This paper looks at multimodal poetry in the contemporary Australian literary landscape and explores the potential for works combining text and image to change or enhance meaning within, outside and between the margins of the text. Australian poets and artists Bella Li, Toby Fitch, Jean Kent, Pam Brown and Caren Florence, among others, combine the visual medium with text to introduce further depths of (mis)understanding and to open alternatives responses for the audience. This interdisciplinary style follows on from 'artists' books' of the 20th century, a form of multimodal publishing which dominated the burgeoning independent publishing sector outside of the visual (gallery) and textual (traditional book) mainstream.

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