“Generative Poetry” by geniwate

These three works all use geniwate’s “concatenation engine,” a page architecture designed in Director and inspired by William Burrough’s cut-up. The first one, “Concatenation,” creates a responsive space of exploded letters which generate phrases when clicked upon by the reader following algorithms that randomize word selection and arrangement on the screen. “When You Reach Kyoto,” places the engine in collaboration with Brian Kim Stefans’ photography and text and was published as part of the Machine Poetics “page_space project.”

Like Jim Andrews’ Stir Fry Texts, using a programmed page architecture to create other works, individually or collaboratively, is an important exercise in developing e-poetic form, returning to the question of whether a poet should create a form to fit the content or whether they can fit the content of what they need to a predetermined or closed form.

To the credit of this e-poetic form as a “space of poesis,” all three works use it to express different things in works with their distinctive textures.

Featured in The Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 1.