What does a poem feel like? Eating. A poem feels like eating. What does the poem eat? The poem eats experience. And yet the poem is an experience. The poem therefore eats itself.
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?