E-Poem Showcase
When the students in the class were asked to create e-poems, it wasn't until they began experimenting with multimedia composition that the nature of the genre became clear. As literature and technology scholar N. Katharine Hayles writes, “electronic literature, generally considered to exclude print literature that has been digitized, is by contrast ‘digital born,’ a first-generation digital object created on a computer and (usually) meant to be read on a computer." The assignment was preceded by a more traditional college-level assignment to write a paper that analyzed a poem of choice through a particular lens. The class began to experience firsthand the potential of electronic literature to “[test] the boundaries of the literary and [challenge] us to re-think our assumptions of what literature can do and be” (Hayles). The e-poetry assignment encouraged the class to analyze poetry through a new medium, which in most cases resulted in reaching a new depth of understanding. One student, Chelsea Cronin, notes that the e-poetry assignment helped her to analyze poetry in another English class: “I knew that the poetry wanted me to see something and wanted me to create something specific, but I think the whole idea of this project was to then interpret that further and see what else we could do with imagery, sounds, videos, and things of that nature.” Leonardo Flores, who curates and writes regularly about e-poetry, argues that e-poetry helps drive this “process of . . . thinking through making.” Finally, creating e-poetry recasts the relationship between the poet and the student. Instead of passively analyzing the words of the poem, students have the opportunity to complement the text by creating something new and transformative.
| "Sonder" by Emily Danes (transcript) | Related Artifacts |
|---|---|
 |
|
First Draft
| "They Shut Me up in Prose" by Emily Shepherd (transcript) | Related Artifacts |
|---|---|
 |
|
| "The Fly" by Connor Winkler (transcript) | Related Artifacts |
|---|---|
 |
|
| "Where Does the Dance Begin. . . ." by Kaitlyn Greene (transcript) | Related Artifacts |
|---|---|
 |
|
| "The City's Whipsers" by Laura Deem (transcript) | Related Artifacts |
|---|---|
 |
|
| "Making a Fist" by Lauren Farrington (transcript) | Related Artifacts |
|---|---|
 |
|
| "Do Not Go Gentle. . . ." by Madison Forsey (transcript) | Related Artifacts |
|---|---|
 |
|
| "Mirror" by Nicole Bassil (transcript) | Related Artifacts |
|---|---|
 |
|
| "I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud" by Smriti Singh (transcript) | Related Artifacts |
|---|---|
 |
|
| "Matter" by Will Close (transcript) | Related Artifacts |
|---|---|
 |
|
| "Eternal Wanderlust" by Sissy Rodriquez (transcript) | Related Artifacts |
|---|---|
 |
|
| "Cloud Fishing" by Amy Elmers (transcript) | Related Artifacts |
|---|---|
 |
|
| "Invictus" by Chelsea Cronin (transcript) | Related Artifacts |
|---|---|
 |
|
| "There is Another Sky" by Caroline Key (transcript) | Related Artifacts |
|---|---|
 |
|