Let's make digital poetry

In Stephanie Strickland’s talk given at Hamlin University (Go Pipers!!!) in 1997 she spends a lot of time describing and explaining what digital writing is (here it’s just hypertext—snore) and how it’s the future of writing. My first question is why? Why, in 12 years hasn’t this exploded onto the literary scene? Why aren’t poets churning out digital works? This year at AWP they were running workshops explaining what the hell a digital poem is and where you might go to find one—Strickland is still up there talking about the computer as the real future of the poem but it still seems like she’s all alone in her enthusiasm and conviction. It just really still feels like a subculture of artists at this point. Is it nostalgia for the physical page that’s holding us back? Skepticism about digital art’s integrity? Fear of computers or collaborative partners? To me, hypertext is dead mostly because it’s boring—sure it might be interesting to talk about conceptually and metaphorically for about 5 minutes but I’m really interested in the more complicated collaborative efforts of journals like New River: http://www.cddc.vt.edu/journals/newriver/07Spring/index.html
or even Born Magazine that really push the limits of what can be done visually, sonically, and interactively. Much of this stuff is valid art, and most importantly for me, contains some good writing. I think it’s unwillingness or laziness or selfishness to collaborate and talk to other disciplines and artists that’s really unfortunate here and I really think that’s what it’s going to take to produce interesting innovative work.

I think her doubting space metaphors to describe the internet is interesting—something I think Mark brought up within the first few weeks of class. Mostly because you have this new hugely popular innovation and for the first time we get to really name something new as a society. I think Mark pointed out that most of our language for the internet comes from books and talking about books—“pages” for example “scroll” for another which is an interesting kind of space and special referent. What was so exciting about the internet (and computers in general) during the recycle and conservation phase in the 90s is that it was going to eliminate paper—oh, we were going to save trees and not have to shuffle through papers anymore but with printers and who knows what we actually doubled our consumption of paper. I really believe that we’re not ready to let go of the book—its physical “thing-ness.”

Strickland talks a little bit about “orientation” in a digital space and I think it’s exactly this that’s so overwhelming to the average web navigator—the question of how do I even begin to navigate or position myself in all this chaos seems to me to get at the root of the post-modern question. Lostness and being lost is something we’re still terrified of I think and why there are so many publications and writings stuck in what’s maybe modernism or something at least “safer” in a sense.