poetandgeek poetandgeek.com
Morning and evening Maids heard the goblins cry Come buy our orchard fruits Come buy come buy Plump unpecked cherries Swart-headed mulberry
Christina Rossetti also wrote In the bleak midwinter.
Monday, 7 February 2011
goblin market tweet
Sunday, 6 February 2011
Computer works 01: Diana Syder's String
Diana Syder is a poet and artist and her book String (Smith/Doorstop Books 2007) is still a rare thing. The result of a residency in Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Sheffield, funded by an award from the Leverhulme Trust.
Coming from a programming background, we might define string as, a sequence of characters (a data type storing a sequence of data values) and this book contains a poem on Boolean logic. Just the fact of that is enough to delight a programmer! Boole's inspiration is also the poet's
If a great idea is a pin of light
or a highlight placed carefully in the pupil,
it makes of our heads some racing,
slight-rigged thing with sails skin-tight....
and is much more pleasing to think of
than molecules hauling luke-warm cargoes
through plasma in the sticky dark;
noradrenalin, acetylcholine, gamma aminobutyric acid -
even their names are supertankers
that cannot manoeuvre quickly.
Boolean logic Diana Syder
Having spent a lot of time whipping cards in and out of computers, the observational poem Look Inside a Computer is less evocative for me.
Coming from a programming background, we might define string as, a sequence of characters (a data type storing a sequence of data values) and this book contains a poem on Boolean logic. Just the fact of that is enough to delight a programmer! Boole's inspiration is also the poet's
If a great idea is a pin of light
or a highlight placed carefully in the pupil,
it makes of our heads some racing,
slight-rigged thing with sails skin-tight....
and is much more pleasing to think of
than molecules hauling luke-warm cargoes
through plasma in the sticky dark;
noradrenalin, acetylcholine, gamma aminobutyric acid -
even their names are supertankers
that cannot manoeuvre quickly.
Boolean logic Diana Syder
Having spent a lot of time whipping cards in and out of computers, the observational poem Look Inside a Computer is less evocative for me.
But of course this is not the only card up Syder's sleeve, her string is superstring theory - the idea that the smallest entities in the universe are made up of strings (rather than points) which vibrate at resonant frequencies. And to simplify, differently scaled resonance would effect a variety of fundamental forces. This idea would imply the existence of perhaps up to ten dimensions to work theoretically.
These poems inspire a real Donne-like excitement at the world of computing and physics; still recommended. Look forward to pointing out a few more informatic-informed works in the future...
String, Smith/Doorstop Books £7.95 available from: Smith/Doorstop Books, Bank St., Arts, 32-40 Bank St, Sheffield S1 2DS or Amazon etc.
These poems inspire a real Donne-like excitement at the world of computing and physics; still recommended. Look forward to pointing out a few more informatic-informed works in the future...
String, Smith/Doorstop Books £7.95 available from: Smith/Doorstop Books, Bank St., Arts, 32-40 Bank St, Sheffield S1 2DS or Amazon etc.
Friday, 4 February 2011
Sound art/poetry: Mark Greenwood performance London February 5th 2011
Mark Greenwood will be performing at [performancespace] on February 5th 2011. For more details go to:http://www.performancespace.org/
Mark first came to poetandgeek's attention (thank you Cris Cheek!) with the project, Parallel Plymouth.
Working in association with Plymouth Arts Centre, he took a series of walks around Plymouth investigating myths, histories and monuments as well as systems for writing poetry. By dissecting the systems of structuring language and using the rules and influences he applies to his text-based work Greenwood, in collaboration with i-DAT, has created a generative software that "writes" or executes poetry.
The software, Greenwood 2.0, generates new poems, which can be viewed on the large public i-DAT Greenscreen situated on the front of the Portland Square Building, University of Plymouth. The software and the poetry are further influenced by its environment through data feeds from sensors such as movement of people, CO2 levels, online search engines and through its own evolving generative system.
More on the project: http://www.i-dat.org/parallel-plymouth-launch
You can still hear some of the results here: http://www.we7.com/#/song/Mark-Greenwood/Parallel-Plymouth.
Mark first came to poetandgeek's attention (thank you Cris Cheek!) with the project, Parallel Plymouth.
Working in association with Plymouth Arts Centre, he took a series of walks around Plymouth investigating myths, histories and monuments as well as systems for writing poetry. By dissecting the systems of structuring language and using the rules and influences he applies to his text-based work Greenwood, in collaboration with i-DAT, has created a generative software that "writes" or executes poetry.
The software, Greenwood 2.0, generates new poems, which can be viewed on the large public i-DAT Greenscreen situated on the front of the Portland Square Building, University of Plymouth. The software and the poetry are further influenced by its environment through data feeds from sensors such as movement of people, CO2 levels, online search engines and through its own evolving generative system.
More on the project: http://www.i-dat.org/parallel-plymouth-launch
You can still hear some of the results here: http://www.we7.com/#/song/Mark-Greenwood/Parallel-Plymouth.
Mark Greenwood's current website http://www.markgreenwood23.com
Thursday, 3 February 2011
Ginsberg twitter howl
poetandgeek poetandgeek.com
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
Definition of a poetcast
I am not sure if there is even a consensus about the word poetcasting amongst poets, let's face it - there is rarely agreement about anything in the community.
As an approach it is simply disseminating spoken poetry across the internet.
And that can be achieved:
1. with a mic and a computer, edit software not really necessary for simple spoken word (but yes, for more complex effects) or you can record on your phone
2. check it especially if you are doing things low-tech! it may sound horrible, get rid of those puffing sounds when you are too close to the mic, make another mistake you never make, edit, repeat several times with different or similar errors until it is how you want it
3. record (editors choose a bit rate of about 128 Kbps to give a sound quality roughly similar to the radio, fine for spoken word) and save in as .mp3 file and upload by FTP, through Facebook etc or email depending on your audience
4. if you want to do it again and again, true podcasting, then you need to consider syndication via an RSS feed or get a friend or one of the groups listed below to do it
There are however other ideas and philosophies, some more divisive, lurking behind proponents and sites. Poetcast or podcast, straight spoken word or interview, music, sound effects, outdoors or indoors or live at a gig, language and translation.
An interesting one to consider though is the perceived split between oral poetry and poets, performance poets, and those who like to be read in a book. (Is there anyone solely in the latter camp?). It seems to me that this division is an interpretation based on the marginalisation of poetry in the latter part of the 20th century: when sometimes the only way to get yourself read was to read/perform.
(Lucky enough those who live here in the Scottish Borders know the oral tradition thrives.)
A few resources:
· http://www.poetcasting.co.uk/ Alex Pryce's site (possibly still funded by the Arts Council) providing access to a stellar range of contemporary British and Irish poetry online and out loud; and you can submit yourself as a potential poetcaster. Not forgetting the Joy of Six http://www.poetcasting.co.uk/?p=99
· http://itunes.apple.com/cn/podcast/poem-podcast-from-poetry-translation/id392269965 The Poetry Translation Centre is dedicated to translating contemporary poetry from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Or get these through i-tunes for free, great stuff such as Kajal Ahmad's Pregnancy translated from the Kurdish by Mimi Khalvaty and Choman Hardi; more on Kajal Ahmad here http://www.poetrytranslation.org/poets/Kajal_Ahmad
· http://blogs.dickinson.edu/latin-poetry-podcast/ Latin poetry podcast and reportage, cool stuff
· http://poetrypodcasting.org/ The Association of Poetry Podcasting, grandly named, Members are expected to have regular poetry content in their podcast; have published a show within the last 2 months; have published at least 3 shows, Doesn't look promising on frontpage (the words latest press release 2006 spring out at you) but forum is active in 2011.
· http://www.readingroom.spl.org.uk/podcasts/ Last but not least, Scottish Poetry Library's lively heady mix, features a "seductive selection of interviews, poems, snippets of events and music" and some great poets.
Tuesday, 1 February 2011
Three rules of tweet poetry
The first immutable rule is there must be 140 characters or less and this of course implies that you must be working digitally; type or hand write a draft by all means but it is the ruthless counter at Twitter that will ultimately OK what you put down. This might encourage a syllabic approach where tweet poety has a fixed number of syllables no matter the stresses in the line, Marianne Moore might be used as a model
Second rule is that there can be no returns or paragraphs, and no line breaks other than those shown by the space character or (if you must) the forward slash; this is where the haiku/tweet poetry analogy breaks down for me. A haiku in Japanese would be written in a single vertical line; the English version is usually divided into three phrases (often lines) so perhaps tweet poetry is truer to the original Japanes presentation. But the display area in Twitter being what it is, you will see line breaks where the text wraps; and this acts as an uncontrolled counterpoint to the haiku.
Third rule is that tweet poetry is of the moment; or gnomic. I think this gives us much more useful avenues to explore with their roots in Nordic/Old English riddles. The approach is much less strict in its form but usefully has a strong stress pattern, poetic technique including balance, alliteration, metaphor, and better still, the caesura or break in the line is part of its phrasal expression. So counting the space character as an unstressed syllable is part of this oral tradition of poetry. Academics have suggested that riddle writers had their own grammars, distinct from that governing regular speech which frees contemporary writers to formalise poetry under the twitter restrictions.
One must make a distinction however: when dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry
Second rule is that there can be no returns or paragraphs, and no line breaks other than those shown by the space character or (if you must) the forward slash; this is where the haiku/tweet poetry analogy breaks down for me. A haiku in Japanese would be written in a single vertical line; the English version is usually divided into three phrases (often lines) so perhaps tweet poetry is truer to the original Japanes presentation. But the display area in Twitter being what it is, you will see line breaks where the text wraps; and this acts as an uncontrolled counterpoint to the haiku.
the first cold shower even the monkey seems to want a little coat of straw
Third rule is that tweet poetry is of the moment; or gnomic. I think this gives us much more useful avenues to explore with their roots in Nordic/Old English riddles. The approach is much less strict in its form but usefully has a strong stress pattern, poetic technique including balance, alliteration, metaphor, and better still, the caesura or break in the line is part of its phrasal expression. So counting the space character as an unstressed syllable is part of this oral tradition of poetry. Academics have suggested that riddle writers had their own grammars, distinct from that governing regular speech which frees contemporary writers to formalise poetry under the twitter restrictions.
He hates silence I am quiet We are together A lord made me faster sometimes stronger but he lasts longer I rest he runs on Without him I die
Of course, there may be no rules at all in which case I am joining the Dylan Thomas, Chus Pato, Walt Whitman school of tweet poet...
pursued by all hidden wrens in town who scold me from the skeletons of bushes at the corner of each road the dead leaves scuff, I walk home
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