Computers and Poetry

Reinventing literature?

Some of the [computer-created] works can be experienced as three-dimensional installations, created in space using so-called vr-cubes and augmented-reality environments. Maria Engberg examines how the forms of the poems construct different reader roles that challenge traditional views of poetry and reading, formed by the visual conventions of the printed page.

"Reading becomes one way to use the poem, and the reader becomes an active co-player. But the poems can also eliminate that possibility, leaving the reader to be a viewer looking at the digital poem, which, like a poetic film, blends words, images, sounds, and movements into a whole," she explains.

In recent years literary research has come to focus more and more on visual forms, and digital poetry brings to a head this concern with the visual.