In 1966, Katue, a leading Japanese poet, proclaimed the birth of what he called “plastic poetry,” mani­fested “through the viewfinder of my camera, out of pieces of paper scraps, boards, glasses, etc.” Rather than relying on written language, plastic poetry emphasizes the dynamic interplay of textures while registering formal relationships among objects in the world. Katue gained international recognition in 1935 as the founder of the group VOU—a loose community of Japanese poets, writers, artists, and architects—and the experimental journal of the same name, in which many of his plastic poems were published between 1966 and 1978.