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This series of hypertext poems tell the story of Irish people who went to North America as slaves in the 17th century, focusing on the stories of Walter Powers and his descendant Hiram Powers, told by Máire Powers (their modern day descendant) and Liam O’Brien, respectively. The research Liam and Máire are doing as they retell the stories of their descendants have intertwined their fates, placing them in a collision course that….
Malloy uses several previously used interfaces and structures to shape this work (such as the one for l0ve0ne)— a fitting practice, since she transforms them every time, allowing her to deepen their expressive potential.
In the creation of interface. I work somewhat like a painter, who maintains his or her original vision in a series of works, while at the same time somewhat varying each work as the series progresses. And within each larger narrative, there may be variations of structure (“about”).
The “about” page suggests several ways of reading the poem and they’re all worth trying to fit your own engagement with the work, but I suggest you allow the text to unfold to better appreciate some of the accumulative aspects of the work.
For over two decades, Malloy has been spinning together history, fiction, technology, memoir, geography, arts, and love into narrative poems that capture the zeitgeist of the early Internet era. With another portion in the making, the time may have arrived for a hypertext epic.
Featured in ELO 2012 Media Art Show, ELO 2013: Chercher le Texte Virtual Gallery
