Dom Sylvester Houédard / typestracts

Portrait of Dom Sylvester Houédard( 1964), taken at Signals Gallery in London (© Clay Perry, England & Co. Gallery, London)

Dom Sylvester Houédard (1924–1992) was a Benedictine monk, theologian, and avant-garde poet, closely associated with the concrete and visual poetry movements of the 1960s–70s. Best known for his “typestracts”, Houédard used a manual typewriter to produce abstract, typographic compositions. By layering keystrokes, spacing, and symbols, he transformed writing into image, creating dense fields, rhythmic patterns, or airy constellations of marks. The typestracts often resist linear reading, existing instead as meditative visual scores. Houédard saw them as a form of contemplative practice, uniting spirituality, language, and material process, and they remain influential in artists’ books, visual poetry, and experimental typography.

Reflection: Dom's work is relevant to my research in regard to his use of the manual typewriter to create patterns and scores and its relation to rhythm.