borders, blurring and the international networks of concrete poetry

As part of Disruptors: Fractured Images and Migrant Wordl, Dr Greg Thomas, a leading scholar of concrete poetry and contributor to the exhibition catalogue, will discuss migration, mobility, and international exchange in concrete poetry and the wider avant-garde. Exploring the idea of ‘migration as a methodology’, the conversation will examine how movement across borders can reshape our understanding of artistic networks and cultural exchange. Focusing on artists including Henri Chopin, Hansjörg Mayer, Ian Hamilton Finlay, and Astrid Furnival, it will consider how migration shaped British concrete poetry.

Greg Thomas is a critic, poet, and artist based in Glasgow. He is the author of Border Blurs: Concrete Poetry in England and Scotland (Liverpool University Press, 2019) and the co-editor, with Julie Johnstone, of a forthcoming volume of Edwin Morgan’s experimental poetry and text art, A Home in Space: Selected Concrete, Visual, and Sound Poetry (Reaktion, 2026). Greg is currently working with Lund Humphries towards a volume of interviews with collaborators of Ian Hamilton Finlay called Crafting Arcadia.

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