National Poetry Slam

National poetry slam is poetry competition where different teams participate in a poetry slam. The teams are from United states, Canada and France. This event occurs in August every year. Participants can take part as a team or individually. 

Here is a video of finalists of 2014 from this competition :

Exploring five poets and how they used technology in their works

·     Jason Nelson

Since, the technological advancements people are getting more attracted towards gadgets. Everything is going digital and poetry is no exception to it.  One such poet who works on digital poetry is Jason Nelson.  But what is a digital poetry? It is a form of electronic literature that is made using computers and a mix of technical software’s. Digital poetries can also be categorized into different groups, it could be a hypertext, kinetic poetry, code poetry or computer generated animation. (“Digital poetry”) Talking about Jason Nelson he is a digital and hypermedia poet. (“Jason Nelson”). One of his works is called “Sydney’s Siberia” which is a mosaic that consists of 130 zoom able images. It begins with a large mosaic and when an area from the mosaic is clicked it generates tiny clickable images which after further clicks shows up a poetry. The images below shows how the poetry looks like after various clicks:

                                                    1st click

                                                                      2nd click

                                                                          3rd click

Here is the link where you could explore his works: http://www.secrettechnology.com/

·     Merry Hedger

Another poet that uses modern technology to compose a poem is Merry Hedger. In technical terms, hyperlink is defined as “a link from document to another location“(“hyperlink”). Hedger efficiently makes use of this concept to create her poems. She uses hyperlinks and embeds into it the interpretation of poems.  

When a reader clicks on a part of the link it directs them to another linked poem.  The link generally contains poems, pictures, words etc. The image below is an example of her work

In the above example when the letters in red like ‘H’,’P’,’E’ etc are clicked it gives up a word i.e. ‘H’ gives a word “Hard Drive Human”, ‘P’ gives “Patience Fast/Slow” and so on.  

It also shows another hyperlink; which when clicked will show a poetry called Patience. The image that is hyperlinked to the word “Patience Fast/Slow” is shown below:

In a nutshell, Merry Hedger links several poetries in one fine piece of art that is made using computer as a technology.

http://www.mauvezone.screaming.net/pages/hypertext%20poetry.html

·       Johannes Auer

Johannes Auer is a poet from Germany, and belongs to the era of 1990’s. He is poet that took concrete poetry to a new level and combined technology with concrete poem. In short, he made a digital concrete poetry.  A concrete poem usually contains words arranged in a graphical form. While, in a digital concrete poem the words can move in different directions and can take different forms. Johannes Auer is one of the famous digital poet in Germany, some of the examples of his work are concrete_machine, search triology, worm applepie for doehl etc. In one of his work, he inserts a digital worm in the apple and creates a concrete poetry that gives the reader a feeling of a worm eating an apple (Auer).  Another example of his work is “Kill the poem” where a bullet with a word from the poem is fired from a gun which erases the particular word from the poetry itself. He hence focuses on using animation to create his works more interesting for his readers. (Auer)

              

In order to see an animated version of this example go to the link

http://nt2.uqam.ca/fr/repertoire/worm-applepie-doehl-0

Link to kill the poem: http://www.netzliteratur.net/tango/kill/killpoem.htm

·      Jim Andrews

Jim Andrews is a Canadian poet who is also a web artist (Andrews). He generally focuses on e-poetry rather than the conventional paper poems. He combines various forms of technology like motion, programming and sound. His love for language and poetries inspired him to write poems. Since, he was also a web developer he decided to combine both his interests into one and generate a new form of visual poetry. His works are colorful and made using codes or software’s. He has a site called vispo.com where all of his amazing works can be found. Jim Andrews thinks that poetry is far beyond print and poets are closer to visual artists, musicians and are closer to scientists and technology (“Currents: E-poets on the State of Their Electronic Art: Jim Andrew”). Some of his works include “The Pen”, “Teleporter”, “The Club” etc.  The pen is a poetry that reflects his style of poetry making. In this work he writes the word POEM in different spring writings and colors (Andrews).

Link: http://vispo.com/I/ThePen.html

·     Dan Weber

Dan weber is a poet and a multimedia artist. His works are completely different than most of the poets of his generation. In this world of technology, where more and more poets are transforming poetries to give them a modern look. Weber uses a completely different approach where is combines technology with the simplest things around us. He is poet who works individually but, he also has worked with some other poets like Jennifer Hill-Kaucher, Reiner Strasser and Dave Grey (“Oh”).  One of his individual works is called “Strings” where he works with the handwritings. He makes the handwritings dance and gives them the movement so that they resemble like elastic. Weber uses Flash to convey his thoughts to the readers. In his collection of “Strings” are various short kinetic poems like argument, flirt, haha, youandme, arms and poidog (“Strings”). Below is an example of a piece “argument” from Strings.

This how he shows the handwritten words to dance.

An animated version of his works can be found at: http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/waber__strings.html

WORKS-CITED

•           Andrews, Jim. "Jim Andrews." Vispo. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 June 2015.
•        Auer, Johannes. "Johannes Auer." Johannes Auer. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 June 2015.
•       "Currents: E-poets on the State of Their Electronic Art: Jim Andrews."Currents: E-poets on the State of Their Electronic Art: Jim Andrews. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 June 2015.
•       "Digital Poetry." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 3 Apr. 2015. Web. 11 June 2015.
•       "Hyperlink." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 14 Apr. 2015. Web. 11 June 2015.
•    "Jason Nelson." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.,  15 Feb. 2015. Web. 11 June 2015.
•       "Strings." Strings. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 June 2015.

Spoken Word Poetry:

Spoken word poetry is a performance based poetry that focuses on word-play and story telling. Performers can weave in poetic components - such as rhyme, repetition, slang, improvisation, and many more elements of poetry - to create an atmosphere for the audience to experience("Spoken Word"). 

Here is an youtube video on spoken word poetry:

Sign Language Poetry:

In sign language poetry, poets do not use paper to write their poems. They use their hands and facial expressions to convey a poetry. It becomes really hard to understand this type of poem. But, people who speak sign language understand this amazing form of art.

Here is a video of Sign language poetry: 

I came across a very interesting website that contains the works of Jon Parosns a poet who has worked on digital poetry. The website contains a new poetic form like: 

tic-tac-po: This actually is a tic-tac-to game which also describes poetry in a new form

Lock: This a digital concrete poetry with animations. When a word is typed it fits into the lock and a poetry is generated out of it.

Check out his website that contains many such poems: http://ontopoetics.com/

5 Poetry Blogs:

 1) Poetry On The Brain:

http://www.poetryonthebrain.blogspot.co.uk/

An interesting blog that I found out is called Poetry on the Brain by Helen Mort. This blog contains a collection of contemporary poetry along with some images. The interesting part of this blog was that Helen Mort came up with something called “The Yossarian Poetry Challenge”. In this challenge she would use the concept of Yossarian Live. Yossarian Lives a search engine in which when a word is looked for it would generate unusual but linked images, this is unlike google where the most relevant images are found. This helps a poet to explore their creative side by using the latest technology. In this blog, Mort uses the modern day technology to come up with her poetries. She, first looks up for a word in Yossarian search engine and then writes up a short poetry on one of the images that she finds.  One of her poem is called Home which is given below along with the image that inspired her for this work

Link to the search engine:

https://yossarianlives.com/

Home

Home is a blank square

inside a solid, wooden frame.

A canvas, white as magnolia,

pale as your fear and square

like an envelope, missing

an address. You stare into it

every day, invent the scene:

arrange three dining chairs,

put down a single, patterned rug.

You could make your home

anywhere. You could hold

the frame out, take imaginary

photographs. You could peer

straight through it, into it,

pretending its a mirror, pretending

you like what you see.

-by Helen Morot

 

 2) Bear Creek Haiku

 http://bearcreekhaiku.blogspot.ca/

A haiku poem is a three line poetry with 5 syllables in first line, 7 syllables in second line and 5 syllables in third line. So it is constrained to the use of 5-7-5 syllables. This blog contains information about haiku poetry along with some great examples of the poems. The poems are submitted by people from all around the world. A new blog task called bear creek haiku was posted on 21^st May 2015, which encourages poets from all over to submit their work through mail or email. A bear creek haiku is a four sheets legal sized blue paper cut in thirds lengthwise, stacked, then folded, two blue staples at fold = 48 pages of poetry and art (bearcreekhaiku.blogspot.ca). This blog also contains good examples of visual haiku poetry. Here is an example of visual haiku:

 

3) Warning The Stars

http://warningthestars.blogspot.ca/

This is a blog by a poet Stacy Lynn Mar. Her blog Warning the Stars is a modern poetry blog.  She creates a challenge to come up with a visual poetry. According to the challenge she, than writes a visual poetry and posts it on the blog.  Stacy Lynn Mar is an American poet and her works have also been published in more than 35 magazines. In one of her recent challenge she uses a box to portray the way to live “out of the box”.  To complete this challenge she creates an image of a girl sitting on top of the box and enjoying her freedom. One thing I loved about this blog is how an image used to convey a deep thought.

Here is the image that conveys her thought of living “out of the box”:

 

4) Poems Ans Poetics

http://poemsandpoetics.blogspot.ca/

This blog is different from most of the blogs I have included here. The blog as the name suggests is all about poetries. It is full of content and works from different poets. Most of the poems posted on the blog seem to have a similar style of writing as e.e.cummings. They include line breaks, odd punctuation and parenthesis.  The appearance of the blog is quite simple and appealing. I think it was done intentionally so that readers could focus on the content of the blog rather than its appearance.  The author of the blog has really worked hard to gather timepieces of poetries from various famous poets.  I would like to share poetry by Serge Pey from this blog that appealed to me the most:

 

5) Verbatim Poetry

http://vernatimpoetry.blogspot.ca/

This poetry blog is a collection of poetries from the ordinary. This blog showcases a completely new way of poetry writing. In order to write a verbatim poetry there are certain rules to be followed by the poet. The task is to extract a whole passage of text from a writing that is not poetic and add line breaks (verbatimpoetry.blogspot.ca). The writer of the poem cannot add their own words or take text from a poem, song or a novel. The text has to be something ordinary like newspaper article, a prescription etc.  Consider this example of poem that is made by extracting text from Section VII of the Sabha Parva of Mahabharata, selected from Variants of Agni. 

Which Of These Fires From The Fire Catalogue Would You Like For Your Birthday?

(#3) the perpetual house-hold fire?

(#4) consecrated fire taken from the house-hold fire and placed in the east side?

(#7) powerful, mighty fire?

(#8) the fire that destroys?

(#9) the classical fire, belonging to the world of men?

(#10) the old or ancient fire, the fire pertaining to the stomach?

(#11) the entwining fire?

(#17) the calm, peaceful, serene fire?

(#20) the luminous, pure, brilliant fire?

(#21) the fire who is the priest?

(#22) the great, auspicious fire?

(#24) the fire consisting of wealth, or of good things?

(#26) the fire which is ethereal?

(#27) the conveyor of virtuous persons to heaven?

. . .the fire of time?

the fire of hunger?

the cold fire?

the fire of anger?

the fire of knowledge?

-by Maya Surya Pillay.