backKomninos’ cyberpoetry site, “poetry that moves in time and space, poetry that requires new ways of reading” is a good introduction to his online works. Animated text poems, deceptively simple. He has written poetry for children and it shows. The words move as examples of what they are, do the actions they describe…sunrise comes up from the horizon, sunset into obscurity. Innovative and memorable, fun and playful, you are forced to consider the possibilities of words, their nature as visual building blocks. The potential of poetry that moves is exciting. I like to imagine putting all these bouncing, shooting, running, jitterbugging words together in a riotous assault. C in quick pursuit of hasing off the screen. Who says the computer means the death of literacy. Spike Milligan-esque, can you imagine what you could do with On the ning nang nong. There are other examples of cyberpoetry featured: interactive, where words change at random and you hit stop to make a poem. As interactive as pokies I guess. Spoken word heard jukebox, where you can hear Komninos reading “faster than a squirt of vinegar.” I like the sensuality of reading poems online, imagining how the poet sounds, the nuance in the work and then hearing the poet’s own voice… interpretation. Java Animated Poems. QuickTime Virtual Reality Poetry. Genres of poetry become poems themselves.
http://www.altx.com
“Black Ice—Fiction for a Wired Nation.” At first glance this section of the site seems male dominated, austere, techno-cold but not so. Good and bad short erotic fiction. Soft core, sometimes cliched and I’ve never been into magic realism. Scoops of techno, which, when it’s good, it’s very very good. According to blurb, Black Ice is modelled on avant-garde literary writing of the past and aims to publish offensive, sexy and formally adventurous works. Commendable ideals and some interesting techno-experiments but nothing really turned me on and I didn’t leave feeling violated.
Amerika Online—Mark Amerika’s column (he recently toured here to mixed reaction)—offers opinion and interviews with legendaries like Allen Ginsberg. He tends to overwrite, very I-driven, which becomes boring, first person, this-happened-then-that—perhaps the internet column format could be played with a little more? Revolutionary hype: Alt X aims to challenge contemporary writing establishments and produce electronic novellas which “experiment in narrative and language” and fight the “oppressive forces of social and literary authority.” Literary terrorism, drive-by-haiku. Yawn.
http://sysx.apana.org.au/~gashgirl/arc/index.html [expired]
Alt X needs to take some lessons from gashgirl in the offensive department. Anything you want, you got it. Feminist speakings—“saboteurs of big daddy mainframe”—lots of cunts, both literal and figurative. Gashgirl likes the smell of blood, the depth of wounds, stomach churning sickening puns. It gets a reaction but then I get bored with self-destruction; I hang around with enough artists. There’s lots of going down, down down down into dreamland, violent fairytales; Little Red Riding Hood’s revenge. Sweet success and the art of killing online. The blinking and blending of technology with words are great and gruesome. Da Rimini knows her machine and rages against it:
She weeps tears of code.
Her thoughts are classified. She has
forgotten her own password.
She is corrupt.
Unrecoverable icon.
http://www.ins.gu.edu/eda/text/journal.html [expired]
The serious site. TEXT. Articles by teachers of creative writing. For all those writing students trying to suck up, click here. Basic layout and design and no pics, hence the name. Creative pieces and writing about writing. Hypertext as bibliographical tool is utilised effectively as a way of referencing. See Susan Hawthorne’s “Topographies of Creativity: Writing and Publishing” for digital resources. For writers interested in critical theory about writing, especially on the net.
http://www.netlink.com.au/~beth [expired]
OK, it’s semi promotional but it’s an example of what the net offers to writers: a haven for their work. Produce a web page that reflects you, show off your best stuff, do a striptease but not down to bare skin. Beth Spencer’s first book How to Conceive of a Girl was published last year. Click on parts of Spencer’s cover to reveal juicy excerpts and contemporary short fiction, poetry and essays. The bitter sweet A Blue Mountains Coin-in-the-slot Telescopic Poem, full of masculinity and mud and feminist footy fever, is even better than its title.
http://www.deadreal.com.au
Online road novel. Episodic and intertextual, an idea well suited to the nowhereness of the cyberhighway. Beautifully designed, film noirish—no True-Love-and-Chaos-desert-scenes here—street signs direct the way and if you’re tired and need a driver reviver, Kit Kat and weak white coffee, meaningful messages are signposted throughout. Strong and narrative-driven, you take various roots/routes as a man and a woman hit the road, Jack, and newcomers arrive on the scene to look at the carnage. For Drifters Only: “You start the wipers’ rhythmic dirge. Lo-ner Lo-ner.”
http://writers.ngapartji.com.au [expired]
Ngapartji’s Virtual Writers in Residence: ngapartji = exchange, the act of giving or receiving (Pitjantjatjara language). The best interactive collection of fiction I’ve seen, divided by genre, which encourages the reader to submit versions, reviews and even a rating.
Electronica/multimedia with a wide range of writers/practitioners: John Crouch’s erotic babble, Gibberish, rolls on the tongue like a well-sucked Malteser, while gc beaton’s tangling with artificial intelligence introduces me to someone who I’m sure will become a lifelong friend. Eliza. At last someone who truly understands me. Talk to her—www.ai.ijs.si/eliza-cgi-bin/eliza_script [expired]—if you need some TLC.
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~rmclean/arts/liftk2.htm [expired]
The K Assignment: a serial cybernovel during a writer’s festival, a chapter per day by different writers. With the opening line by Dean Kiley, “Helen Garner’s just finished fucking Patrick White”, I’m hooked. The writing explodes off the screen and into the next millennium, into the psychology of the future. A sci-fi thriller, hilariously subversive, a world where poems only appear as computer viruses and “rhetoric was outlawed after the infamous 21st century scandal involving PP McGuiness, Ray Martin and the use of unauthorised E-motion gravitators”, full of imagination and irony, techno-savvy brilliance and belly laughs. A must for struggling writers hoping to get an arts grant. Will the Rogues Gallery of Minor Poets overpower the Niche Warriors? It’s now your assignment…
RealTime issue #25 June-July 1998 pg. 18
© Kirsten Krauth; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]
