L.ART en LOIRE 11

ical slice of internet culture, and meant to
feel like you’re on the internet.
What is the role of internet in the rebirth
and dynamism of poetry ?
The internet both extends and reshapes
what poetry can do. It extends in the sense
that you can do more - images are inexpensive
to use and circulate widely, so where in
a previous time the idea of making a dozen
image macros would have been outrageously
expensive and time consuming,
now it’s just like writing and speaking.
Images are a new type of word now. The
internet allows other things too, like sound
and movement, but I believe images have
especially been set free to become poetry.
That’s the «extend» part. Even more exciting
is the «reshape» part - poetry can be
created collaboratively in ways that echo
the past (Arabic lyric poetry societies of the
medieval period, haiku contests in Edo era
Japan) but are unique to internet culture. I’m
thinking about memes - not in the «funny
image macro» sense of the term, but as little
circulating cultural units that gets morphed
as they are reshared. That’s also the
shape of poetry now, impacting the evolution
of macros, and can be seen in MACRO
in more detail.
Can you present Macro ? Why did you
choose to make an anthology ?
The image macro deserves a printed book.
Because so many of these works can easily
disappear over time, forgotten, I wanted to
make sure there was a place where they
could be remembered. And not just as a
way of thinking about the past, but as a look
to the future - how can a book of macros
productively feed forward and jump start
the next generation of poets?
Speak a little about the artists, the pieces
? How do you choose the pieces of art for
the publication ?
We wanted to capture the full range of expression
you can find online. Everything
from teen selfies to tumblr poetry to alt lit
to net art to the aumm group, basically as
many platforms and styles as we could represent
without it getting overwhelming.
So we included a lot of people, some of
whom see themselves as artists and poets,
others who were just making these for fun
but in the process did something amazing.
Penny and I went through THOUSANDS
of images, and over facebook messaging
went through them one at a time, over
countless hours, until we’d made a good
representative selection.
What program(s) do you use to create
your own macro poetry ?
Personally? My older stuff was made on
my computer. I would make collages in microsoft
paint, and then run them through
a meme generator, Roflbot. Now I do it a
bit differently, using a ton of different image
editing programs from layer tools to different
glitch programs, and make greater use
of different fonts through apps like Phonto
and Picfont. It was important for me to
make the switch, because while I still do the
old approach i am now getting much more
experimental, and need to make use of all
available tools. But I only use free programs
and that’s part of the point - you don’t need
anything fancy! Just use whatever is available
and make it your own.
Where/ how can we buy the book ?
The order link is here!
http://www.boost-house.com/store/
macro-an-anthology-of-images-macros
To make my final pitch - dear reader, this anthology
is meant to show you what people
can do with internet tools, together, to make
beautiful poetry. I hope that whatever walk
of life you come from, that it will speak to
you in some way. Please consider taking
look!