Poetry in digital media : Investigating the remediation of poetry through critical and creative practice

Abstract

This interdisciplinary thesis investigates the effect of digital mediation on poetry structured around the materiality of the page and vocal performance, which is generally regarded as the mainstream poetics of modern and contemporary poetry. This is opposed to poetry that builds upon what Loss Pequeño Glazier calls ‘digital poetics,’ which is the kind of poetry that has been more widely written about in relation to digital media. The thesis approaches this investigation through two interconnected methods. The first is a critical analysis of four smartphone applications as inventive methods of publishing poetry texts and recordings, which considers how the affordances of digital media create a playful, exploratory encounter with the poem. The second is a portfolio of experimental digital reading interfaces for poetry, creative digital remediations of existing works of contemporary poetry, and original poems written in response. The original poems are presented in both standard manuscript form and as a digital collection. Together, these two elements of the thesis form an exploration of how the technical medium of a poem affects the poem’s form and the reader-audience’s approach to it. In moving between critical analysis and creative practice, and between creative remediation and creative writing, the thesis offers new ways of considering poetry’s relationship to our contemporary media ecology.