Poetry Friday--Digital Poetry

Last Saturday, I attended the New Hampshire Writers' Project "Writers Day 2011." It was a day of workshops with a keynote by Pulitizer Prize-winning novelist Paul Harding (Tinkers). I had a fabulous time.

One of the workshops I attended was "Pioneering Poetry in Pictures: Elements of Digital Poetry" by Mary Ann Sullivan. Here's the description:

"One can foresee the day when phonographs and cinema will be the only recording technique, and poets will revel in a liberty hitherto unknown" (Apollinaire, 1917). In a speech he gave in Paris in 1917, Guillaume Apollinaire predicted that the writing of poetry would shift from the tangible printed page to a new audiovisual medium. In this poetry workshop, using the poet Apollinaire as a springboard, we will observe seven types of digital poetry: kinetic, video, interactive, programmed, audio, code, and hypertext. We will explore how traditional poetic techniques such as metaphor, symbolism, tone, meter, and juxtaposition can be used in this engaging new poetic form. You will plan an adaptation of one of your poems to digital media and discuss the challenges that emerge from your plan.

If it seems all a bit overwhelming, believe me, it was! But, that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. I did, and I learned quite a bit, although most of it is beyond my abilities! I thought I was stretching my limits by dabbling in illustrated poems. Ha! That's child's play compared to some of what is being done. It was good to see that there is more than one way to approach poetry.

Ms. Sullivan provided us with a number of examples. Ones that she created can be found here.

There are more digital poems on this BBC page. Make sure you look at the hypertext poem here.

I found a bunch of animated poems at Vimeo. Here's one:

We Fly from Adlai Moss on Vimeo.

There's so much more out there--have fun!

Check in with Liz in Ink for this week's Poetry Friday Round-Up.