Dom Sylvester Houédard's Typestracts and Cosmic Dust Poems at Broumov Monastery

Endlessly Inside, an exhibition at Broumov Monastery on the Czech-Polish border from 25 June to 24 September, features 60 works by Dom Sylvester Houédard, a Guernsey-born concrete-poetry pioneer known as 'dsh'. Curated by Monika Čejkova as part of the 'Ora et Lege' series, the show divides his output into three sections. One includes typestracts, object-poems created on an Olivetti 22 typewriter with black, red, or blue ink ribbons, such as yantra of sex (1966) and the nine layered universe of the pawnee (1967), which visualize Mahayana Buddhist and Tantra doctrines through rigid diagrams. Another section presents laminate poems and cosmic dust poems from 1966–68, plans for speculative sculptures made from materials like newspaper cuttings and PVC sealed in vinyl laminate. A third, housed in the monastery's library, displays poetry books, folded poems, posters, and correspondence from 1964–80. Houédard, who entered a Benedictine abbey at age twenty-five, engaged with London's 1960s counterculture and Eastern religions, producing works that correlate Catholicism with Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist texts, including tributes to artists like Raoul Hausmann and Marcel Duchamp. The exhibition highlights his exploration of prayer, reading, and infinity, expanding the Benedictine practice of 'holy reading' into art that embraces diverse spiritual traditions.