As 2016 comes to an end and I ♥︎ E-Poetry turns 5, I bring good tidings: I ♥︎ E-Poetry awakens from it’s dormant state and is being rebooted with a new phase in its development.
Here’s a brief history of the project:
Phase 1: December 20, 2011 to September 1, 2013
I launched I ♥︎ E-Poetry as a daily blog with a simple constraint: reading one e-poem and writing 100 words about it every day. I quickly abandoned the 100 word limit, settling into a 250-300 word average per post, but adhered faithfully to the daily constraint for 500 days in a row, concluding this initial run on May 2, 2013. The project was not directly funded, but became a major research outcome of being a 2012-13 Fulbright Scholar in Digital Culture at University of Bergen.
Phase 2: September 1, 2013 – December 31, 2016
Following my Advisory Board‘s guidance, I launched a second phase for I ♥︎ E-Poetry, porting it to WordPress, creating resources for our readers, and opening it up to regular and guest contributors. During this time, I had the help of several generations of DH Internship students, my co-editor Dr. Bárbara Bordalejo, and received support in the form of research release time from my university (UPRM) to dedicate to the project. Towards the end of this phase, I ♥︎ E-Poetry became largely dormant as I dedicated time to the Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 3.
Phase 3: Launched on January 1, 2017
Powered by a grant from the Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades (Puerto Rico’s branch of the NEH) and the UPRM, I ♥︎ E-Poetry now reawakens with a mission to expand its public outreach in several ways: translating the whole resource to Spanish, redesigning its website, and building resources for multiple audiences, particularly K-12 students, teachers, and college faculty, in addition to expanding its coverage of electronic literature through partnerships and collaboration with electronic literature scholars and projects from around the world.
So stay posted as we announce new partnerships, calls for contributions, features, and more short form scholarship of born digital poetry and poetics.
And thank you for your readership, support, and ❤️!
Leonardo Flores