Formatting the Flow
How Contemporary Poetry Circulates in Media
Based on current discussions in media studies and interdisciplinary literary theories, this research project examines how poetic works circulate in various media. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube take on key functions in this context, as they present, document, and distribute poetry as well as poetry performances (readings, live performances, etc.). These kinds of transitions between various media are not a new phenomenon, because, as Mike Chasar points out, poetry crosses media boundaries more easily than other literary forms, which he attributes to specific features of the genre such as its brevity and stanza structure. In the process of digitalization, however, prominent changes have become apparent: on the one hand, poems often first appear on social media networks, whose interfaces have thus become important for the reception of such poems. On the other hand, these publication formats are being accompanied by new human and non-human agents (e.g., algorithms), whose impact outweighs that of traditional institutions such as publishers and critics.
The concepts of format and interface will serve as methodological starting points for exploring these new media constellations of contemporary poetry. A format is generally understood as something that is agreed upon and standardized by the media industry and designed to make it easier to distribute works. According to Jonathan Sterne, however, formats also include a model of the recipients. Even more important is the question of what influence formatting has on how recipients aesthetically perceive poems and their performances: What do (re)encodings and file compressions mean for a genre like poetry, which deals strongly with the materiality of written and spoken language, and in whose performances corporeality, particularly that of the voice, plays an important role? Is it smoothed out by making technical adjustments (such as post-processing/the removal of sound variations and noise) – or does some material or corporeal resistance remain? For example, do these disturbances perhaps even have specific functions, especially with regard to authenticity effects? In contrast to traditional processes of selection, such as those undertaken by publishers, technical factors and new agents hinder the “flow” of poems, i.e., their (digital) distribution.
The concept of the interface, in turn, provides an opportunity to interrogate the specific situatedness of poems. On social media, but also on the screens of e-book readers, poems are presented on interfaces that follow their own design logic. This results in a tension between the interfaces them and the aesthetic (surface) design of poetic texts, which often work prominently with layout, typography, etc., and self-referentially emphasize their materiality. This interplay must be examined in relation to the aesthetic perception of poems, for example, when the immersive “flow” of interfaces interacts with poetic practices. This raises questions about the relationship between text and recipient. Timo Kaerlein, for instance, characterizes smartphones as “near-body technology.” Intimacy and immediacy are also important topoi of poetry discourse. The study of the mediatization of poetic texts and their performance by authors and users thus provides insights into the relationship between intimacy, subjectivity, and mediality in contemporary poetry.
Henrik Wehmeier's study “Formatierung des Flow. Die mediale Zirkulation zeitgenössischer Lyrik” will be written in German.