Digital poetry is a form of electronic literature, displaying a wide range of approaches to poetry, with a prominent and crucial use of computers. Digital poetry can be available in form of CD-ROM, DVD, as installations in art galleries, in certain cases also recorded as digital video or films, as digital holograms, on the World Wide Web or Internet, and as mobile phone apps.
33.3 QR code poem by Genco Gulan
Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature where digital capabilities such as interactivity, multimodality or algorithmic text generation are used aesthetically. Works of electronic literature are usually intended to be read on digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones. They cannot be easily printed, or cannot be printed at all, because elements crucial to the work cannot be carried over onto a printed version.
Stuart Moulthrop's hypertext fiction Victory Garden (1992) is shown here in two versions: the original, published on floppy disks to be read on a computer, and the 2009 version that was reprogrammed to work on an iPad. This display was part of an exhibition curated by Dene Grigar for the ACM Hypertext conference in 2023.
A network visualisation showing works of electronic literature cited by two or more PhD dissertations on electronic literature defended between 2002 and 2008. Four clear genres emerge: interactive fiction, generative works, hypertext fictions and more experimental web hypertexts and poetry.
PhD dissertations on electronic literature completed between 2009 and 2013 show a shift in genres. Classic hypertext fiction is still present (the red circle), as are the experimental webtexts, interactive fiction and generative works. Two new distinct genres have emerged as important to this generation of dissertation writers: kinetic poetry and digital poetry installation art.
