WUMPERTATER: A Number Progression

For the eighth Writers Forum Folder (1970), Jennifer Cobbing created a poem – “wumpertater” (one potato) – in which a sequential numerical design (from 1 to 10) gradually grows more complex. This particular work could be categorized as “Dirty concrete poetry,” which has been defined by concrete poet Derek Beaulieu as “concrete poetry which foregrounds the degenerated, the broken and the handmade – so for instance, photocopier degeneration, broken letterforms or semantic pieces or some of the collage-based or graffiti-based poems of Bob Cobbing. Clean Concrete on the other hand is closer to the Russian Suprematists and would be exemplified by the typography-based poems of Pete Spence.”