Roman lyric poet Horace, in his Ars Poetica, draws an analogy between poetry and visual arts in these words: “ut pictura poesis (as is painting, so is poetry).” From the Renaissance up until now, his words continue to shape the creation of art and poetry. In his critique of Horace’s popularised notion, German philosopher Gotthold Ephraim Lessing argued that poetry and art occupy “distinct” physical boundaries which constrain what both these mediums can present. Painting (or visual art) exists in space with forms and colours representing a single instant, while poetry exists in time with words and sounds arranged sequentially; an unfolding of multiple instants.

I believe, in his critique, Lessing may have further strengthened the inescapable bond between the two art forms. As inhabitants of a three-dimensional space and swimming towards infinity along the arrow of time, it is not unusual that poets and artists have been in a constant dialogue between their works. Bruegel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus and W H Auden’s Musée des Beaux Arts, Apollinaire’s Calligrammes, and the modern-day typography of pattern poems are all different facets of this same eternal dialogue.

In this issue, Lakeer has strived to play its own small part in extending this dialogue between poetry and visual art, in hopes that each may enrich and illuminate the other.

—Sidra Tul Muntaha