computational poetry reading group: game poems

the vibe

Our guest curator this month is Rachel Heleva, a game designer and researcher, and Executive Director of the MADE. What happens when a poem becomes something you can play? When rules, choices, repetition, chance, constraint, and computation become part of how a poem makes meaning? And from the other direction, when does a game begin to behave like a poem? Game Poems / Poem Games brings together writers, artists, and game makers working between poetry and play for an evening of short readings, performances, demonstrations, and works in progress. We’ll encounter games made from language, poems structured by rules, computational literature, interactive fiction, and other forms that trouble the boundary between reading and playing. Rachel will also share a prototype of In Countless Shadows, which treats Shakespeare’s sonnets as playable systems. The presentations will be followed by a conversation facilitated by Helen Shewolfe Tseng. For more on the strange territory between videogames and poetry, explore https://www.gamepoems.com/. computational poetry reading group is a recurring series of gatherings at the intersection of language and technology.