Digital poetry is a form of electronic literature, displaying a wide range of approaches to poetry, with a prominent and crucial use of computers. Digital poetry can be available in form of CD ROM, DVD, as installations in art galleries, in certain cases also recorded as DV or films and on the World Wide Web or Internet.

A significant portion of current publications of poetry are available either only online or via some combination of online and offline publication. There are many types of 'digital poetry' such as hypertext, kinetic poetry, computer generated animation, digital visual poetry, code poetry, experimental video poetry, and poetries that take advantage of the programmable nature of the computer to create works that are interactive, or use generative or combinatorial approach to create text (or one of its states), or involve sound poetry, or take advantage of things like listservs, blogs, and other forms of network communication to create communities of collaborative writing and publication (as in poetical wikis).

Digital computers allow the creation of art that spans different media: text, images, sounds, and interactivity via programming. Contemporary poetries have, therefore, taken advantage of this toward the creation of works that synthesize both arts and media. Whether a work is poetry or visual art or music or programming is sometimes not clear, but we expect an intense engagement with language in poetical works.

[edit] Some pioneers and noteworthy followers of the art

Some pioneers of e-poetry in Europe, developing Italian and Russian Futurism, concrete poetry, visual poetry, performance, interactive art, hypertext include: Joan Brossa (E), Gianni Toti (I), Caterina Davinio (I), Lello Masucci (I), “Alire“ (experimental e-poetry review) (F), “Doc(K)s” (Experimental art review, Ajaccio, F), Jean-Pierre Balpe (F), Reiner Strasser (Be), Amartya Ray and Alexis Kirke.

A rich experimental poetry tradition exists in Brazil. The pioneer of media poetry in Brazil is the poet Albertus Marques, who in 1961 presented his "electric poems", as he called them. Albertus Marques participated in the Neo-Concrete art movement. Some poets who participated in the Concrete Poetry movement adapted their poems to new media and digital art. Augusto de Campos is a famous digital poet from the region. Ana maria Uribe, Fabio Doctorovich, Belén Gache are some from Latin America.

Other followers of digital poetry include Arnaldo Antunes, Lucia Leao, Philadelpho Menezes and Alckmar Luiz Dos Santos

[edit] Bibliography

• AAVV, La coscienza luccicante. Dalla videoarte all’arte interattiva, Gangemi, Roma 1998
• Jean-Pierre BALPE, "L'Ordinateur, sa muse", in "Pratiques" nº 39, Metz 1984
• Jean-Pierre BALPE, "La position de l'auteur dans la génération automatique de textes à orientations littéraires", in "Lynx" nº 17, Université de Paris-X Nanterre, Nanterre, 1987
• Friedrich W. BLOCK, Christiane HEIBACH, Karin WENZ (eds.), p0es1s. The Aesthetics of Digital Poetry, Ostfildern-Ruit, Hatje Cantz, 2004 (German, English)
• Caterina DAVINIO, “Parole virtuali. La poesia video-visiva tra arte elettronica e avanguardia”, in "Doc(K)s. Un notre web” (libro e CD), serie 3, 21, 22, 23, 24, Ajaccio (F) 1999
• Caterina DAVINIO, "Scritture/Realtà virtuali" in "Doc(K)s" (web), 2000
• Caterina DAVINIO, Tecno-Poesia e realtà virtuali (Techno-Poetry and Virtual Reality), essay with preface by Eugenio Miccini (Italian/English), Mantova, Sometti, 2002.
• A. DE CAMPOS, Re/visão de sousândrade (with Haroldo de Campos), Edições Invenção, San Paolo 1964 (2nd edition, Nova Fronteira, San Paolo 1982)
• A. DE CAMPOS, Teoria da poesia concreta (with D. Pignatari and H. de Campos). Edições Invenção, San Paolo 1965; 2nd edition, Duas Cidades, San Paolo 1975; 3rd edition, Brasiliense, 1987
• A. DE CAMPOS, Poesia antipoesia antropofagia, Cortez e Moraes, San Paolo 1978
• Chris T. FUNKHOUSER, Prehistoric Digital Poetry, An Archeology of Forms, 1959-1995, Tuscaloosa, The University of Alabama Press, 2007
• Eduardo KAC, New Media Poetry: Poetic Innovation and New Technologies, "Visible Language" Vol. 30, No. 2, Rhode Island School of Design, 1996.
• Eduardo KAC, Hodibis Potax, Édition Action Poétique, Ivry-sur-Seine (France) and Kibla, Maribor (Slovenia), 2007.
• Eduardo KAC, Media Poetry: an International Anthology (Second Edition), Bristol: Intellect, 2007.
• Eduardo KAC, Telepresence, Biotelematics, Transgenic art, Association for Culture and Education, Maribor 2000
• Philadelpho MENEZES, Poetics and Visuality, translation Harry Polkinhorn, San Diego State University Press, 1995.
• Philadelpho MENEZES, Poesia Concreta e Visual, São Paulo, Ática, 1998.
• Philadelpho MENEZES(org.), Poesia Sonora: poéticas experimentais da voz no século XX, São Paulo: EDUC (Editora da PUC), 1992.
• Philadelpho MENEZES, "Poesia Visual: reciclagem e inovação", em revista Imagens, número 6, Campinas, Editora da Unicamp, 1996, pp. 39/48.
• Philadelpho MENEZES, "Poetics and new technologies of communication: a semiotic approach" in Face - Revista de Semiótica e Comunicação, D.1, 1998, site: www.pucsp.br/~cos-puc/face
• Kenneth MEYER, “Dramatic narrative inVirtual Reality”, in Frank BIOCCA e Mark R. LEVY (eds.), Communication int eh Age of Virtual Reality, Hillsdale, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum, 1995, pp. 219/259.
• Janet MURRAY, Hamlet on the Holodeck – The future of narrative in Cyberspace, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1997.
• Walter J. ONG, Orality and literacy – The technlogizing of the word, Londres, Routledge, 1989.
• Eric VOS. "New Media poetry - Theory and Strategies" in : Eduardo KAC (ed.), New Media Poetry: Poetic Innovation and New Technologies, "Visible Language" Vol. 30, No. 2, Rhode Island School of Design, 1996.

[edit] External links

• New Media Poetry and Poetics Leonardo Electronic Almanac 14 5-6 (2006)
• New Media Poetry, Hypertext and Experimental Literature Bibliography compiled by Eduardo Kac for Leonardo/ISAST