TITLE Five Calligrams PROMPT A small anthology of five original concrete poems (calligrams) in which the text itself forms and performs its subject, typeset on SVG paths and animated. Concept: reading as watching; the shape of the words is the meaning. Original poems written for this page (short, good, unsentimental); the calligram form is the tradition, the poems are new. Mood: quiet, bookish, playful. Palette: book paper #FBFAF5, ink blue-black #14213D, one red #C1121F used for a single word or mark in each poem (and for the full stop after the cover title), and a pale grey-blue #C9D1DB for ghost paths. Light page with a faint paper grain. Layout: a vertical sequence of five full-viewport "pages", each a poem centred in generous margins like a fine-press book: a small folio number and title at the top in tracked small caps, the calligram in the middle, a hairline rule and a one-line note at the bottom. A cover at the start: a large title set in an elegant book face (Baskerville/Palatino/Georgia), "Five" in italic above a very large "Calligrams." with a red full stop, the subtitle "poems that do what they say" typed onto a long ghost wave that runs the width of the cover (with the aside "the shape of the words is the meaning" further along it on wide screens), and a slim table of contents in which each poem is paired with its verb (Rain falls, River forgets, Heron waits, Stair goes down, Breath comes back). A column of small ticks at the right edge marks the six pages. The poems (each uses SVG text on paths, with lettering sized to remain legible on phones; text is real selectable SVG text, and an accessible plain-text version of each poem is provided in a visually hidden paragraph): I. "Rain": the six lines of the poem fall as near-vertical columns of words, each line on its own path slanting with the wind, at different speeds, each column carrying its line twice so the page is always raining; the last word of each line travels as separate letters and, on reaching the ground line, the letters are thrown up in small arcs while two ghost ripple arcs spread. Fast hairline ghost streaks (and, on wide screens, faint ghost columns of "it rains") fall between the lines. The red element: the single word "umbrella" held still in the middle under a ghost canopy, with the rain parting around it. Text: "it has been raining since the word for it / it rains on the just and on the bus stop / on the roofers, who have all gone home / on the washing, which was nearly dry / on the sea, which has no use for more / it rains on everything except one umbrella". II. "River": one long sentence in eight clauses set on a meandering path that flows from the top left to the bottom right (each clause's stretch of the meander is re-sampled every frame, letters emerging one by one at the source and leaving one by one at the mouth), with two tributary sentences joining it, one from below at a trough and one from above at a crest; where they meet the type size swells (roughly 18, 23, 31px on desktop) and the ghost water line gains another strand. The text is about a river forgetting its source; the red word is "upstream". Hovering (or pressing on touch) slows the current. III. "Heron": the bird's standing silhouette is built from text: neck a single S-curved line of words, body a packed block of seven short lines of varying size in a tilted teardrop, legs two thin lines of widely spaced letters, the head the words "not yet" whose "o" is the red eye. Every so often (and when tapped) the neck coils, straightens and strikes down to the water in an arc, letterspacing stretching like sinew; at the moment of the strike the head reads "now" and ghost rings spread on the water; then it returns. The poem is about patience. IV. "Stair": the seventeen words of one sentence set as steps descending over a ghost stair profile ("a sentence is a staircase you go down carrying one full stop until you find the floor"); the page is pinned while scrolling makes a small red full stop bounce down the stairs, word by word, with squash and stretch, each word dipping and inking in as it is landed on and a ghost arc recording every hop, until the stop comes to rest after "floor". V. "Breath": a four-line poem set in a circle (four arcs of text on a circular path) that slowly expands and contracts at breathing pace (4s in, 6s out), letterspacing opening and closing; in the centre in tiny type "in" / "out" inside a ten-tick dial with a travelling dot. The red element: a single comma. Pressing and holding holds the breath. Signature moment: the River: a long, legible sentence visibly flowing along a meander, with tributaries merging in type. Motion throughout is requestAnimationFrame-driven path re-sampling and path morphing with eased curves; each poem "writes itself in" when its page enters view: letters appear sequentially along the path at reading speed, not a fade. Interaction: hover/tap effects per poem as described (in Rain the wind follows the pointer); clicking a poem's title toggles "read plainly", which gracefully un-shapes the text: every line's path morphs, staggered, into a straight line of an ordinary left-aligned stanza (and back); arrow keys move between poems with an eased page turn, and inside Stair the down arrow first carries the full stop to the floor. Typography: the poems in a classic serif italic and roman (Baskerville/"Palatino Linotype"/Georgia), sizes from 13px to about 40px with deliberate scale changes within a poem; notes in small sans caps. Phone: paths are recomputed for narrow viewports (a steeper portrait-shaped meander, no ghost rain columns and fewer streaks, a staircase that turns back on itself in switchback flights, a smaller heron and circle) so nothing is illegibly small or overflowing. Reduced motion: all poems hold a composed still frame, fully written; the River does not flow; breathing is paused with "in" and "out" both shown; the full stop moves step to step without bouncing. DESCRIPTION A fine-press book of five pages on warm paper, in blue-black ink with one red mark per page. The cover sets "Five" in italic over an enormous "Calligrams." and types its subtitle onto a pale wave. Each page then performs its poem: Rain falls in slanted columns of words that splash letter by letter at the ground and part around one red, dry "umbrella"; River carries a long sentence down a meander, letters springing at the source, swelling where two small tributary sentences run into it; Heron stands as a bird made of type and, when ready, lunges its neck of words at the water as "not yet" becomes "now"; Stair lets the reader's scroll bounce a red full stop down seventeen word-steps to the floor; Breath opens and closes a ring of words at four seconds in and six out. Any poem can be un-shaped into plain stanzas and shaped again, so the reader can watch form become, and stop being, meaning. VISUAL TECHNIQUES - Real, selectable SVG text on per-line paths (textPath), rebuilt in pixel units for the actual stage size so type stays between 13 and about 40px on every screen - Flow by re-sampling each clause's sub-path along an arclength table of the meander every frame, with negative startOffset at the source and natural glyph clipping at the mouth and confluences - Type that swells at confluences through a size function integrated along the river, so each clause exactly fills its widening stretch - Path morphing: Catmull-Rom paths interpolated point by point (polar interpolation about the shoulder for the heron's strike; staggered shaped-to-straight morph for "read plainly") - Letter-by-letter write-in using paired visible/transparent tspans, so layout never shifts while the text appears along its path - A displacement field that parts falling columns and streaks around the umbrella; ballistic letter splashes and expanding ripple arcs at the ground line - Dynamic letterspacing for the breathing circle, the heron's elastic neck and its spaced-letter legs - Scroll-linked sticky page with parabolic hops, squash-and-stretch, dipping treads and dash-revealed ghost arcs - Ghost paths in pale grey-blue hairlines: water strands, canopy, stair profile, breathing limits, a ten-second dial - Paper grain from an inline feTurbulence filter; hairline rules, tracked small caps, dotted leaders - Responsive recomputation of every geometry (portrait meander, switchback staircase) and a composed still frame for reduced motion INTERACTION MODEL Scroll or use the arrow keys (also Page Up/Down) to turn between the cover and the five poems with an eased page turn; the contents list and the ticks at the right edge jump to a page. Each poem writes itself in when its page arrives. Pressing a poem's title toggles "read plainly": the shaped lines morph into an ordinary stanza and back, and the label and its small icon change to say so. In Rain, moving the pointer across the page turns the wind and the slant of the columns. In River, resting the cursor on the page (or pressing on touch) slows the current to a crawl so it can be read. In Heron, a tap or click makes the bird strike at once; otherwise it strikes on its own every several seconds. In Stair, scrolling carries the red full stop down the words; pressing the down arrow sends it all the way to the floor. In Breath, pressing and holding pauses the circle and the centre reads "held" until release. All controls are keyboard-focusable buttons and links with visible focus rings; with reduced motion every poem rests in a finished still frame.