ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries C&RL News ■ April 2003 / 249 INTERNET RESOURCES E-poetry Digital frontiers for an evolving art form by Cynthia D. Shirkey A pril is National Poetry Month and, in cel­ebration, this article invites you to ex­ plore recent developm ents in the w orld of poetry. Even as a print art form, poetry is mal­ leable. From Sappho to Shakespeare, and from Pope to Neruda, this genre pushes at the bound­ aries of language, sound, and vision. It evolves from one fonn into another. Poets and artists are cuirently using computer technology as a means to realize new ways of expressing themselves. The am ount of e-poetry, in its various forms, on the Web is astounding. A simple Google search on the word poetry returns over 9 million results. This bibliographic article at­ tempts to highlight interesting, unusual, or even simply illustrative examples. It is not an at­ tem pt to exhaustively catalog e-poetry re­ sources or to judge them in any way. A short, informal glossary will help you in your explorations of this digital frontier. • Concrete poetry: print and electronic po­ etic form in which the arrangement of words on the page or screen is as meaningful as the words themselves. • E-poetry: generic term for all types of poetry written, published, and meant to be read in a primarily electronic environment. • Flash: program by Macromedia enabling authors to create videos and multimedia. • Hypertext poetry: form of poetry using a nonlinear linking system that allows the reader to spontaneously create the poem. • JavaScript: coding language allowing design­ ers to incorporate visual elements into Web pages. • New Media Poetry: poetry written in an electronic environment that relies heavily upon graphics, videos, sound, and other elements. • QuickTime: program by Apple that allows authors to make movies and other types of media pieces. • Sound poetry: poetry fonn that places em­ phasis on how the poem sounds when read or performed out loud • Visual poetry: print and electronic gestalt- oriented art form in w hich visual elements, such as typography, calligraphy, painting, pho­ tography and drawing, are co-mingled with words to form poems. Meta sites: Starting points • E lectro n ic P o etry Center. Jointly authored by the Poetics Program and the De­ partm ent of Media Study at SIJNY Buffalo, the “EPC serves as a central gateway to re­ sources in electronic poetry and poetics at the University at Buffalo and on the Web at large.” It contains links to a large number of authors, magazines, presses, poetry organizations, and audio poetry files and maintains a curated col­ lection of literary works. Poet and scholar Loss Pequeno Glazier is EPC’s director and founder. Access: http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/. • Voice o f th e Shuttle: T ech n ology o f Writing. Over the years, Alan Liu’s Voice of About the author Cynthia D. Shirkey is the instruction coordinator for the undergraduate library at the University o f Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, e-mail: cshirkey@uiuc.edu. http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/ mailto:cshirkey@uiuc.edu 250/ C&RL News ■ April 2003 the Shuttle has been an excellent resource for humanities scholars. The Technology of Writ­ ing section provides access to a wide variety of resources, including a great many discussing the theory behind different types of e-poetry. Access: http://vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id= 2733. C o lle ctio n s of e-poetry • Arras: New Media Poetry and P oet­ ics. Designed and edited by Brian Kim Stefans, Arras collects a wide variety of works by new media artists. Stefans kindly alerts readers about which plug-ins each work uses. Access: http:// www.arras.net/web_poetry.htm. •ASL Quest. Web site authors Linda Wall and Mike Brunner have collected Flash and QuickTime poems performed in American Sign Language. Their links section also provides ac­ cess to online sign language dictionaries. Ac­ cess: http://aslquest.deafbase.com/. • UbuWeb: Visual • Concrete • Sound. Published by Kenneth Goldsmith and writ­ ten by Jerome Rothenberg, Andrew Stafford and Brian Kim Stefans, UbuWeb is “the de­ finitive source for Visual, Concrete + Sound P o etry .” UbuWeb contains an amazing amount of contemporary and historical po­ etry and poetry theory. The philosophy of the site is summed up on the resources page by this sentence: “Essentially a gift economy, poetry is the perfect space to practice uto­ pian p o litics.” Access: h ttp ://w w w .u b u . com /. • VISPO LANGU(IM)AGE. This impor­ tant site created by Jim Andrews focuses on new media poetry and other avant garde forms of the genre. Access: http://vispo.com/misc/ links.htm. Examples of individual poems • COG. According to author Loss Pequeno Glazier, “COG is a user-interactive experiment in the visual possibilities of a poem .” It was created using Flash. Access: h ttp ://e p c . b u f f a lo .e d u /a u th o r s /g la z ie r /e - p o e tr y / cog/. • Frame Work: A Hypertext Poem. This piece by Robert Kendall was originally pub­ lished in the Iowa Review Web. It uses frames and JavaScript to create a hypertext environ­ m ent. Access: h ttp ://w w w .u io w a .e d u / % 7Eiareview /tirw eb/hyperm edia/robert_ kendall/. Magazines: Electronic serials that publish poetry and other art forms • A gnieska’s D ow ry (AgD). If nothing else in this article has blown your mind, AgD, edited by katerina grace craig and Mark Lugowski, is sure to do so. It is a serial (it even has an ISBN), but it is arranged in a highly nontraditional manner. Be sure to check out AgD Intro/Index link at the bottom of the page for a linear explanation of how to read this publication. Access: h ttp://asgp.org/ agnieszka.html. • The Iow a R eview Web. Focusing on new media, Thomas Swiss is the Iowa Review Web’s editor and Ingrid Ankerson is the associ­ ate editor/designer. The Iowa Review Web is sponsored by the University of Iowa’s English Department and is “well-known for its com­ mitment to new w riting.” Access: http:// www.uiowa.edu/%7Eiareview/mainpages/ tirwebhome.htm. • Mudlark: An E lectronic Journal o f Poetry and Poetics. William Slaughter has been editing and publishing this serial since 1995. Each issue usually focuses on a single author or theme. Access: http://www.unf.edu/ mudlark/. Journals: Academic explorations of e-poetry and its theory • Electronic Poetry Review. This jour­ nal is dedicated to publishing poetry, as well as interviews with poets, essays, and book reviews. It is edited by Katherine Swiggart and D. A. Powell. Access: http://w w w .poetry.org/. • NMEDIAC: The Journal o f New Me­ dia and Culture. This ambitious project is under the direction of Jonathan Lillie. Accord­ ing to the front page, NMEDIAC will publish “peer-reviewed papers and audiovisual pieces which contextualize encoding/decoding envi­ ronments and the discourses, ideologies, and human experiences/uses of new media appa­ ratuses.” Access: http://w w w .ibiblio.org/ nmediac/. • Poems that Go. According to editors Megan Sapnar and Ingrid Ankerson, this jour­ nal “explores the intersections between mo­ tion, sound, image, text, and code. The work http://vos.ucsb.edu/browse.asp?id= http://www.arras.net/web_poetry.htm http://aslquest.deafbase.com/ http://www.ubu http://vispo.com/misc/ http://epc http://www.uiowa.edu/ http://asgp.org/ http://www.uiowa.edu/%7Eiareview/mainpages/ http://www.unf.edu/ http://www.poetry.org/ http://www.ibiblio.org/ C&RL News ■ April 2003 / 251 we feature explores how language is shaped in new media spaces, how interactivity can change the meaning of a sign, how an image can con­ flict with a sound, and how code exerts ma- chine-order on a text.” Access: http://www. poemsthatgo.com/. Articles: Helpful readings • Bibliography o f Materials o n New Media Poets. This bibliography, which is bro­ ken into general categories, is part of a sylla­ bus prepared by University of Iowa instruc­ tors Dee Morris and Thom Swiss for their fall 2002 class, New Media Poetics: Histories, Aes­ thetics, Institutions. Their class was taught in conjunction with a conference entitled New Media Poetics: Aesthetics, Institutions, and Audiences. Access: http://twist.lib.uiowa.edu/ newmediapo/bib. html. • Hypertext Poetry vs. Print Poetry. This short, h elp fu l article by A ndrew Strycharski, a lecturer at the University of Miami, compares and contrasts a traditional poem and a hypertext poem, both entitled “In­ somnia.” Access: http://composition.miami. e d u / ~ s t r y c h a r s k i / l i n k 0 2 / b r o d y W e b / page_five.html. Forums: Informal electronic publishing communities • Poetry Poem . This resource provides free Web sites for poets to publish their works and has a section called PoetryChat for discussion of various aspects of poetry. Access: h ttp ://w w w‚poetrypoem .com . • The Web Poetry Corner. Web Poetry Corner allows users to search by author’s name, date of submission, and author’s country. It also has a sub-foaim for children, allows people to publish their poetry for free, and contains over 22,000 poems by more than 3,500 poets. Access: http://www.dreamagic.com/poetiy/ poetry.html. Workshops: Places to get formal feedback, criticism, and direction • Eratosphere. Sponsored by AbleMuse: A Review of Metrical Poetry, Eratosphere al­ lows writers to post their own metrical and nonmetrical poetry and get feedback from other poets. Access: http://w w w .ablem use.com / erato/Ultimate.cgi/. • trAce: O nline Writing Centre. tiAce is under the directorship of Sue Thomas and Helen Whitehead, both faculty members of Nottingham Trent University’s English and Me­ dia Studies Department. Membership is free, but workshops and courses designed around various genres, including hypertext and poetry, are fee-based. Access: http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/ about/index.cfm. Blogs: Free Web publishing services requiring no HTML skills • Eatonweb Portal. This resource is a la­ bor of love by author Brigitte Eaton. It is a directory of blogs that allows users to search on various topics and compiles user ratings on each blog. Searching on poetry produces a great num ber of results. Access: h ttp ://p o rta l. eatonweb.com/ • Mike Snider’s Formal Blog. This is just one example of what many blogs are like; a place for poets to publish poems, write articles, and share enthusiasm for the art form. Access: h ttp ://rad io .w eb lo g s.co m / 0113501/. For children • Surfing the Net with Kids. Barbara J. Feldman’s excellent bibliographic Web site, Surfing the Net with Kids, has a section en­ titled “Publish Your Poetry Online.” She links to five very good Web sites dedicated to mak­ ing poetry more accessible to children of vari­ ous ages through the Web. Access: http:// www.surfnetkids.com/pubpoem.htm. Fun stuff • Magnetic Poetry®. Courtesy of Mag­ netic Poetry, Inc., the fridge genre has found new life on th e Web. Choose from New York, A rtist, Ro­ mance, Dog Lover, Col­ leg e, M an­ ager, Sequel, Kids Kit, Minnesota, Cat Lover, and Rock & Roll sets. Access: http://www. magneticpoetiy.com/magnet/index.html. • tinywords.com. Haiku is a serious genre of poetry, and this site contains beautifully artistic examples of the art form. D. F. Tweney’s site is in the fun section simply because who could resist “fresh haiku, delivered daily?” Ac­ cess: http://tinywords.com/. ■ http://www http://twist.lib.uiowa.edu/ http://composition.miami http://www%e2%80%9apoetrypoem.com http://www.dreamagic.com/poetiy/ http://www.ablemuse.com/ http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/ http://portal http://radio.weblogs.com/ http://www.surfnetkids.com/pubpoem.htm http://www http://tinywords.com/