Dom Sylvester Houédard was a Benedictine monk and eminent theologian, but also a pioneer, in Britain, of concrete poetry, a poetic form in which the arrangement of words and letters in a pattern on the page relates to the meaning or emotional impact of the poem. Using concrete poetry as a kind of springboard Houédard developed a way of making more purely abstract or pictorial images with the typewriter keys directly onto typing paper.
This is one of a number of prints using more conventional media, such as letterpress or lithography. Some of these appear directly related to his 'typestracts'; others, such as this one, appear more independent, but they all have a somewhat different visual impact from the typewritten pieces. This is one of six sheets of translucent paper, overlaid, each printed with a different word, in a different position on the page so that they read collectively as a poem; the words show through the paper but progressively faintly as the number of layers increases.