The result is something of an exquisite corpse... with kids.

It Wasn't the Flu (From Mercy Island. Phoenicia Publishing, 2011).

Animapoetics is on the back burner while I figure things out.

More to come...

Animapoetics .

My animation skills are rudimentary, as is my knowledge of Flash, but I have been searching for a format in which to create intertextuality, not only within a collection, but within individual poems. I am excited by the possibilities interactive flash provides.

Two areas of exploration led me to animation: my own characteristic use of space on a page to guide the reader into multiple readings of a single text, and my research into the preliterate poetry of the Bedouin Arabs and a desire to adapt the pre-Islamic qasida, with its characteristic use of didacticism, intertextuality and telescoping metaphors, for a postmodern, feminist world view.

The pre-Islamic qasida (as performed by men) was a form of mass media in the Bedouin cultures. Over the centuries it became the spring board for other (now traditional) forms of prosody, for the shape of the verses of the Q'uran and for the structure of contemporary secular songs. At least one contemporary qasida, written using Classical formal elements, exists in video form. In Western culture we speak of a "return" to oral poetry. However, while slam poetry/spoken word is popular, I would argue that it is essentially a "live medium" (CD versions and youtube documentation performances notwithstanding) and therefore not a true mass media in our culture. Our primary medium for information and entertainment today is electronic.

Just as the popularity of slam poetry/spoken word certainly doesn't indicate that we have lost an interest in written poetry - the latter arguably allows for greater textual complexity and contemplation and the reader is freed from the tyranny of intonation that can determine meaning - I do not believe animated poems or poetry videos will usurp the chapbook. However, I am interested in exploring what happens to a poem as the written word becomes as much illustration as text, and font choice becomes a potential metaphor. How does the poet use literal and figurative images and still invite the reader to bring his or her own experience to the poem?

The poet Ted Deppe told me that a poet has to teach the reader how to read each poem. While it was not my original intention, I can see that animated poems could serve as a reader's guide to my own system of poetics: they demonstrate the way I invite the reader to approach the text from several directions and allow phrases to interact vertically as well as horizontally, and refer back within the text itself through parallel structures (spacial and grammatical). At the moment, I don't see the animations as a replacement for the poems on the page: I like the A4 frame and compose within that space first. However, it will be interesting to see if working with animation influences the way I compose poetry.

With the publication of my last two poetry collections, came the dilemma of "notes". It is never my intention to have a poem educate the reader, but when something as delicious as the fact that the giant rue that grows in Afghanistan was traditionally used both as a treatment to open asthmatic lungs and to induce abortion comes along and begs to add depth to a poem, I have to find a way to communicate to the average, contemporary reader the facts about the giant rue plant without destroying the fabric of the poem itself. The interactive element of flash animation may provide an option for allowing the reader to weave in and out of the poetry collection without disrupting the tone of the poems (unlike flipping to an appendix to search for terms). A bit pedantic, yes, but in keeping with one of the primary functions the pre-Islamic qasida and necessary in referencing the more esoteric intertexual elements of the story of Dorothea Dix.

ren powell

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