What insights (both practical and theoretical) have you gained into the poem/poems that you have studied? What have you learned (both practically and theoretically) about hypermedia?

Lets play with these both. As I find it so very hard to separate the two these days. The two being poetry and hypermedia, and days being time, or the artificial measurement of the earth spinning. They say the earth is slowing down, and days millions of years ago were half of what they are today. So perhaps early humans lived to be hundreds of years old, simply because everything was so much faster. But I digress. Yes, yes I do.

Back to the original point. When I think of poetry I think of interface and movement and sound. Words are always attached to navigation and color and image. So both questions (and in fact it appears all the questions posed here) are great friends, separated by long distances and speaking different languages. But again a digression.

First…I find I don’t read as much print poetry as years past. I am perplexed by this. Is it because I have become a self-obsessed ego maniac only interested in my own odd creatures (a real possibility). Or is it because poetry, I am proposing, has or will or at least should make the very nature and important transition to the hypermedia format. But if we say poetry will soon be e-poetry, then where is the basis? How do we decide what is an e-poem, a digital poem, a moving and evolving poem, a game poem and what simply is a digital creation we like. Is everything poetry? This is not a question I can answer with any authority. But I do find that when I create new artworks, many suggest they have seen nothing like them, and that they elicit the same responses and emotions and confusions that most good poems elicit. What that means is I consciously think of my artworks as digital poems. I think of creating poetry through these varied texts.

I think what needs to happen, and one of the things I have learned from Epoetica, is we need to develop bridges. We need to find ways/methods/forms which entice and encourage people/artists/writers/poets to translate their ideas and poems into simple digital forms. We as artists/e-poets are creating these islands, these strange and wondrous creations, which people can visit, but cannot emulate, cannot find ways to create their own islands. Each backyard is a small island, so how can we encourage more backyard e-poems, to make an e-poem as clichéd and accessible as print poem has become?

Perhaps these are all questions which should be answered by Epoetica 2. But more on that later.

 What have you learned (both practically and theoretically) about your own work (creative and critical)?

As far as my work, I had a very interesting discussion recently regarding my PhD confirmation (a 30 page document to prove I can be a PhD candidate). The external supervisor/judge suggested that my PhD was a theory free zone, that I was all practice. At first I agreed in that my PhD is mostly creative work, with an exegetical section describing that work. But while I was working on the PhD confirmation document I was also considering Davin’s epoetica. And it struck me. Why must the theory be somehow separate and removed from the artwork/poetry? And why must e-poets attempt to “ground” their work in a theoretical framework? To me the very nature of creating a digital poem has the theory built into the process and creation. Additionally the notion that a poem must be dissected and analysed also becomes muddled when considering e-poems. Therefore I think one result of Epoetica has been for me to rethink how I write about my work, and to try to find method of writing theoretically that emulates how the work functions. And at the same time, leaving , what is a very new and haphazardly growing field, without rules, without any strict idea of what is and isn’t a digital poem. Eventually we will need to explore and establish this. But for now, I would suggest we simply encourage poetics in the digital realm. Offering more examples than directions.

Oh crap that completely goes against my previous comment about creating e-poetry forms to act as bridges between the print and digital realm. Maybe it is this conflict, this conflict between that which is established and that which is fleeting, between the words and the multi-media. Maybe that is where the digital poem lives.   

What have you learned (both practically and theoretically) about your colleagues and their work?

In short….I want to find ways to encourage others to make more e-poems. There are far too many digital theorists and not enough digital poets.

What about epoetica worked well?  What didn’t?  How would you improve this process?

As Lori suggested, I am overjoyed that Davin has taken up e-poetry as one of his many and diverse interests. Mostly because he is the most intelligent and honest and creative person I know. What didn’t work is cross communication. I don’t feel like I know who the other people are, and don’

t feel like I communicated with them. Perhaps next time we should explore other techniques like forums and messengers and other formats. Also we need more games, more playtime. Maybe even a dispersed writing concept where we load our writing into all the various public places/spcaes on the net where user entered content is allowed.

More on this soon.

I bring this up because the comments people write on blogs, forums or send to me directly can be lumped into a few categories. 1. What drugs am I on (the sad cliche that equates drug use with creativity). 2. they dont understand it, but they like it and it makes them think 3. they hate it and find it arty (to the point of the occasional threat) 4. they like parts of it…but not all….and want to experience more.

And these comments signal that one of digital poetry’s powers, its draws, its allure, is that it offers people who would normally never read poetry, a place, a foothold, a bridge to jump into the poem. There are, as Davin says, feelings they can access immediately via sounds, or movement, or interface, or play etc…. and once that bridge pulls them in…they can explore the more experimental bits….maybe not understanding, but at least feeling and thinking and experiencing…hmm….that sounds good…if you want you can read some of the comments via a google search:

I think our lovely Davin is on to something here. Poetry has always been born from and constricted by the print page, the linear textual form. And yet, as I have argued before, texts are not simply words. Everything is a text. Signs, motions, sounds, interactions, all things are texts, communicating creatures. And digital poems eat these many and nearly infinite supply of texts (experiences) to create a wholly new experience.

But then the question I pose to everyone here is….what makes a digital poem, an electronic poem…an electronic poem? Or to put it a better way…..why couldn’t we say that all net artworks, new media artworks are digital poems? If we extend the idea of text to all experiences and objects and signs etc…then all creative works could be construed as digital poems.  

Or do we say that digital poetry must either follow directly from a print poem..ie a translation of that print poem into movement and interface?  Or do we say that digital poems are simply another way of displaying, albeit in an interactive way, word based poetry?

Or maybe the difference is in the construction…how the artist/writer builds their creation.  Which brings

 us back to Davin’s point/question and feelings. Maybe the digital poetry is creating experiences whose components are those feelings, those images and imagery, those metaphoric movements.

Hmm……more to think about…..but what are other’s thoughts?

Davin asks about time. Time in a poem. Time is this.   

Does he mean cadence? Is he an angry boar released in Arkansas by an ex-prince, rich and moved to American. Maybe he misses the hunting of boars, the slow and then fast runs through forests. Firing guns and releasing dogs.  But then Davin won’t catch all his angry swines (swine do not need plurality, vote, vote), and later football teams will mascot his failed hunts. Somewhere in those two sentences, the subject was turned, interrogated to exhaustion. No will. Nothing to determine ownership after death.

So I’m staying in an orphanage,  brick and wood raftered complex recently adopted by a mega-resort conglomeration. It is semi-cold here, around 40 or 50 (American style metrics) and there is an outdoor pool, semi-heated and semi-indoors. Last night I went for a lonely swim, chlorine fog and the side pool drains made conversational noises. I imagined a small group of important men just outside the fog, smoking various combustibles and discussing what to do with the unmarked orphan graves found at the lakes edge, always at the lake’s edge. My room has high ceilings and borrowed thrift (or opp for southern hemi-kids) furniture. Down most hallways is a common room called a library, ceramic books, four together with titles suggesting romance and science, book ends replacing the books themselves. There are mega-resort conglomeration magazines and brochures for wine tours, craft tours, high adventure experiences in the lows of this valley. 

These haphazard words are being typed at a blue table in a public Library. The main library mind you, in this town, almost a city, named Ballarat. There is fast wireless now, it being around 11 in the morning on a Saturday, but children and old men with new laptops are filling the spaces, so that speed will wane, cold and sunny outside.

Across from me is one metal row of the reference section (numbers 304.4 to 425 ONF). Four titles:  Dictionary of Wars, Rivers for Life, Protocol and Producers, Convicts.  A large green book, faded and binding worn, has papers/notes fountaining from the top (nouns as verbs as nouns). I want to read them, but I most likely won’t.

From behind the woman in the white hooded and fur rimmed coat appeared to be a child. Turning around aged her over 50 years.

Each paragraph is smaller than the paragraph preceding.

Trend now ends.  I am thinking about interfaces. Many months ago, Christine Hume, a curious and long angled poet, recently a mother, and who took me to see a Rushdie multimedia play in

Michigan, gave me a poem to turn into a digital creature. And since then I have done nothing, but play in my isolated brain (the isolated brain, a movie starring ex-NBA star Horace Grant and the cliché librarian with short red dyed hair and permanent, heavy reading glasses turned up and down for check-out stages). Her poem will start me away, away, like the tightest of jeans.  Scroll down to read, hoods that cant be seen while driving or parking.