E-poetry

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E-poetry, short for electronic poetry, is poetry generated electronically, including hypertext poetry, interactive poetry written in various computer languages such as BASIC and internet related languages/scripts (javascript, java, perl, php), and poetry that is partially or completely randomly generated by electronic (usually computer) means. Electronic poetry is a form of electronic literature and can also be a kind of ergodic literature.

Sometimes loosely used to include any poetry propagated over the Internet, it originally designated poems that explored the compositional, distributional, formal, or aesthetic properties of the Internet, as distinct from oral or print culture. The term was coined in 1993 by Kenneth Sherwood; it served as the name of the listserv used to distribute the first issues of an electronic literary journal prior to the dominance of the web. It has been superseded to some degree by "digital poetry."

E-poetry can be fixed, random, user-guided, or a mixture of these. In interactive and random poems, the over-all total possibilities can either be limited or unlimited, known or unknown by the author. Especially in user-guided, interactive e-poetry; the question of who the author is is unclear and can be used by the poet (initiator) to specifically ask questions about authoriality.

E-poetry has roots in visual/concrete poetry, mail art, kinetic poetry, sound poetry, combinatory poetry/literature and similar approaches that were (and partly still are) explored in non-electronic (computer) media, so its roots go back at least to the historic avant-garde movements. It is not merely a repetition of these movements in another media, though. Most interesting e-poetry will use at least a basic level of programming (and/or interaction with the "user").