Red Sonnet, Country Song single work   prose  
Issue Details: First known date: 2022... 2022 Red Sonnet, Country Song
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Red Sonnet, Country Song was created by taking text from twelve iconic poems – selected by compiling online lists of “most famous poems” – and using software to shuffle the words into a random order. Phrases were selected for rhyme and iambic pentameter to create a sonnet, a form chosen for its respected place in the Western literary canon. The concept was inspired by poets such as Nick Montford, who writes algorithms to generate poetry, and Toby Fitch, who uses existing texts to generate new meanings. Their work questions how poetry is delineated from other artforms, and asks “who is the ‘real’ author?” We often read poetry in search of meaning, but what feels profound for one person may be meaningless to another. Red Sonnet, Country Song is intentionally arbitrary: the words were written across continents and centuries; algorithms have no poetic intent, and phrases were chosen for their syllable structure. Nonetheless, the words create imagery; meaning is instinctively derived through the act of reading. The poem draws attention to this human instinct and the ongoing influence of iconic poems in contemporary poetry. It intertwines texts and methodologies to reflect contemporary reality: technology both distorting and facilitating human emotion.' (Publication abstract) 

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon TEXT Special Issue Digital Realism no. 69 2022 25658613 2022 periodical issue 'The COVID-19 pandemic has seen a heavy reliance on digital technologies: workplaces and classrooms have retreated to Zoom meetings; online video game narratives and streaming services have become a staple of contemporary entertainment; and social media pervades our life and seeks to distract us at every turn. Existence is now infused with non-human computer language. Even contemporary print texts display what N.K. Hayles calls the “mark of the digital” (2008, p. 159). Hayles (2008) argues that contemporary literature is deeply
    interpenetrated by electronic textuality:

    digital technologies do more than mark the surfaces of contemporary print novels. They also put into play dynamics that interrogate and reconfigure the relations between authors and readers, humans and intelligent machines, code and language… More than a mode of material production (although it is that), digitality has become the textual condition of the twenty-first-century literature. (p. 186) (Publication abstract)

    2022
Last amended 17 Jan 2023 09:28:39
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