Code poetry can be loosely defined as a genre of experimental, constraint-based digital literature that is able to run the program of source code and be read as poetry. It can be written in any programming language like Javascript, Ruby, and Perl and add depth mattering on which one you use. Javascript can be used for animation and HTML can be used for visual design. There’s even special programming languages made for literary code like Shakespeare (shakespeare.spl) that can make programs look like Shakespeare’s plays scripts.
Code poetry can be performed like traditional poetry and there are many ways to do it. Two of the main ways are having a computer or the poet read it. At the Stanford 2013 Code Poetry Slam, “allGoRhythm” by Paul Hertz was read by machine voices, while Leslie Wu read her poem “Say 23” while she entered the code into her laptop.
A special aspect of performing a code poem is that the code that produces an output or animated image or sequence. The website, code-poetry.com, is an anthology of 16 code poems curated by Daniel Holden and Chris Kerr. For each program/poem, the text on the left produces the visual presentation on the right. The topics of these poems range from environmentalism to literary aesthetics. They are both technological and deeply personal, and break the binary opposed on art and science.
Code poetry gained traction in 1980s with the Perl programming language. One of the most notable pieces is “Black Perl,” a Perl 13 poem uploaded anonymously to Usenet on April 1, 1990. With more programming languages being invented and the advancement of computer technology, code poetry became more complex and accessible.
Today, code poetry exists in many formats and has many communities dedicated to it. The world of code poetry is filled with artists, writers, programmers, academics, and many more who blur these lines.
The School for Poetic Computation is “an experimental school in New York City and online supporting interdisciplinary study in art, code, hardware and critical theory” founded in 2013. They emphasize decolonization and transformative justice in their curriculum and admissions. They have many projects that the faculty, organizers, and students work on from zines to in-person showcases to websites centered on defining and redefining “poetic computation.”
PerlMonks is a community website covering all aspects of Perl programming which has a section dedicated to poems about Perl and uses Perl to generate poetry.
J.R. Carpenter is a UK-based writer, performer, artist, and researcher who works in digital media and more. She not only writes visual code poems, she also has a book of short stories written in Python script.
Nick Montfort is an MIT academic who has written several books of code poetry. They are available in print, online, and computer-generated recordings.
Mez Breeze is a trailblazing Australian based artist who created the mezangelle language in the 1990s. Mezangelle combines programming syntax with natural human language, mostly made up of hybrid words. Her work is preserved at Duke University.
zainab “zai” aliyu is a lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY) based designer and cultural worker who touches on ancestral memory and counter-narratives in digital media. A collaborative work/class she taught with The School of Poetic Computation, Instruments of the Black Gooey Universe, touches on “the surveillance of Blackness and the construction of whiteness as “neutral” within high technology.”
The journal dadakuku gathers micro surrealist and experimental poems. There is a variety of poems written in source code and binary code which they have published here.
code::art is an art journal edited by Sy Brand that "challenge our perceptions of what both [code and art] can look like." They are on their third issue and accept any kind of art where code is the medium.
There is Source Code Poetry Challenge, a non-profit initiative where you can submit a rhyming poem in any programming language. Under Previous Submissions, there are poems that read as code and visual poems about code.
Code poetry may seem like a difficult form to try, but with a little bit of programming knowledge, anyone can write a code poem. It’s all about experimenting with artificial and human language. It’s a great medium to expand your creativity and think about exploring classic literary themes with technological interaction.
Comments