Situating Scandinavian Poetry in the Computational Network Environment

Book excerpt: How to grasp poetry in its contemporary digital situation, a situation wherein poetry travels across digital and analoge media platforms and intended or not collaborates with computers? Situating Scandinavian Poetry in the Computational Network environment investigates how heterogeneous forms of poetry in Scandinavia interact with and work in a digital media environment, how digital programmable and network media intervene with and shape new poetic forms or remediate older forms of poetry, and how digital and digitalized poetry through its self-reflexivity sheds light on digital media technology and its role for poetry and potentially for literature and aesthetics more in general. In doing so, it also argues for the importance of close reading poetry in digital media. It includes an historical and theoretical approach to poetry in digital media and analysis of poetic works in Scandinavia. The book is written within the framework of posthumanism and what N. Katerine Hayles calls "technogenesis", and makes up the argument that contemporary poetry constitutes and is constituted by a computational network environment of human and non-human subjects, wherein poems travels in an egalitarian media ecology . The book is relevant for researchers and students in the field of poetry, students and researchers in the field of literary studies, media studies and digital culture studies, and teachers interested in presenting newer forms of poetry for their students.