13 November 1999

Ideas for Newspoets

Write a newspoem in the form of a flowchart.

Write a newspoem in the form of a screenplay.

Write a newspoem that's a maximum of 12 characters long.

Write an ode to Ted Koppel.

Come up with a slogan for newspoetry.
(Next year we'll have to trash "A Poem a Day Until Y2K.")

Stage a bogus event, then cover it for newspoetry with pictures and interviews with passers-by.

Freewrite a hypertext starting from a news story, having decided beforehand a single type of link to use: chronological, referential, apparently unrelated...

Take a source text and break it into lines. Add a line between each of its lines. Make your lines one font size smaller.

Take a photo from a news source and write your own caption.

Find the same news story in three different news sources. Write a stanza for each source.

Write a small song. Write out the chords and also make a simple recording.

Take a photo from the newspaper, draw on it, and scan it in.

or

Make a drawing of a photo from the newspaper, scan it in. Alter it using software.

Type a word that is the first word in a sentence. Make each letter a link to a word that could be the second word in the sentence. Do the same with each second word, and third word, etcetera, until the sentences all end. Example:

S -> the bombing
T -> the shooting
O -> taxation
P -> working

Take two headlines the same number of words in length. Make your way from one headline to the other by changing one word at a time. Make the resulting headlines a linear hypertext such that clicking on one takes you to the next. Make the process reverse itself at the end to make an endless circular hypertext.

Create a weird table, with lots of rowspan and colspan tags. Make sure it's consistent across browsers. Then write a poem with a stanza in each cell.

Write a poem that changes as you move the mouse over it.

Use illustrator to make a poem whose text is cut out of an image.

Make a subtraction poem using color.

Write a poem in two columns which share stanzas.

Write a story about the fall of technology which goes from being word-processed to typed to hand-written.

Write using only letters with/without curves or vertical/horizontal/diagonal lines

Begin a story in words, end it in pictures.

Write a story where major events are elided and replaced by an image.

Write a story with images that tell another story.

Write a concrete novel.

Write a story with overwrought descriptions paired with mundane images.

Write a poem where the stanzas are replaced automatically, with the speed at which they are replaced varying according to mood.

Write a stanza which rearranges itself.

Begin a story in words, end it in sounds.

Write a story where major events are elided and replaced by a sound

Write a story with sounds that tell another story.

Write a story with overwrought descriptions paired with mundane sounds.

Make a newspoem with only images and sound.

Write a hypertext where links fill in missing portions, making the story longer. The reader starts with a short short. After clicking on every link they have a novel. The short short is contained within the novel and the...

On a really large page, tell a story in short stanzas, stanzas moving from right to left.

Make a HTML form with images and no text - compose a poem based on these responses.

Handwrite a newspoem.