In this sense, they can be considered ‘expanded books’ whose artistic conception calls for innovative writing processes and a performative or interactive reading.

The series publishes previously unreleased works from the 1960s onwards as well as reprints of works that have not been available for many years. The aim is to make these works available for academic study and to introduce them into academic discourse with different emphases. But the series is also open to new contributions by contemporaries who deal with the plastic presence of words, the spatialisation of texts or the reification of language. In the diversity of its material forms, the series demonstrates for the first time the range of a multifaceted ‘intermedia poetry’ that crosses the boundaries of traditional artistic disciplines.

The objects are accompanied by in-depth scholarly essays which place them in their historical context. Each edition is conceived and realised in close collaboration with the artist or poet – or with their estate.

paper–poem–objects are held in collections including Tate Modern, London, the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, Kolumba, Cologne, and the Zentrum für Künstlerpublikationen – Weserburg, Bremen. They have been shown in the exhibitions ‘das wort steht im raum’ (2021, Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst, Bremen), ‘Dichtung in 3D’ (2022, Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Leipzig), ‘Skulpturale Poesie’ (2022, Weserburg, Bremen), at the Prix Bob Calle du livre d’artiste (2023, École des Beaux-Arts, Paris) and in ‘Paper-Poem-Objects’ (2023, Book and Sons, Tokyo).