Concrete and Digital Poetics

Abstract

I argue that there is an intrinsic connection between concrete poetics as a theory of the medium (i.e., of language, of written language, and of poetical forms) and digital poetics as a theory of poetry for the digital medium. This link is clearly seen in the use of concrete poems as storyboards and scripts for electronic texts, both in composing text for graphic interface static display and for animation. This essay deals with the adoption of electronic media by concrete poets, with examples from the work of Brazilian poet Augusto de Campos (1931-), and Portuguese poets E.M. de Melo e Castro (1932-) and Tiago Gomez Rodrigues (1972-).