ABSTRACT
The close association between free verse and contemporary dance is evident when we see that free verse uses the white space of the ground of the page in the same way as choreographers and dancers inscribe the framed space of dance floor with movement, articulation and expression. These art forms, via their own modes of expression, afford different kinds of meanings. The physicality of dance also suggests a metaphor for the rhythmic impulse of free verse. Free verse aims to bring together the meaning expressed in conceptual terms through the words with the movement of the language as charted in the page (and, in sound, through a reading of the poem). From a distance, the words on the page in a free verse poem can look like the movements of a dancer across a stage, with the positioning of the words akin to the tensions and complementarities along with the flow and arresting changes in the direction of the dancer.
