Digital Poetry Analysis Sample Project

Sydney’s Siberia is an interactive digital poem by Jason Nelson, infinitely zooming/clicking mosaic comprised of 121 poetic image tiles, that combine and recombine as you click and move and click. The work is thematically attached to Newcastle, Australia, a small industrial town struggling to find a future beyond its mundane coal and steel. Each tile of this addictively clickable digital poem is a small ficto-history or poetic retelling, signs of the difference between what is there and what they hope (or hoped) for it to become. And as each new mosaic is formed, the reader must search for what they haven’t seen and find new connections to what continually re-arrives.



There is no quick way of experiencing Sydney’s Siberia. There is no short summary of the story and there are no bullet points to make. Sydney’s Siberia is entirely interactive, which demands exploration and ‘play.’ The user constantly clicks on the mosaics of photos formed in each scene. It is up to the users to decide where further to explore and which connections to make.

It is still possible to provide such an experience through a book in a form of a collection of the photos and the respective poems written over the photos, however, such experience leaves little room for exploration. Nelson encourages his readers to be engaged in the scene by leaving the decision of where and when to explore further through his infinitely zooming mosaic of pictures which resembles that of The Body by Shelley Jackson. Experience such engagement through actual print would require the readers to manually browse through chapters, discontinuing the engaging experience as it may diminish the mood going through the hassle. A click of a button is required helping the readers experience the scenes of Newcastle at lightning speed. Such form of interaction is unique to the genre of digital poetry. Rather having the readers use their imagination and think freely, the creator suggests a direction of how to imagine the scenes of Newcastle and directly share the creator’s thoughts and ideas of that particular moment. Nelson’s particular piece of electronic poetry would not be effective if the purpose was to open the reader’s minds through infinite imagination, due to the hypermediation which occurs within each scene of a poem. The hypermediacy occurs as each poem is accompanied by a photo. Nelson, instead of leaving room for infinite imagination to the readers, gives the users the option of infinite exploration through its never-ending mosaics.



However, the experience itself is not what makes the digital form of poetry attractive for both readers and creators. The scale of audience which digital media can attract is what makes the digital form more beneficial to both readers and creators. In the simplest terms Digital Poems are born from the combination of technology and poetry, with writers using all multi-media elements as critical texts. Sounds, images, movement, video, interface/interactivity and words are combined to create new poetic forms and experiences. When a piece like Sydney’s Siberia attracts millions of readers, successful print poets might attract a hundred. The use of the World Wide Web can offer a bright future to poetry. Readers can play within the possibilities of the electronic poem, to inspire and frighten, to allure and repel.