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PoetryDB is intended to be a database of poetry consumable via an API. You can try it out at http://poetrydb.org http://poetrydb.org. The API is documented on g

PoetryDB is intended to be a database of poetry consumable via an API. You can try it out at http://poetrydb.org http://poetrydb.org. The API is documented on github at https://github.com/thundercomb/poetrydb https://github.com/thundercomb/poetrydb. There is definitely overlap between Digital Poetry and Poetry Technology. However as the name suggests, Poetry Technology is more than the resulting instances of poetry. It is as much, if not more, about the technological process and mediation. Digital Poetry is perhaps more apt as a marketing label to a consumer (just as we might say, “I like listening to electronic music”). From the point of view of a practitioner, my objection to Digital Poetry as a label is that it is two dimensional, and casts poetry technology as a variant of existing poetry, whereas this is misleading. Digital Poetry, unfairly or not, is not on the whole viewed too seriously by the literary establishment. It is considered to be gimmicky and perhaps even a failed attempt to achieve “serious” or mainstream literary work. Poetry Technology aims to set that right, by drawing attention to the technology, the process, the body of knowledge that it draws from, the theory that can inform the practice and application, the potential works that could be created. It is much more than a label. * Your markup project sounds intriguing. Would love to keep in touch to hear how it progresses, do you have a preferred way of being contacted? I also tried the poetify weblink but the website doesn’t seem to be running at present. Thanks for the links.

igravious 12y ago
> I also tried the poetify weblink but the website doesn’t seem to be running at present. I know :( I upgraded Ruby past 1.8 and broke my own app :( but the code is there for you to have a gander at and the README gets at what I was trying to do. > Your markup project sounds intriguing. Would love to keep in touch to hear how it progresses, do you have a preferred way of being contacted? Your database of poetry consumable via an API sounds intriguing. I would love to keep in touch to hear how it progresses! Would this be able to support a poetry sharing social network of authors, followers, and readers?
- thundercomb 12y ago
  That's an interesting suggesting. There is no reason that the API can't be extended to accept posts of actual new poems. The reason this hasn't been done is largely practical, because I'd have to tackle the security and authentication side, and probably put in place some moderation too. A truly multi-tenanted social database, where people can share their content or keep it private as the case may be, sounds intriguing. However this would be a much larger undertaking. The current incarnation of PoetryDB had a somewhat simpler, less "social", aim. * Thanks again for drawing my attention to ELMCIP, it looks like a treasure trove of learning in Electronic Literature. I tried to access the full text of Giovanna's thesis, but unfortunately the link seems to be broken. PS: Wrt your earlier question, I don't mean to sound hung up about labels, and what to call such and such. This tends to be a futile exercise anyway, as to what will be taken up in popular usage. What I do think is worth reiterating is that poetry technology in particular tries to shift attention away from digital poetry as simply "poetry in another medium", and moves "lower down the stack" to investigate and clarify the real material and symbolic grounds that give rise to digital poetry / electronic literature. This material and symbolic ground is necessarily a combination of the new aspect, namely information technology at large, text processing technologies, program language techniques, data science, and the specific methods that can be applied to language learning and pseudo language learning, etc. ; as well as the traditional and ongoing aspect, namely the body of poetry since the dawn of civilisation, the literary criticisms and appraisals that took shape around it, formal understandings of poetics, etc. In other words poetry technology is about bringing together two considerable traditions in their own right (one new, one old). The danger, at least from the mainstream point of view, has been to see this as gimmicky, a recurring flirtation. Poetry technology is saying there's more to it, they're in a relationship now.

igravious 12y ago

> I also tried the poetify weblink but the website doesn’t seem to be running at present. I know :( I upgraded Ruby past 1.8 and broke my own app :( but the code is there for you to have a gander at and the README gets at what I was trying to do. > Your markup project sounds intriguing. Would love to keep in touch to hear how it progresses, do you have a preferred way of being contacted? Your database of poetry consumable via an API sounds intriguing. I would love to keep in touch to hear how it progresses! Would this be able to support a poetry sharing social network of authors, followers, and readers?

thundercomb 12y ago
That's an interesting suggesting. There is no reason that the API can't be extended to accept posts of actual new poems. The reason this hasn't been done is largely practical, because I'd have to tackle the security and authentication side, and probably put in place some moderation too. A truly multi-tenanted social database, where people can share their content or keep it private as the case may be, sounds intriguing. However this would be a much larger undertaking. The current incarnation of PoetryDB had a somewhat simpler, less "social", aim. * Thanks again for drawing my attention to ELMCIP, it looks like a treasure trove of learning in Electronic Literature. I tried to access the full text of Giovanna's thesis, but unfortunately the link seems to be broken. PS: Wrt your earlier question, I don't mean to sound hung up about labels, and what to call such and such. This tends to be a futile exercise anyway, as to what will be taken up in popular usage. What I do think is worth reiterating is that poetry technology in particular tries to shift attention away from digital poetry as simply "poetry in another medium", and moves "lower down the stack" to investigate and clarify the real material and symbolic grounds that give rise to digital poetry / electronic literature. This material and symbolic ground is necessarily a combination of the new aspect, namely information technology at large, text processing technologies, program language techniques, data science, and the specific methods that can be applied to language learning and pseudo language learning, etc. ; as well as the traditional and ongoing aspect, namely the body of poetry since the dawn of civilisation, the literary criticisms and appraisals that took shape around it, formal understandings of poetics, etc. In other words poetry technology is about bringing together two considerable traditions in their own right (one new, one old). The danger, at least from the mainstream point of view, has been to see this as gimmicky, a recurring flirtation. Poetry technology is saying there's more to it, they're in a relationship now.